‘Justice is not measured by where we stand after history has issued its verdict. It is measured by where we stand when the verdict is still being rendered.’ —Mayor Zohran Mamdani

"Living is reconciling opposites While death is when war starts because of splits" —Rumi

"When fate decrees our brain sleeps in its spell, The sun's eclipsed, the moon turns black as well." #Rumi, The Masnavi (Bk 1)

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window. —Charles Baudelaire

Ah, to be one of them! One of the poets whose song helps close the wound rather than open it! — Juan Ramón Jiménez

“Help each other in righteousness and piety, but do not help one another in sin and transgression.” —Quran 05:02

Nothing truly observed is ordinary… Poetry merely registers the miracle of everything✨

"Someone you have dreamed about may visit. Better clean house to make the right impression ... Who is the stranger standing at the door? You sometimes wonder what you're waiting for." —Dana Gioia, Divination <Interrogations at Noon>

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked upon. —Kafka, Aphorisms

Evil does not require a wide open door to enter; just a crack will do, or a hairline fissure.

Remember… David and Goliath, a colour lithograph by Osmar Schindler (c. 1888) #art

"The poetry of the heart, the final, exasperated solitude of this lyricism, through an immediate reversal, finds itself to be the original song of things; and the world, so long silent in the face of the tumults of the heart it finds its voice once more." —Foucault, The History of Madness

Writers write to silence the voices in their head. 🪶 Finding your voice, as an artist, means choosing one.

"The face of the world may be sad and grieving, but inside are a hundred thousand smiles” —Rumi, Masnavi

As in the physical realm, so in the spiritual — it takes one moment of inattention to slip and fall..

Grateful to see New York Times bestselling author, Gretchen Rubin recommending my first book, ✨Signposts to Elsewhere✨ #booksky #poetry #writing #news #reading

Accept what comes from silence… Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. —Wendell Berry

I’m both a prisoner and an escaped prisoner. —Thomas Merton

Encouraging #news in #USA: Almost Half of House Democrats Vote to End Aid to #Israel

“Hydration break!” @newyorker.com

“[The world's wounded] desire with a more passionate, far more dangerous avidity than the happy. They love with a fanatical, a baleful, a black love.” —Stefan Zweig ( #Art: Agostino Arrivabene)

What is to give light must endure burning 🔥 youtu.be/lh1cSwN0ItA #poetry #politics #activism

Solitude tends to produce an understanding of our own limitations, and it forces us to seek our own council in dealing with them. And, in turn, the insights and greater self-awareness attained in solitude eventually need to be tested in the company of others.

"Love is strange and calls me to stranger things. When I was young I thought I'd know why. I've drawn my life -- a shape with forty wings." —Luke Hankins, Weak Devotions #poetry #booksky

the better we know ourselves –who we are and what we want- the less likely we are to hurt others.

Knowing ourselves is a basic courtesy to others, especially the ones we love.

There is no such thing as Other People, only unrealized possibilities.

Remove the obstacle..

'He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic...' —Melville, Moby Dick

What to Bring to a War Protest www.youtube.com/@Yahia.Labab... #peace #war #Gaza #Israel #Palestine #news

What Tragedy Teaches Us youtube.com/shorts/KnYl3... #Gaza #poetry #booksky #news #Palestine 🇵🇸

Meditate upon the Indestructible and remember we cannot despair tending to the Light 🙏🏼✨

What Can Artists Do? youtube.com/shorts/NzR23... #Palestine #booksky #Gaza 🇵🇸 #IfYouCannotSayGenocide

Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking. —Joubert

What Can Artists Do? youtube.com/shorts/NzR23... #Palestine #booksky #Gaza 🇵🇸 #IfYouCannotSayGenocide

Trump’s illiteracy of world history is his greatest weakness. — @rokhanna.bsky.social youtu.be/RiY8yJf6W8A?... @khanna.house.gov #iran #palestine #usa #news

Art by Caravaggio, 'St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy', 1590

Le secret de la liberté est d’éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie est de les retenir dans l’ignorance. "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant" —Maximilien Robespierre

“And everything you were deprived of, you were spared from its harm”

@ysl.bsky.social appeared on podcast PalCast-One World, One Struggle to discuss the crisis in Palestine and his forthcoming book If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and reorder the book through our website. #newvillagepress #newrelease #palestine #essays

“If adversity befalls you, none can remove it except Him. And if happiness approaches you, know that He is over all things competent." #Quran 6:17

‘I had reached the point where I wanted to obey… Freedom is based on complete submission, complete weakness to God.’ —Dorothy Day @plough.bsky.social www.plough.com/magazine/sum...

Oui, il faut toujours avoir l'espoir d'un jour meilleur💫🌏🌍🌎

We cannot be the same in a time of Genocide: @franceskalbs.bsky.social in conversation with Chris Hedges youtu.be/sohVR-C7dgk?... #palestine #israel #news

‘I had reached the point where I wanted to obey… Freedom is based on complete submission, complete weakness to God.’ —Dorothy Day @plough.bsky.social www.plough.com/magazine/sum...

I write down what I feel in order to lower the fever of feeling. Pessoa

There are as many kinds of laughter, as there are silences... To laugh out of sheer joy might be our most natural & holy state: innocent & wise.

"Of all our different expressions of beingness, only laughter was pure enough, complex enough, free enough, endowed with enough mystery of meaning, to accurately reflect the soul." —Tom Robbins

We weave The fabric of our own existence out of words, And the right story tells us who we are.' youtu.be/hibBJp1dduE #poetry

'The artist concentrates on the detail of the object until it blushes in the way the love object blushes when a lover gazes at it with that particular intense gaze. That is what #art should do. It should make the world blush and give up its secrets.' — John Banville