Category: Quotes

Sunday Morning

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I also painted a study of a seascape, nothing but a bit of sand, sea, sky, grey and lonely—sometimes I feel a need for that silence—where there’s nothing but the grey sea—with an occasional seabird. But otherwise, no other voice than the murmur of the waves.

— Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo, 17 September 1882 (via Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters)

Notes: DK Photo, 5:21 am. Saturday July 6, 2024. Quote via More Than Ideas.

Sunday Morning…

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And yet the morning washes everything away… I think, where would humanity be without morning? Even the most violent need is calmed by dawn, and you can almost catch the fresh scent of hope. The day is a child before it ages and it ages very quickly here, making those early hours all the more miraculous.

— Hisham Matar, My Friends: A Novel (Random House, January 9, 2024)

Notes:

  • Just finished this book. Highly Recommended. Here’s an additional passage: “I became, in silent and private ways, powerfully aware of the fragility of all that I treasured: my family, my very sense of myself, the future I allowed myself to expect.” And another: “I had my own words, blades packed in the mouth, capable of cutting my tongue wide open. I feared speaking them and feared not speaking them, and I knew that, like all things of consequence, they could not be postponed or stored away for later use. If I missed my opportunity now, I thought, I would have to carry those words unspoken forever. Sounds in the dark.” And one last one: “A thousand and one things could befall us and the people we love the most would have no hint of it. Which is why we must remain close to them, within an arm’s length.”
  • NY Times Book Review by Peter Baker: In ‘My Friends’ an Exile Finds Himself Outside Libya, but Never Far Away
  • Photo: DK this morning February 4, 2024 at Cove Island Park @ 6:33 a.m, 28° F feels like pretty damn cold. More photos from this morning here and here.

Sunday Morning

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Church. My sister is one of the servers. Unaware that I’m there, she approaches the spot at the altar rail where I’m kneeling with my hands out. She stops in front me, carrying the big silver chalice, looks down, recognises me. She rocks back on her heels, her face is still with astonishment, then she smiles and I have to keep my eyes on her black shoes. My lips quiver against the rim of the chalice so hard that I’m afraid I won’t be able to swallow.

— Helen Garner, from a diary entry in 1987 when she was 44 in One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995.

Notes: Portrait of Helen Garner in 1984 by Ray Kennedy via smh.com.au. ‘A poet in plain prose’: Reflection on Helen Garner’s amazing opus by Kerrie O’Brien.

Lightly Child. Lightly.

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I hit a low point today. I felt I could not go on. It was like knowing that a free garden, calm and full of rest, lay on the other side of a wall. I knew where the gate was, I could walk through it whenever I felt like it. I was withholding release from myself. Then I had a coffee and a cake, went back to the desk, forced a solution, and kept going.

— Helen Garner, One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995

  • Portrait via Inside Story. “Garner Territory” by Zora Simic: “In one of the most remarkable entries, in the thick of torment, Garner envisions a new life for herself… “Sometimes we know what we want even when we think we want something else.” Another friend declares, “I think these diaries are the best thing she’s ever written.” I agree; they are her life’s work, and the ideal mode for a “writer who works off and is nourished by the events of daily life.” •
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I’ll take the sea with me, deep in my bones, its tides making their way through my soul.

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Notes: