{"id":11686,"date":"2025-10-10T18:50:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T22:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/instructions-for-being-more-alive-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T18:50:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T22:50:53","slug":"instructions-for-being-more-alive-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/instructions-for-being-more-alive-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Instructions for Being More Alive \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"posts\">\n<h2\/>\n<h3 class=\"byline\">By Maria Popova<\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry_content\">\n<p>We spend our lives trying to see our own light, to catch its surprising refractions on the face of the world, to play in its waterfalling golden blue radiance until we are ready to lie down in the bright black of time as the stars go on spinning, their fractured hieroglyphics encoding the memory and mystery of being alive.<\/p>\n<p>Sarah Williams \u2014 one of the five wonderful women in my intergenerational poetry group \u2014 offers a shimmering set of instructions for how to do that in her splendid poem \u201cHow to See the Milky Way,\u201d read here by <a href=\"https:\/\/themarginalian.org\/tag\/rose-hanzlik\">Rose Hanzlik<\/a> \u2014 the youngest member of our constellation \u2014 to the sound of Mozart\u2019s \u201cMoonlight Sonata\u201d against a painting of the Milky Way by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2016\/07\/07\/trouvelots-astronomical-drawings\/\">\u00c9tienne Trouvelot<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;How to See the Milky Way&quot; by Sarah Williams (read by Rose Hanzlik)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xPdGwkIQSN0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>HOW TO SEE THE MILKY WAY<\/strong><br \/><em>by Sarah Williams<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Travel far<br \/>from crowds. Leave<br \/>lit places that yellow the sky.<\/p>\n<p>Bodies of water help.<br \/>Pick a cloudless night,<br \/>a new moon.<\/p>\n<p>Find a place to rest your head,<br \/>perhaps on someone\u2019s chest,<br \/>their heart keeping time.<\/p>\n<p>Or float in still water<br \/>flecked with stars<br \/>rippling around you.<\/p>\n<p>However you arrive<br \/>parallel to earth and sky,<br \/>settle your eyes in their soft sockets and wait.<\/p>\n<p>Look up.<br \/>Disregard the march of satellites,<br \/>their plotted lines.<\/p>\n<p>Linger here.<br \/>Drink speckled light<br \/>from billions of neighboring stars.<\/p>\n<p>Some nights your life is like this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Couple with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2025\/06\/17\/the-whole-of-it-hannah-fries\/\">\u201cThe Whole of It\u201d<\/a> by Hannah Fries \u2014 another of the five women in our poetry group \u2014 then revisit Ellen Bass\u2019s lifeline of a poem <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2025\/03\/14\/any-common-desolation-ellen-bass\/\">\u201cAny Common Desolation,\u201d<\/a> which has been an ongoing inspiration to all of us.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Maria Popova We spend our lives trying to see our own light, to catch its surprising refractions on the face of the world, to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}