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Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

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Entries in Grow Your Soul (46)

Monday
Apr072025

Books

I invite them to Phu Bai. We stood in the shade of the old small faded airport building. It’s a clear memory of my arrival when I was a green nineteen. I needed to see and feel the area again.

I’ve carried a copy of Omar’s book, A Century Is Nothing from Turkey to Indonesia to Nam. I considered making a sacrifice in Nam. Burn it.

First thought, pure thought, said a Zen monk.

Together with Omar we used fire, crucible alchemical combinations, diversities, sweat, blood and tears to create it so I’d use fire to release it.

Save books, build a library.

Books are universes of ideas, experiences, feelings, visions and paths, destinations obliterated through discovery, reminding memory. They are worlds of dreams, stories, dramas, plays, songs, histories and guides into new visceral experiences.

Pages sing their laughter with wisdom, song, and poetry. Grow Your Soul.

Live forever with paper’s tactile sensation. Voices of reason, comedy and tragedy are skintight drum stories. They are oral transmissions recorded on parchment, vellum and illustrated manuscripts in Gaelic talking tongues, etched on Sumerian clay and painted on Asian scrolls.

I didn’t burn it. Down the road I gifted the brick to three Asian women passing through Saigon in late 2009. They had Chinese ancestry from Hong Kong and lived in Australia. I said a blind friend named Omar wrote it so I signed it laughing letting it go with them.

Thanks for the book.

You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it.

It took all three to carry it. They staggered up guesthouse stairs with the epic opus. After breaking down a wall they struggled to get it through an opening.

People need to break down before they break through.

They discarded cheap Vietnamese souvenirs to maneuver the monster into a bag. We’ll have to check this beast all the way to Sydney.

People use words to make walls, said Zeynep.

People use words to make bridges, said Rita.

Bridges over walls, said Devina. It’s a mind map.

Show someone a rectangle, said Z. Ask them is this a door or a wall?

When you build a wall think of all the things you leave outside, said Tran.

Yes, said Leo who knew a lot about dynasties and firewalls.

Some veterans return to Europe, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the South Pacific. Others remember to forget or forget to remember returning in their memories, dreams, reflections, flashbacks and nightmares. Some write it down and make sense of it later.

Don’t try. Do.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BCE)

Thursday
Dec212023

Laos

Thin vociferous tongues

Wag sound letters

Calligraphy senses voice

Sniffing garbage

Swirling smoke dances from grilled meat

H'mong man eats sticky rice with startled fish eyes

 

 

Net man deftly braids threads

White filament

Words melt into excellent soft smooth paper

Laughter sings a long song

Wearing a crash helmet

In the event of a volcanic eruption

Pen fountain

Tyranny of whining children

Angry mothers without love die of neglect

How did I get here?

Blind eyes see blind lies

Real eyes realize real lies

 

 

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king

We’ve been killing each other for 4,000 years and still no one knows who the king is

Grow Your Soul

Wednesday
Mar292023

Grow Your Soul

31

See through soft eyes
Gratitude

No mistakes in life art - happy accidents

Ink dances point line shadow

Watercolor pencils
Creativity has no rules

Take a dot/line for a walk

Hospital poem story

Remember - Every story is a poem and every poem is a story.

1

Create like a god, order like a king, work like a slave

Work like you don’t need the money

Love like your heart’s never been broken
Dance like nobody’s looking

I am a short story

You are a novel

Her Zen like awareness
Stoic serene
Shamanic wisdom seeks wisdom

Wabi-sabi

Everything I do is an experiment

Art is what everything else is not

Art is medicine - a cure

Laughter medicine

Spill sounds letters words phrases sentences sing

Grow Your Soul

Monday
Dec192022

Talk Story

  1. Where does the story want to go?
  2. Embrace ambiguity
  3. Stay confused

Be a work of art or wear a work of art

Talk Story

Discuss common sense

Not very common

The world of forms/ideas

Form is emptiness

Emptiness is form

Forms in natural world

Basho said, if you want to know a tree go to a tree


World of ideas

Imagination

Observation

Experience

Present moment

Ink me laughter

Waves light nature's song

Riding a beam of light through space

Keep your own counsel

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can

It’s what you find in the corner

Circus people live on the edge

Sunset swift lets fill orange sky with magic

 Inhale here

Exhale now

Mental hypothalamus

Unconscious

Grow Your Soul

Grow Your Soul: Poems by [Timothy Leonard]

Tuesday
Apr122022

ink brush pressure

I visit from Mars. It is 38 billion miles away. A way.

Earthlings visit a hospital to collect relatives with an expiration date ... a woman scrubs steel pots in a gutter soapy floods flow into street drains.

Earthlings are good at two things - eating and sleeping.

A young woman chops meat. Absorbing her rhythm I play my harp. She dances with a bloody cleaver. 

We share laughter. Music is the fuel.

*

"When we dance the earth trembles, the earth feels the beating of our hearts and we become one with the earth. We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth..." - Earth Keeper by N. Scott Momaday.

*

I can help you. I can't solve your problem.

*

 

Die cast - explanations have to end someplace

Character sketch in 20 words or less

Awareness - compassion - gratitude - kindness

Ink, brush, pressure

Line, shape, shading

Reality is the funniest thing happening

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – position or velocity

People talk about people talking about people

Pinpoint of light in left lung

Cancer sun flare

Meditate on the process of your death

A small sun glows in darkness

Active imagination shares a story – process

Talking with doctors in class

Illustrate FEARLESS

Fear speaks of patient death

Save the children

Language chunks

Courage

Curiosity

Focus on your breath

Meditation

Wushu slow methodical

Every movement has meaning

See through soft eyes

Gratitude

No mistakes in life art - happy accidents

Ink dances reveals point line shadow

Watercolor brush

Creativity has no rules

Take a line for a walk

Grow Your Soul - prose and poems from Laos/Cambodia