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advice for college graduates
collated from this askmefi thread.
- Live in smaller place, near work.
- Don’t accumulate stuff.
- Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.
- Don’t own a TV.
- Learn to tidy. Put things in their place.
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(Untitled)
June 1
Write about something to hold on to.
June 2
Write about a silence.
June 3
Once, when I was . . .
June 4
What are you looking for?
June 5
Write about small regrets. -
striking similes
a few choice morsels from one bored workday's browsing through the book Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases (available at Project Gutenberg)
Striking Similes- Whose laugh moves like a bat through silent haunted woods
- A quibbling mouth that snapped at verbal errors like a lizard catching flies
- A reputation that swelled like a sponge
- All my life broke up, like ( Read more... )
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a myth of devotion
A Myth of Devotion
by Louise Glück
When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness
Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,
( Read more... ) -
I closed the book and changed my life
Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life]
Bruce Smith
I closed the book and changed my life and changed my life and changed my life and one more change and I was back here looking up at a blue sky with russets and the World was hypnotic but it wasn’t great. I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss, I didn’t know about bliss. Is bliss just a rant ( Read more... ) -
not boring, but stable
Lesson 1
By Julie Alger
At least I’ve learned this much:
Life doesn’t have to be
all poetry and roses. Life
can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks,
electric bills, dishwashing,
chapped lips, dull stubby pencils
with the erasers chewed off,
cheap radios played too loud,
the rank smell of stale coffee
yet still glow
with the inner fire of an opal,
still taste like ( Read more... ) -
If porcelain, then only the kind | Stanisław Barańczak
"If porcelain, then only the kind"
Stanisław Barańczak
If porcelain, then only the kind
you won’t miss under the shoe of a mover or the tread of a tank;
if a chair, then not too comfortable, lest
there be regret in getting up and leaving;
if clothing, then just so much as can fit in a suitcase,
if books, then those which can be carried in the memory,
if ( Read more... ) -
dohell
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell
by Gwendolyn Brooks
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I ( Read more... ) -
i really needed this today
The Word
Tony Hoagland
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning ( Read more... )