Small Life.

Small Life

by james bezerra

Can’t ever shake the feeling,

the curse of a small life.

No one has a large one

where I was a boy.

A good life there is dirt under your nails,

lush fields of lettuce or cotton. A good truck. Kids.

A bad life there

is blowing up your garage cooking meth.

There are many shades between,

but not that many options.

So that’s the name of the little fear I keep in my shirt pocket like a tiny pet, like a hamster or a tumor with teeth: the small life.

I can scratch it on the head, my pocket monster,

on these summer sticky LA nights.

No one wants to die like Kafka,

but ultimately, as I lay dying, I hope my only hope won’t be to die like Kafka.

The small life can allow for failure

as a writer, as a man.

The small life can afford to be forgiving,

but that’s what makes it small.

The longer you live without success,

the greater that success has to be to matter.

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Going Granola.

One of the more hippie-dippie, granola, lefty-liberal, tree-hugging, whale-saving things I like to do is read the blog Zen Habits. It is written by a guy named Leo Babauta who I learned about because he often comes up in other blogs I read about minimalism. I know nothing about Babauta except that I enjoy his blog. I am skeptical of him for the simple reason that I am always skeptical of anyone who appears to have answers for unanswerable questions, but that has more to do with me than with him. He seems like a decent and legit dude. Aside from that I try to forget that there is a person writing his blog, just like I can only read a novel nowadays if I force myself to forget that it has an author.

Anyway, so that was a pretty long disclaimer, wasn’t it?

All I really wanted to post was this thing below, which is his brief guide of what he calls "reminders" for life.

I have found more peace in life since I started doing most of these things. When I started doing them I did not really have names for them and I didn’t know that there were cheerleaders available for them. So I’m posting them below because maybe they’ll make your journey through life a little easier. Or not, whatever.

less TV, more reading

less shopping, more outdoors

less clutter, more space

less rush, more slowness

less consuming, more creating

less junk, more real food

less busywork, more impact

less driving, more walking

less noise, more solitude

less focus on the future, more on the present

less work, more play

less worry, more smiles

breathe 

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