Waves of Words

hand-me-downs-et-cetera:

So I’m working on a research paper in which I’m inquiring into the Gross National Happiness of Bolivia in comparison to that of the U.S.   For this I’ve made up a survey that I’m trying to distribute as wideley as I can amongst people in the U.S. and, of course, a Spanish version amongst people in Bolivia.  Within is the short survey that could potentially be filled out every day (at the end of the day.)  As often as you’re able/willing I’d appreciate your answers.  You can send it to joshuapatrickmurphy@gmail.com.   Please share this with anyone you think may be interested as well. Thank you all very much. ciao for now.

Read More

been publishing my own work to my personal blog rather than to here… maybe I’ll slowly reblog them to here but until then you can find them at hand-me-downs-et-cetera.  They’re the “read more” posts…

hand-me-downs-et-cetera:

I’m looking for some people to help me out with a research paper.  I’m planning to write a piece comparing Bolivian and U.S. Gross National Happiness (GNH.)  As part of this I want to get some personalized data, not just generalized statistics.  So I’ve come up with the idea of trying to find some people willing to share with me (at least) one week of personal journaling.  I come to you all to ask for volunteers because I don’t want to employ anyone that I have personal relationships with, these relationships would naturally keep them from supplying the raw and honest data that I’m looking for.  I’m hoping for a very detailed and truthful resource here.  So I’d really want a vivid description of your personal relationships, your work life, your home life, your sex life, all your lives with all of the emotions admitted and explored.   (the emotions are key here, if you haven’t figured that out.) I know it’s a lot to ask but who knows, you may have something to gain from it as well, and I’d greatly appreciate the favor and would be glad to share with you the finished product. 

I’m looking specifically for 3 people.

One Student

One Parent

One Professional

The gender for each isn’t specific, but I do want it varied…

“Apply” by telling me which role you fill, your gender age and location, how long you’re willing to journal for and why you want to help me out.  Reply to this post or send me a message.

*these diaries must be digital so they can be emailed to me at the end of the journaling period and the period, by the way, would be starting as soon as possible.*

Thank you all again for reading this, and a special thanks to those that are interested.

Whovever you are: step out in to the evening
out of your living room, where everything is so known;
your house stands as the last thing before great space:
Whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their fatigue can just barely
free themselves from the worn-out thresholds,
very slowly, lift a single black tree
and place it against the sky, slender and alone.
With this you have made the world. And it is large
and like a word that is still ripening in silence.
And, just as your will grasps their meaning,
they in turn will let go, delicately, of your eyes.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(Source: brightendless)

You, my son, have much to learn about goals.

Rilke warned you about the wind that

Accompanies you on the winding road

That carries scents of a sweet future

That carries you onward towards that green hill.

 

But he failed to mention the anguish;

The doubt that holds your hand along the way

The curves that confuse your direction

The fear of failure that begs for failure

The voice calling you to turn around

The times when the goals are hidden behind

The mountain that has no clear-cut path

 

You don’t know yourself as a trailblazer

You don’t know yourself as a leader

You do not know that you write your own fate

In fact, you do not know much at all.

 

-Joshua Patrick Murphy

"

Listen, listen, listen:
Within each thing there frolics an elf
or an invisible wing unfolds.

Capture with your fingers
the fleeting breeze that hesitatingly passes.
Don’t let things slip by in a hurry.

Don’t let yourself be governed by ephemeral sciences
for they are the flower of human madness.
Life is not only appearance.

Birds—in just a flicker—
give us in the school of wings
the key to a changing world.

The rose is a crucible of joy.
The day offers you treasures.
The clock drips of ambrosia.

Let us understand and revere all things
and penetrate into that secret world.
May the flower be your guiding light.

"

Jorge Carrera Andrade,  Each Thing Is a World in Itself

"No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away."

“There is No Going Back” by Wendell Berry

(Source: growing-orbits)

"

If I could live my life anew
in the next I would try to commit more mistakes
I would not try to be so perfect
I would relax more

I would do things stupidly
I would take fewer things seriously
I would be less clean
I would run more risks, make more trips
and contemplate more sunsets

climb more mountains, swim more rivers
I would go to more places that I haven’t been to
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans
I would have more real problems and fewer imaginary ones.

"

Jorge Luis Borges

"

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God or many
gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the
world with its harsh need to change you.

If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is
where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that
fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of
your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day,
with the consequence of love and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

"

David Whyte, “Self Portrait”

Fortunate is the tree, which hardly has feeling,

and more so the stone, because it has none,

because there is no greater sorrow than the sorrow of being alive,

nor greater sadness than conscious life.

To be, and yet know nothing, and to be without a fixed couse,

and the fear of having been, and the terrors about the future…

And the guaranteed horror of being dead tomorrow,

and to suffer from life and from darkness and from

what we don’t yet know and barely suspect,

and the flesh that tempts us with its fresh clusters of grapes,

and the tomb that awaits us with its funeral wreaths,

and not knowing where we are bound,

or where we have come from!

—Ruben Dario