Tag: darkness

Lightly Child, Lightly

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I pause under that summer tree, the one that feels like a friend, as my dog wonders why we’ve stopped. She was trotting in such rhythm. But when this still, I wonder what part of me, way down, remains untouched by dream or memory? What drop of being remains out of reach of the opinions of others? When up close, each thing reveals its shimmer. And it’s the unexpected closeness that holds everything together. The light spreads across my dog’s face, her eyes so devoted to wherever I want to go.

Can I be this devoted to the pull of life?  

~ Mark Nepo, from “Speechless” in Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living

Notes:

  • Photo: Bill Leslie with Groovy Times
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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

Live & Learn15 Comments

I remember how [the sparrow] felt
When I got my hand, and how it burst
that hand open
when I took it outside, a strength

that must have come out of hopelessness
and the sudden light
and the trees…

— Stephen Dunn, from “The Sudden Light and the Trees,” in Landscape at the End of the Century

Notes:

  • Photo: Sparrow by © sergey_polyushko
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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

Live & Learn6 Comments

When silence reaches an ultimate point,

the light penetrates everywhere.

— Hsuan Hua, The Chan Handbook: Talks About Meditation

Notes:

  • Photograph by Marta Bevacqua. Quote via Memory’s Landscape
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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

Live & Learn27 Comments

In recent months I have become intent on seizing happiness:
to this end I applied various shades of blue…
I am trying to invent a new way of moving under my dress…
yet the thigh keeps quiet under nylon…
draw nearer my dear: never fear: the world spins
nightly toward its brightness and we are on it.

~ Carolyn “C.D.” Wright, from “Crescent,” Tremble: Poems

Notes:

  • Photograph via Newthom
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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

Live & Learn30 Comments


Ms Green didn’t believe her mind
was a dark room full of poisons—
a room cluttered with rags
pills, torn tinsel, perfume
in lavender glass. She got stuck sometimes
inside her mind like a bit of lint
caught in a web meant for a fly…
But today Ms Green learned to reach inside
and touch her own mind, lightly—
her mind more like
a stalled record player playing
one song in deep-grooved vinyl—
today she learned to pick up the needle
and move it a little to the right—

~ Amanda Beth Peery, from “A Poem About Anxiety”

Notes:

  • Photograph by Paul Brumit with Sony Turntable
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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.”