Magic Lamp Editing Services

07/07/2024

THE PROMPTER ROOM

Posted on July 7, 2024 by magiclampedits
For Sunday, July 7, 2024:

A mysterious quickening inhabits the depths of any good poem—protean, elusive, alive in its own right…. We feel something stir, shiver, swim its way into the world when a good poem opens its eyes. Poetry’s work is not simply the recording of inner or outer perception; it makes by words and music new possibilities of perceiving…. The eyes and ears must learn to abandon the habits of useful serving and take up instead a participatory delight in their own ends. A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from a tree branch: it is a ripening collaboration of artist, receiver, and world.

~~ Jane Hirshfield, TEN WINDOWS: HOW GREAT POEMS TRANSFORM THE WORLD

30/06/2024

Confession: I'm not getting any work done today (other than trying to help our neighbors with online red tape issues) because I'm watching a brand new baby loon (hatched yesterday afternoon) at the Lake Fairlee loon cam. S/he went in the water this morning (!) and has been swimming with or on Mom and Dad ever since, with an occasional nap on the nest raft. Apparently we are waiting for egg #2 to hatch this afternoon, so there's that, too.

If you want some Zen time, check out the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGU0mSYgzcA

You can watch in real time (or close to it) or go back in time. The parents have been very vocal today, so you'll hear a lot yodels, wails, and tremolos while you watch the little one bobble about in the choppy water. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Lake Fairlee LoonCam! Lake Fairlee hosted its first loon breeding pair in 2016 when they successfully hatched a chick at a shoreline nest nea...

23/06/2024

THE PROMPTER ROOM
Posted on June 23, 2024 by magiclampedits

For Sunday, June 23, 2024:

When you are up against a wall, be still and put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall.

~~ Carl G. Jung

16/06/2024

THE PROMPTER ROOM
Posted on June 16, 2024 by magiclampedits
For Sunday, June 16, 2024:

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

~~ Henri Nouwen, via Anam Cara Ministries

09/06/2024

The Prompter Room
Posted on June 9, 2024 by magiclampedits
For Sunday, June 9, 2024:

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the hour of the new clarity.

~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

02/06/2024

The Prompter Room
Posted on June 2, 2024 by magiclampedits
For Sunday, June 2, 2024:

Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth. A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

-- Ursula K. Le Guin (via Philosophical Quotes on FB)

26/05/2024

The Prompter Room
by magiclampedits
For Sunday, May 26, 2024:

Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

~~ Mary Oliver (h/t BJ)

14/04/2024

For Sunday, April 14, 2024: A mysterious quickening inhabits the depths of any good poem—protean, elusive, alive in its own right…. We feel something stir, shiver, swim its way into the world when …

07/04/2024

For Sunday, April 7, 2024: You would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer, once you get to know them.  Anne Tyler

31/03/2024

For Sunday, March 31, 2024: Reading is meat and drink and vitamins for a writer.  Read more than you write!  Read widely and deeply.  The more you read, the more fluently and natural…

24/03/2024

For Sunday, March 24, 2024: I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar.  They neither paint nor dance.  Their me…

17/03/2024

For Sunday, March 17, 2024: In writing and ordering your poems, you are forging a self. Housing it in a stall of your own making. You are building a bearable myth. You are constructing, as much …

03/03/2024

For Sunday, March 3, 2024: A good poem takes some irresolvable complication, worries it to death like a dog with a bone, and leaves it still unresolved. The pleasure of the poem lies entirely in th…

25/02/2024

For Sunday, February 25, 2024″ We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled wi…

18/02/2024

For Sunday, February 18, 2024: To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. W. Somerset Maugham

11/02/2024

For Sunday, February 11, 2024: Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line. Rollo May, THE COURAGE TO CREATE (via Heron Dance Art Studio…

04/02/2024

For Sunday, February 4, 2024: … [Khalil] Gibran’s life is … a reminder that your voice matters, your dreams matter, and you have the power to paint your own masterpiece on the can…

28/01/2024

For Sunday, January 28, 2024: In old age the steps are slower, as the elderly carry a child, a young person and an adult in their own story. Unknown, seen in a Facebook meme

21/01/2024

For Sunday, January 21, 2024: The manner in which you get ready for work, go to work, and the way you are while you are there affects not only those you work with, but also the quality of your work…

14/01/2024

For Sunday, January 14, 2024: Art is the thing we call … what the artist does.  It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it.  What matters, wha…

07/01/2024

For Sunday, January 7, 2024: I think if I could go back in time and give myself a message, it would be to reiterate that my value as an artist doesn’t come from how much I create.  I think tha…

31/12/2023

For Sunday, December 31, 2023: Looking behind I’m filled with gratitude, looking forward I’m filled with vision, looking upwards I’m filled with strength, looking within I discove…

24/12/2023

For Sunday, December 24, 2023: A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers. Leonard Bernstein (quote at …

17/12/2023

For Sunday, December 17, 2023: You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that’s not within your body.  Let it live in art.  Let it live in writing.  Le…

10/12/2023

For Sunday, December 10, 2023: My life without books would be like my life without clothes – naked. Like everyone else, I know that books warm up a room, but they do much more than that. They warm …

03/12/2023

For Sunday, December 3, 2023: The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right …

26/11/2023

For Sunday, November 26, 2023: I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. Brené Br…

19/11/2023

For Sunday, November 19, 2023: A word after a word after a word is power. Margaret Atwood, in her poem ‘Spelling’

12/11/2023

For Sunday, November 12, 2023: I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre…

05/11/2023

For Sunday, November 5, 2023: 20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor…