Lightly Child, Lightly.

I am floating on a blue rubber raft. My eyes are closed, face to the sun. Black motes dance around under my eyelids in the opaque red. I drift, listen to the sound of my breath going in and out, let the salt wind carry me to the middle of the pond. There is nothing but me. No one here but me. A perfect moment. I dangle my arm over the edge of the raft, open my fingers, feel the resistance of the water as it passes through them.

Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace: A Novel (Riverhead Books, July 6, 2021)


Notes:

  • Debut novel.  Book, highly recommended.
  • NY Times Book Review: Summer After Summer, a Clan Returns to Cape Cod
  • 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.”

T.G.I.F: My body was an ark once. And you ask, would it still float?


Post title from: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, “Other women don’t tell you,” published in Muzzle. Photo by Xenie Zasetskaya (via See More)

It’s been a long day

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

~ Mary Oliver, “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches” in West Wind: Poems & Prose


Notes: Poem via The Hammock Papers. Photo: Laurence Demaison. Related Posts: It’s been a long day

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Everything wants to float.
And yet we move about like weights,
attaching ourselves to everything, in thrall to gravity…

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “14,” Sonnets to Orpheus.


Notes:

  • Photograph: Lori Vrba with ‘The Caretaker’s Balloon’ (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.

The thing is to relax and not fret about worldly things

but just let the wings open and be oneself quietly for a bit.

This never fails to renew strength.

~ Iris Murdoch, from a letter to Hal Lidderdale written c. July 1950 in Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934–1995

 


Notes:

  • Photo:  Czech Dance Information photo of Jarmila Jerabkova (via Hidden Sanctuary). Poem: Violent Waves of Emotion
  • 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.

I want to rest, to float–
a dust mote in a beam
of light squared by a window–
to sigh and lilt between

the object and the eye,
before the day can catch me
back up into myself,
and through that prism, watch me

–  Anna Lena Phillips Bell, from “Midafternoon” in Ornament


Notes:

  • Photo: celestial dust motes by Brian Parker. Poem: 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.”

 

3, now 23. Happy Birthday Eric!

Eric, son, swim,swimming,float

It’s been a long day

hands-art-cullen.jpg

My hands.

In the kitchen, at the stove.
In the prairie. The shed.
Under the blanket. In the bath.
Behind the barn. In the garden.
The cornfield. The river.

By stone. By thorn. By childbirth.

Slow. Like fog.

Jeanann Verlee, Said the Manic to the Muse 

 


Notes:

Saturday

relax-float-summer-weekend-saturday


Source: Joanna Chudy with “Take me to the River” (via ignant.de – Introducing the Melancholic Works of Joanna Chudy)

 

It’s been a long day

rest-fatigue-float 

I empty myself with light
Until I become morning.

— Charles Wright, from “33,” Littlefoot: A Poem


Notes:

Feel it. In both directions.

floating-swimming

I like swimming against the current,
but only because it makes me feel
I’ve earned the ease and pleasure
of floating back to where I started.

~ Jan Heller Levi, from “Conversation,” Once I Gazed at You in Wonder

 


Poem Source: memoryslandscape. Image: Discover Magazine

%d bloggers like this: