The individual aspiration is always defeated of its perfect fruition and expression, but it is never lost; it passes into the conglomerate being of t… - Don Marquis

demons and fishhooks
he exclaimed
i am losing my personal
identity as a worm
my individuality
is melting away from me
odds craw i am becoming
part and parcel of
this bloody robin
so help me i am thinking
like a robin and not
like a worm any
longer yes yes i even
find myself agreeing
that a robin must live
i still do not
understand with my mentality
why a robin must live
and yet i swoon into a condition of belief

amen said a beetle who had
preceded him into the interior that is the way i
feel myself is it not
wonderful when one arrives at the place
where he can give up his
ambitions and resignedly
nay even with gladness
recognize that it is a far
far better thing to be merged harmoniously
in the cosmic all
and this confortable situation
in his midst
so affected the marauding robin that he perched
upon a blooming twig
and sang until the
blossoms shook with ecstacy
he sang
i have a good digestion
and there is a god after all
which i was wicked enough to doubt
yesterday when it rained'''

The best good that you can possibly achieve is not good enough if you have to strain yourself all the time to reach it. A thing is only worth doing, and doing again and again, if you can do it rather easily, and get some joy out of it. Do the best you can, without straining yourself too much and too continuously, and leave the rest to God. If you strain yourself too much you'll have to ask God to patch you up. And for all you know, patching you up may take time that it was planned to use some other way. BUT . . . overstrain yourself now and then. For this reason: The things you create easily and joyously will not continue to come easily and joyously unless you yourself are getting bigger all the time. And when you overstrain yourself you are assisting in the creation of a new self — if you get what we mean.