David Kanigan
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
~ Claude Monet
Notes:
Yesterday I had a beautiful letter from Eugénie about old age (she is in her seventies).
Ici la vie continue égale et monotone en surface, pleine d’éclairs, de sommets et de désepérance, dans les profondeurs. Nous sommes arrivés maintenant á un stade de vie si riche en apprehensions nouvelles intransmissibles aux autres âges de la vie – on se sent rempli á la fois de tant de douceur et de tant de désespoir – l’énigme de cette vie grandit, grandit, vous submerge et vous écrase, puis tout á coup en une lueur suprême on prend conscience due “sacré.”
“Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage – one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair – the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the “sacred.”
~ May Sarton, March 3rd, Journal of Solitude
Notes:
In the morning
the light flickers—
every place it touches is unnamed.
I forget
my silk-spun dreams & losing heart.
I am open. I am soft.
I move into the silence
but I know I can’t stay.
— Michelle Tudor, This is Not the Place
Notes:
Our heart survives between hammers,
just as the tongue between the teeth
is still able to praise.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Image Source: akimuby via blackandwhite. Quote Source: youreyesblazeout
We have time for everything
Sleep, run back and forth,
regret we made an error and err again
judge others and absolve ourselves,
we have time to read and write,
edit what we wrote, regret what we wrote,
we have time to make projects and never follow through
we have time to dwell in illusions and stir through
their ashes much later.
We have time for ambitions and diseases,
to blame destiny and details,
we have time to look at the clouds, at the ads, or some random accident, we have time
to chase away our questions, postpone our answers, we have time
to crush a dream and reinvent it, we have time to make friends,
to lose them, we have time to take lessons and forget them
soon after, we have time to receive gifts and not understand them. We have time for everything.
No time, though, for a little tenderness.
When we’re about to do that, too, we die.
~ Octavian Paler (1926-2007. Romanian writer, politician, journalist and activist.)
Source: For Quote, Thank you Yama-Bato. For photo: Cristina Otero
