Tag Archives: fiction

Bearded Man On A Bus – New Book Recommendation

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http://www.amazon.com/Bearded-Man-Bus-Immigrants-Privilege/

A friend and Buddhist mentor, Daniel L. Smith, has written a new book: Bearded Man On A Bus and it’s the perfect book for me right now as I live out my new life as a recovering romantic. His book is filled with wandering wisdom and gave me some fresh insights for my life journey. Specifically:

  • “Trailways red and white – and – lost all over” p.9
  • “Backwoods Alabama – born here, raised here, still feels she doesn’t belong.” p.31
  • “Wondering if enough is sufficient, if enough is in the right direction, if enough means loving just one person, enough? P.41
  • “Wrens migrating after the storm, down from Ontario for the summer; unaware of the tumult a world away.” p.75
  • “She sits in front of her all too honest mirror, as a thousand times before, one thought away from last week’s fantasy, another from this week’s fleeting memory, just one ahead of the nothingness, she fears.” p.82
  • “Tonight you end right quick, right here at table, Momma stirs her sauce with a long knife.” p.88
  • “Toils and tears of some creator we see as absent, but intuit in the present moment, moss underfoot or sandy shore, we find forgiveness in the sky.“ p.92
  • “Yet, it’s communion we’re really after, isn’t it? Not conversation, not community, but true communion at source – all light and insight.” p.99
  • “It is difficult, this staying in tenderness, this wanting to be” p.102
  • “What follows in the darkness, all a fantasy anyway, there’s not much real about any of it, but she, she goes on and on, almost as if there is no beginning and no end” p.107

My thanks to author Daniel L. Smith who approved the sharing of his words above. If you’d like to read more of his “wanderer’s spiritual journey … a collection (of) hopeful poems, possibly, because life continues, nothing is permanent, and breathing is such a fundamental right to exploring the conditions necessary for happiness in all humans, regardless of origin, journey, or destination.” check out his book available on Amazon.

There She Was – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway Highlights

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Five authors contribute to the Lion’s Roar article The Dharma of Fiction where fiction reveals greater truths. The first contribution comes from Emily France on insights gained from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. See an article excerpt below.

For the full article check out http://www.lionsroar.com/the-dharma-of-fiction/

There She Was

Emily France on Mrs. Dalloway.

Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway follows a single day in the life of a British socialite in 1923. The plot is simple. Mrs. Dalloway buys flowers in a London shop, has a visit from a former suitor, and hosts a party. But the novel isn’t about all that. It’s about the vast inner life of one woman, her mind a field of immeasurable size. Woolf painstakingly traces every thought her heroine experiences, and this is part of what makes it remarkable: it was one of the first novels to follow the stream of consciousness.

Woolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway in the wake of World War I, when writers were turning away from the chaotic details of outward events to the fragmented movements of inner ones. Mrs. Dalloway is pummeled by delicious memories of her youth, feelings of inadequacy in the present, and fears about what may come. And aging! Oh, the horror of all this aging. The powerful undertow of mind is pleasing and terrifying by turns. And it’s nothing if not familiar.

Mrs. Dalloway’s story captures the very essence of dukkha, the Buddhist term for a dissatisfaction that permeates our lives, even at the best of times. She feels something is off-kilter. Things aren’t as they’re supposed to be. Desperate for a solution, her mind tries to solve the puzzle of this discomfort.

‘Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.’—Virginia Woolf

I see a woman at peace. Awakened to her life.