Just Add Father

A thing is what it is, Part 2: Appearances

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:26:33 +0000

A The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. – John Ruskin I’ve never won an argument with Aristotle. Go [...]

Listening for my mother

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:41:04 +0000

A Perhaps everything terrible in its deepest being is something helpless that wants help from us. — Rainer Maria Rilke A I began listening to my mother when she was dying. She had never listened to me. In the end, I decided I was the one who needed to listen. Our relationship after my father [...]

A thing is what it is, Part 1: Truthiness

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:45:26 +0000

“I should be content to look at a mountain for what it is and not as a comment on my life.” ― David Ignatow A David Ignatow’s little poem has always worried me. When I think I’m writing about someone else, say my son, am I really writing about myself? If I take action to [...]

Whispers to God

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:09:22 +0000

Come wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, come yet again, come. — Rumi It’s the oddest thing, but I’ve started to pray. God is no stranger, but for me words have never been part of the relationship. [...]

Of landings and forgiveness

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:20:21 +0000

I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest. [...]

Pipers at the gates of dawn

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:09:54 +0000

“Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” [Ratty] said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, [...]

Free fall

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 09:57:38 +0000

I can fly. But I always I fly down. — Little Bear There’s seldom reason to drop out of a perfectly good airplane. But when my cousin Philip got leukemia, his brother Robert and I promised we’d accompany him on a parachute jump if he survived the bone marrow transplant. Philip’s wife Jill had already [...]

What we leave behind

Wolf Pascoe — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:12:03 +0000

Hold on tightly, let go lightly. — Proverb This fatherhood thing. Is it me, or everyone who has a child? Lately all I am is sad, and it’s all I seem to think about. James Hillman used to rail against autobiography. Bly had a personal grudge against all confessional poetry. Sooner or later every writer [...]

Starting over

Wolf Pascoe — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 09:30:21 +0000

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? — Joni Mitchell Lately we’ve been visiting Oregon, and Oregon has been singing to us. We found a school for Nick, after he graduates from Fern Hill in two years, and went to investigate a month ago. It had [...]

Rain in Austin

Wolf Pascoe — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:05:40 +0000

The core of community is not good intentions or agreement. It’s sitting at the same mystery. — Michael Meade All last year the drought in Texas had persisted past reason and despair. Last weekend when I went to Austin for the Dad Conference (Dad 2.0 Summit), it rained and rained, translating the landscape into a soggy, [...]