"You hear so much talk about risk-taking in poetry. Lying is a form of risk-taking, but no one talks about that." - Mary Ruefle"The End." - Me______________________________________________LINKS:Buy Madness, Rack, and Honey at WAVE BOOKS.Buy a "ME READING STUFF" shirt or sweatshirt HERE. See my drawings in "HELL and the Paradisal" HERE.Get free shipping on all books in my SHOP! (use Coupon Code "BOOK")And here's my WEBSITE. Thank you so much for listening. 

Episode 372: Mary Ruefle - On Beginnings

Love letters to the people of the world. Sincerely, Robyn O'Neil

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With love, RobynLINKS:The De Palma trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97XoMjwoZ5wIndiebound for buying absolute any of the books I mention, always: https://www.indiebound.org/Cowboy Tommy // Cowboy Teddy Bear // Electric Fireplace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSqVnHN3q9E

Episode 5: 

Episode 4: P.S. 1:  How my dog Henry's DNA ended up at the home of a Vanderpump Rules cast member's apartment.

Episode 2: ❤️‍

"See God, it ain't me.They 'bout to start a world war,I'm just tryna practice peace." - Leikeli47"How the hell you walk outta Heaven?" - Leikeli 47"LEARN A TRADE" - Me"I. CHOOSE. LIFE!" - Ricci OprahTo anyone reading, I've missed you. If anyone out there is struggling with, well anything, I hope you can find the resources that are best, most comfortable and affordable to you. I always recommend Al-Anon, as many of my listeners have heard before. I've yet to meet a person who doesn't "qualify" for the miraculous program it can be. And I actually did end up finding tremendous help through Betterhelp.com by the way; that wasn't entirely a joke. So there's that, but it's very expensive. Be kind to yourselves, be extra kind to children, and I'll talk to you very soon. With infinite love to every person reading this, even you, Robynp.s. THE AL-ANON PROMISES If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline of the Twelve Steps, our lives will be transformed. We will become mature, responsible individuals with a great capacity for joy, fulfillment, and wonder.Though we may never be perfect, continued spiritual progress will reveal to us our enormous potential. We will discover that we are worthy of love and loving.We will love others without losing ourselves, and will learn to accept love in return.Our sight, once clouded and confused, will clear and we will be able to perceive realityand recognize truth.Courage and fellowship will replace fear.We will be able to risk failure to develop new, hidden talents.Our lives, no matter how battered and degraded, will yield hope to share with others.We will begin to feel and will come to know the vastness of our emotions, but we will not be slaves to them.Our secrets will no longer bind us in shame.As we gain the ability to forgive ourselves, our families, and the world, our choices willexpand.With dignity we will stand for ourselves, but not against our fellows.Serenity and peace will have meaning for us as we allow our lives and the lives of those we love to flow day by day with God's ease, balance, and grace.No longer terrified, we will discover we are free to delight in life's paradox, mystery, and awe.We will laugh more.Fear will be replaced by faith, and gratitude will come naturally as we realize that ourHigher Power is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.from p. 269-270 "From Survival to Recovery"

Episode 1: Hello from Robyn and Ricci - An AFTER DARK! episode of ME READING STUFF

“There is a charming quality, is there not,” he said to me, “in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is , a novelist whom you will read in time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow.  And see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light; the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.” - Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way."A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man. They are sluggish yet more wayward, and never without a melancholy tinge. Sights and impressions which others brush aside with a glance, a light comment, a smile, occupy him more than their due; they sink silently in, they take on meaning, they become experience, emotion, adventure. Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry." - Thomas Mann, Death in Venice "Good feeling, won't you stay with me just a little longer?" - Violent Femmes "I'll be so alone without you. Maybe you’ll be lonesome too." - Price, King & Stewart, You Belong to MeLINKS:Buy Frank Spicer's "My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer".Send your questions/comments/concerns to: info@robynoneil.comMy website: www.robynoneil.com"We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds."Anton Chekhov

Episode 372: Mary Ruefle - On Beginnings

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