Author Archives: Patrick Rhone

I keep this text file on my computer called “Bits of Words and Wisdom” for capturing nice sentences and word pairings. It’s not quite a Text Playlist (I keep one of those as well) but sort of it’s shorter and faster brother. I’ve been doing this for years and the list has grown quite large. I often refer to this list whenever I want to be inspired. Here is a snippet from the list to give you an idea of the sort of things that end up here:

• dear thursday, please me kind and gentle. my defenses are worn down and my exhausted heart is weary – DIYSara

• Through stacks of unread books, seas of feeds, people, invitations, events, and unanswered emails, if we stand still long enough, if we listen and look, if we pause, we see that nothing is ever the same again tomorrow. – Liz Danzico

• You’re defined by your inspiration, your vision, your creativeness and in trusting your instincts to break away from your comfort zone and not trying so hard to be different but in being you. – Jorge Quinteros

• One gets better at writing by writing and reading good writing. – Frank Chimero

• Lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless. And lonely is healing if you make it. – Tanya Davis, How to be alone

• For me, form is beauty. Get the structure of a sentence right, make every word work as hard as it possibly can, and you’ll have yourself a beautiful sentence — Iain Broome

• Sometimes the voices we miss most are the only ones we can hear, calling us out into the night, filling the darkness with howls. — Jenny Browne – We Should Dance While We Can

• When everything works best it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that. – Charles Bukowski

As you can see, it could be anything. Represented above are snippets from blog posts, tweets, things spoken in videos, things written in letters. If I read it, or hear it and it causes me to pause, I capture it here. There are even a few things I have written that I have been proud of.

Mainly, I’m sharing this with you so that maybe it will spark a similar idea or at least a mandate to remember and appreciate some well crafted words.

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often find myself staring at this little girl. I can’t help myself. I’m smitten. She’s mine. But, so very often, as hard as I look, I do not see myself there.

She has her Mother’s eyes. A steely blue that shimmers like ice in the right light. Skin like cream. Blond hair that could not have come from my side, even despite it’s curl. Maybe the curl is mine, but who knows. Her walk, that ball-forward gait – Bethany’s. The way she talks is a combination of Bethany and, increasingly, her British born care provider. Certainly not me.

So, as I stare, I so very often wonder where I am.

Much of her face is still too early to tell. The nose and cheeks and mouth and shape of it. All will change so much over the next several years as toddler becomes little girl. Perhaps, when her features form, her face will provide a glimpse of me. But this hope provides little truth right now.

Then there is the personality. The strict adherence to rules, especially those self made, arbitrary, and imposed. The flash-fire temper that ignites with little tender and calms just as quickly. The many unique personal habits both good and bad. All of this is straight from her mother as if cloned in a lab.

Will, I ever show up in any of her angelic features? Will I ever feel as if I somehow contributed in any way other than nurture?

Then, the other day, we were waiting in a line. Beatrix, belying the patience normally found in a two and a half year old, crossed her arms in a way that was not intertwined in the traditional style but, instead, one atop the other…

Ah ha! There I am.

Because, truth be told, if I can see some part of me, in someone so beautiful, perhaps I will feel some small part of me is beautiful too.