Words To Live By

www.lifein10minutes.com

"Ten minutes is enough time to write something strange and beautiful and true without editing the strangeness and beauty and truth out of it."  Valley Haggard

This is Valley Haggard's new website, a site to find beautiful writing -- Valley's and other's -- in it's most raw and real form.  And think about it -- if it's written in 10, it can certainly be read in 2.  Give it a look.  

This is one of my pieces included in the 10:

I Am

I am a daughter.
I am a sister.
I never wanted to be a mother – until I did.
I wasn’t a very good wife, until I married the right husband.

I’ve always been most comfortable being a friend.
I also think I make a pretty good Aunt.

I am a decent Pilates teacher.

I am not a cook, but I can bake.

I can’t sing or play an instrument, but I love music and need to hear some every day.

I am chocolate and cats and pink roses and warm socks.
I love watches and clocks but rarely get anywhere on time.
I am not the cold, or the wet.  I would not survive the Pacific Northwest; I barely got out of the Northeast alive.

I am organized – I know where everything is.

I am curly hair that is blown dry straight.
I am eggplant parmesan with a side of pasta.
I am rock and roll, alternative and classic.

I am not morning, and never will be.

I have my mother’s hands.  She has her mother’s hands.

My mother disliked her mother, resented her deeply and forgave her nothing.
I work hard not to be the same.

...
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

-- Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

Favorite Quotes

"We're all insecure...and then some people are polite and some people are rude."  The Emperor's Children/Claire Messaud

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What I've Read Lately:

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel
"You never know.  You only guess.  This is how it always is.  You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what's good and right and then be able to make that happen.  You never have enough information.  You don't get to see the future.  And if you screw up, if with your incomplete contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake.  It's impossible.  It's heartbreaking.  It's maddening.  But there's no alternative."

We Are All Completely
Beside Ourselves
by Karen Joy Fowler
"But as far back as I could remember, I'd also been jealous of her.  I'd been jealous again, not fifteen minutes past, learning that Lowell's visit had been for her and not me.  But maybe this was the way sisters usually felt about one another."

The Wife
by Meg Wolitzer
"Joe once told me he felt a little sorry for women, who only got husbands.  Husbands tried to help by giving answers, being logical, stubbornly applying force as though it were a glue gun.  Or else they didn't try to help at all, for they were somewhere else entirely, out walking in the world by themselves.  But wives, oh wives, when they weren't being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease."

The Ocean at the
End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
'"Grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of things.'
'Oh, monsters are scared,' said Lettie. 'That's why they're monsters.  And as for grown ups...I'm going to tell you something important.  Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either.  Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing.  Inside they look just like they always have.  Like they did when they were your age.  The truth is there aren't any grown-ups.  Not one, in the whole wide world."

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