Lightly Child. Lightly.

December 28, 2023 ~ Live & Learn ~ 16 Comments

Hope, neuroscientists say, resides in the orbitofrontal cortex, one of the most confounding parts of the human brain, which somehow directs our decision-making and expectation and memory and emotional behaviors and our hedonic experiences — which is to say, what devastates us and what makes our life worth living. It is located just above our eyes: it dictates how we see the world. I wonder if this is why, to envision a hoped — for beyond or to focus better on a hopeful wish or a prayer, we close our eyes, or look up.

— Anna Badkhen, from “To See Beyond: A Hoping in Three Pictures” in “Bright Unbearable Reality: Essays” (New York Review Books, October 18, 2022)

Notes: 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. Quote Source: Thank you Beth @ via Alive on All Channels.

One pair of eyes is simply not enough

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020 ~ Live & Learn ~ 34 Comments

Notes:

DK. Daybreak. December 9, 2020. 6:16, 6:52 & 7:00 am. 30° F feels like 23° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT
Post Title: One pair of eyes is simply not enough. Mary Ruefle, from “The Life of a Poet: Mary Ruefle” (Library of Congress, May 15, 2015)

Sunday Morning

March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 ~ Live & Learn ~ 21 Comments

One of the earliest texts on the eye—its structure, its diseases, its treatments—Ten Treatises on Ophthalmology, was written in the ninth century by the Arab physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq. The individual components of the eye, he wrote, all have their own nature and they are arranged so that they are in cosmological harmony, reflecting, in turn, the mind of God.

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

Photo: A Photographer’s Eye, Nicholas Nixon

Sunday Morning

December 8, 2019December 7, 2019 ~ Live & Learn ~ 22 Comments

You live a decent length you get an appreciation for the individuality of creation. You understand there’s no such thing as the common man, and certainly not woman. But even then, in those first moments beside him on the windowsill, I think I knew there was something arresting about him. Everybody carries a world. But certain people change the air about them. That’s the best I can say. It can’t be explained, only felt. He was easy in himself. Maybe that was the first thing. He didn’t feel the need to fill the quiet and had the confidence of the storyteller when the story is still unpacked, its snaps not yet released. His hair had not been barbered in some time, his beard rose into his cheeks and descended inside the collar of his shirt, around the top-button of which was grey with finger-grease. The flesh of his face had the same travelled quality as his clothes and belongings, as if cured by hot suns and cold winds. He was deep-wrinkled, like a chamois. His life was written all over him. His eyes I’ve mentioned. I can see them still. It seems to me the true and individual nature of a human being’s eyes defy description, or at least my capabilities. They’re not like anything else, or anyone else’s, and may be the most perfect proof of the existence of a Creator. Maybe that old thing about eyes and the soul is true, I can’t say, but I did wonder the first time I saw him what gave a person eyes like that.

~ Niall Williams, “This Is Happiness” (Bloomsbury Publishing; December 3, 2019)

Notes: Photograph: Amanda Dalbjörn with eyes