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Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke written, um, to a young poet. This Rilke is recommended reading, especially regarding creative endeavors.

From the first letter (italics are my addition):

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

Very insightful.

Some words of wisdom from Don Miguel Ruiz:

Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

“It is not childish to live with uncertainty, to devote oneself to a craft rather than a career, to an idea rather than an institution. It’s courageous and requires a courage of the order that the institutionally co-opted are ill equipped to perceive. They are so unequipped to perceive it that they can only call it childish, and so excuse their exploitation of you.” —David Mamet, True and False

I joined Twitter 1,000 days ago in January of 2008. When did you join? Oh, I see — after I did. That’s okay, don’t feel badly. We couldn’t all be Livia’s co-workers back in the day.

Anyway, in honor of my longer-than-thou time on the Twitter, I post a few favorites, a handful of Tweets Gone By.

I like a nice, clean tweet.

Burgers and more!

When people encounter new information, facts may not be as important as beliefs.

I don’t #MM, #WW or #FF. But I might start doing #TT and #SS just for the ambiguity factor.

This is one of my favorite poems. It was written by my dear mother, who passed away this week.

The story goes that this poem was inspired long ago by me and my siblings’ propensity for grabbing quickly at things in the basket on top of the fridge whenever dad would hoist us in the air, which he did often. If something fell down, it wasn’t my fault — gravity did it!

			Gwabity

		Kathryn R. Ashworth


	Gwabity did it;
		Gwabity told
	About all the things
		I climbed up and stoled

	Fwom off of the fwidge top
		And put in my pocket.
	Gwabity told,
		Though it couldn't talk it.

	Mama held
		My feet by her hand
	While I giggled and giggled
		At Upside-Down-Land.

	"Oh, oh," I said,
		And Mama did, too,
	As the pennies and pwetties,
		Away they all flew.

A paper clip here,
			A blue marble there,
	And one wubber band
		All hid in my hair.

	"Gwabity makes
		Things fall," Mama said,
	As the things I had gwabbed
		Fell down wound my head.

I’d mentioned this poem to mom recently, and it brought a big smile to her face. A couple of days later she said “Gwabity did it” with a twinkle in her eye. It’s one of the last things my dear mother said to me.

Thank you, mom. I love you. I miss you.

I had my first rehearsal today to play the role of Dr. Jim Bayliss in a production of All My Sons, the great Arthur Miller play. More info will be forthcoming, naturally, but since today was my first rehearsal and since I speak first in the play, I thought I’d type up a snippet from the top of the play, including the last bit of prefatory stage directions into the first lines of dialog:

DOCTOR BAYLISS is nearing forty. A wry, self-controlled man, an easy talker, but with a wisp of sadness that clings even to his self-effacing humor.
AT CURTAIN, JIM is standing at L., staring at the broken tree. He taps his pipe on it, blows through the pipe, feels in his pockets for tobacco, then speaks.

JIM. Where’s your tobacco?
KELLER. I think I left it on the table.

I may wear a bow-tie. Stay tuned!

I just received an email from Delta Air Lines, that begins as follows:

Dear Kevin Ashworth,
We are trying to contact you because our flight has cancelled. We have rebooked you on the best available flight and we’ll keep trying to reach you by phone.

What’s wrong with this? Doesn’t one syntax thing jump out at you immediately? My inner grammar cop says this is wrong. Maybe it’s just industry jargon. Maybe they’re British. I mean, let’s talk about how many l’s this word has. Or maybe it’s just plain wrong!

Cancel is a transitive verb, meaning it requires a subject and an object, no matter how it’s spelled (one l in America). My flight has canceled? Not so much. Something canceled my flight. What or who could that something be?

Glee has many great things about it — and you can read about those all over the internets, so let me offer a couple of minor complaints. The show could be so much better.

1. Any scene with cheerleaders wearing cheerleader outfits in it pretty much sucks. Painfully clichéd, caricatured and shallow, especially when there’s more than one girl wearing her cheerleader outfit around school.

2. The musical numbers don’t sound like what they look like. Big problem. Huge problem! Come on — give us cred. We are smart viewers, we can handle it. Many (most?) of the actors on this show can really sing quite well, so let us see what it would sound like if we were present in the scene as we see it. Instead, we see obvious lip synching, and we hear instruments that make no sense. Not right! (Please note: I am not talking about fun, surreal moments like when the football team dances to “If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it.” Nope. That’s great. It was staged and we bought it. But almost all other numbers where you hear and see something that doesn’t add up: these make the show less than it could be. If you show four vocalists, let us hear four vocalists in the moment. Etc.)

So much good. So much potential, also, to be that much better.

This iPhone photo provides a glimpse of tonight’s wonderful reading of the new play Tombs of the Vanishing Indian by Marie Clements. A great opportunity for all of us actors. Thank you, Marie. Thank you, Autry.