Category: Quotes

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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we’re small
and flawed,
but I want to be
who I am

— Ada Limon, from “The Problem with Travel” in Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) (via Read a Little Poetry)

Notes:

  • Photo of me by Cara Denison at 6:35 am this morning at low tide. Thank you Cara. 21° F, feels like 8° F, with wind gusts up to 15 mph. January 30, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here (twilight to sunrise) and here (my duck friends)
  • 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.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Every leaf that falls
never stops falling. I once
thought that leaves were leaves.
Now I think they are feeling,
in search of a place—
someone’s hair, a park bench, a
finger. Isn’t that
like us, going from place to
place, looking to be alive?

— Victoria Chang, “Passage” in The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2022. (via Read a Little Poetry)

Notes:

  • Video: InnoRecords (via Pexels)
  • 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.

Sunday Morning

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Softest of mornings, hello.
And what will you do today, I wonder,
to my heart?

— Mary Oliver, from “Softest of Mornings” in “A Thousand Mornings: Poems” (Penguin Books, 2012)

Notes:

  • Photo from this morning’s walk at Cove Island Park. Other photos from this morning here.
  • Full poem from Jules of Nature here.

Even fanatics cannot change that.

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Why? Because people need songs like they need bread and water. People need poetry, beauty, love! So long as the sun rises and rivers flow, there will always be weddings and celebrations and music. Even fanatics cannot change that.

— Elif Shafak, “There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel” (Knopf, August 20, 2024)

Notes:

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn30 Comments

Tippett: And then you talk about growing up in a sad, depressed place, a difficult place. You don’t belabor this, I mean, and in other places — there’s a place you talk about you were one of many thousands who’ve had insufficient childhoods, but that you spent a lot of your time walking around the woods in Ohio.

Oliver: Yes, I did, and I think it saved my life. To this day, I don’t care for the enclosure of buildings. It was a very bad childhood — for everybody, every member of the household, not just myself, I think — and I escaped it, barely, with years of trouble. But I did find the entire world, in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.

— Mary Oliver, from “I Got Saved by the Beauty of the World” in “On Being Interview with Krista Tippett” (Feb 15 2015)

Notes:

  1. 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.
  2. Poem Source. Thank you Make Believe Boutique.