Commonplace – Lisa Marie Blair

God Gone Missing

“Imagine three days of God
gone missing. Now,
imagine my lifetime of it.”

— Airea D. Matthews, from “Sexton Texts a Backslider after Breaking Lent,” Simulacra

Honey

“Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Price for Being Wrong

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong”

— Thomas Sowell

She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.

Repeat Repeat

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

— André Gide

Untethered

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”

— Chogyam Trungpa

The Wonder

“And the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.”

— James Baldwin

Don’t I?

“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”

— Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Category: Commonplace