Tag: Colum McCann

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn9 Comments

We are creatures of great change. Not a single atom in our bodies today was there when we were children. Every bit of us has been replaced many times over. We flake away and become new. Whatever we are now, we are not the stuff from which we were originally made. All the people we once were. All the people we had once hoped to be.

— Colum McCann, Twist: A Novel (Random House, March 25, 2025)

Notes:

  • Man can write. I’d read anything he puts on paper….
  • NY Times Book Review: “A Novel Explores the Undersea Cables That Connect the World. The crew in Colum McCann’s new book makes complex repairs deep in the ocean. Human bonds prove harder to mend.”
  • Guardian Book Review: “Colum McCann: I like having my back against the Wall”
  • 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.

Miracle. All of It.

Live & Learn42 Comments

Long. But worthy. And esp. don’t miss the scenes @ 11m 33 sec.

Notes:

  • Post title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Miracle. All of It.

Live & Learn16 Comments

I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peach. Try to describe it.

—  Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Notes:

  • Photo: Bianca Nakayama. Quote via seemoreandmore
  • Post title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Miracle. All of it.

Live & Learn12 Comments

The bar-headed goose can fly at almost thirty thousand feet, allowing it to migrate over the Himalayas before sweeping south. Pairs of them have been spotted over Mount Makalu, the fifth-highest mountain on earth. In certain villages the birds are caught and the names of the dead are written in dark ink on the underside of the birds’ bellies. The geese are said to bring news of the dead to the heavens.

~ Colum McCann, Apeirogon: A Novel (Random House, February 25, 2020)

Notes:

  • Bar Headed-Goose Photo: “Bar-Headed Geese Slow Their Metabolism to Soar over Everest” from the Scientist
  • Post title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Feel that sway…

Live & Learn17 Comments

As a boy, Picasso liked to draw by candlelight.

He had already intuited that the moving shadows cast by the light would instill a feeling of sway in his work.

~ Colum McCann, Apeirogon: A Novel (Random House, February 25, 2020)

Photo: John Taylor