Share What Inspired You Today

[Graf_Severin]

It could be an anecdote you remembered, a quotation that hit you out of nowhere, a satirical article, a person in line at a store you didn't want to be in. Whatever it is, please share away.

I'll start: 15 quotations from Kurt Vonnegut, along with really good paragraph annotations that are insightful: http://www.avclub.com/article/15-things-kurt-vonnegut-said-better-than-anyone-el-1858

Specifically this: "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

 

[Hypoxia]

I'm inspired by a walk down memory lane. Literally. We're revisiting the wonderful locale (central Sonoma County, California) we had to leave almost 15 years ago. We strolled down the old streets, marveled at the changes, appreciated the survivals, etc. Yesterday's big inspiration: buying a 6-string tenor ukulele and restringing the octave pairs for better fingerpicking (and developing a new right-hand technique). Today's inspiration: great tapas.

 

[slyc_willie]

I'm going to pass on the Vonnegut quotes, if you don't mind.

Instead, I'll share something my eight-year-old daughter told me yesterday in all the pure sincerity a child of that age can muster:

"I hope when I grow up and get married, I'll marry a boy just like you, daddy."

Now, just try and tell me that's not the most inspiring thing any man can hope to hear in his life.

 

[CyranoJ]

Then crooned the crass young weed: "Last night my stamen
Could hear her pistil sigh.
Though far the garden that her petals flame in,
We touched in dreams the hour that bee flew by.
My pollen's shy
Deep nuzzling tells her: weeds must love or die."

Yes, it's Paul Viereck's poem "The Slacker Apologizes," which contains the afore-quoted weed pr0n*, vengeful tree armies and an all-out war between the worlds of Dirt and Asphalt, and a meditation on the role of the artist in society and the Treason of the Intellectuals. It also opens with this particularly deathless passage:

We trees were chopping down the monsters in the
Street to count their rings.
WHO BLESSED OUR WAR? The oak invoked: "Within Thee
Crush, Mother, quakingly these red-sapped things
Whose harrowings
Wrong Thy clean dirt. Kill, kill all alien things."

Look upon his verse, Ye Pervy, and despair.

* Incidentally, paging oggbashan. oggbashan to the white courtesy phone. I'm not issuing you a challenge to write a story about long-distance sex between weeds? But I'm not not issuing one either. I'm just saying if there's anyone on Lit who can pull it off, it's probably you.

 

[Graf_Severin]

I'm going to pass on the Vonnegut quotes, if you don't mind.

Instead, I'll share something my eight-year-old daughter told me yesterday in all the pure sincerity a child of that age can muster:

"I hope when I grow up and get married, I'll marry a boy just like you, daddy."

Now, just try and tell me that's not the most inspiring thing any man can hope to hear in his life.

Christ. That trumps all the Vonnegut quotes.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm going to pass on the Vonnegut quotes, if you don't mind.

Instead, I'll share something my eight-year-old daughter told me yesterday in all the pure sincerity a child of that age can muster:

"I hope when I grow up and get married, I'll marry a boy just like you, daddy."

Now, just try and tell me that's not the most inspiring thing any man can hope to hear in his life.

I understand the sentiment behind your statement, sure it gave you one of those lumps in your throat us guys are not supposed to get.

But when my older daughter once said that to me...

It scared the shit out of me.....

 

[sr71plt]

I'm getting inspiration from my garden waking up for spring.

 

[Handley_Page]

Seeing the crescent Moon, hanging in an azure sky, this very evening.
And the planet Venus was spectacularly bright.

 

[slyc_willie]

Christ. That trumps all the Vonnegut quotes.

Hey, my little girl said it; I'm not taking credit.

I understand the sentiment behind your statement, sure it gave you one of those lumps in your throat us guys are not supposed to get.

But when my older daughter once said that to me...

It scared the shit out of me.....

Then you and I are of different mind. My daughter thinks I'm Superman, and honestly, I'm not intimidated by that. So far, I've been able to fix just about everything in her life that has gone wrong, and those few things I couldn't, her mother took care of.

Eventually, there will come a day when she realizes I'm not perfect, that I have faults, that I make mistakes and I'm not always right. But I still have faith that she'll want to marry someone just like me because the important thing I hope to have impressed upon her is that I'm someone who doesn't give up when it comes to taking care of her.

So, when she tells me the same thing at sixteen that she said at eight, I figure I'll have done what I was supposed to do as her father.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I don't know, that thing about the boy sounds like that infamous Ian Fleming line: 'as a woman, Bond thought she was etc...'

 

[Graf_Severin]

I'm inspired by a walk down memory lane. Literally. We're revisiting the wonderful locale (central Sonoma County, California) we had to leave almost 15 years ago. We strolled down the old streets, marveled at the changes, appreciated the survivals, etc. Yesterday's big inspiration: buying a 6-string tenor ukulele and restringing the octave pairs for better fingerpicking (and developing a new right-hand technique). Today's inspiration: great tapas.

I like the whole combination of factors, followed by tapas. Yes yes yes.