Tag: lightly

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn18 Comments

Though they cannot be deciphered,
cannot become lighter,
all moments will shine
if you cut them open,
glisten like entrails in the sun.

— Sara Eliza Johnson, from “As the Sickle Moon Guts a Cloud” from “Bone Map: Poems” (Milkweed Editions; September 16, 2014)

Notes:

  • DK Time Lapse. October 9, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos of yesterday’s glorious sunrise 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

how old am i?
today, i’m today.
i’m as old as whatever light touches me.

— Danez Smith, from “summer, somewhere“

Notes:

  1. And today, yes, yet another Time Lapse video with light progression that touched me — this despite near 100% cloud cover and light rain. 90 Minutes in 21 seconds (4:35 to 6:05 am). 64° F. August 8, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here.
  2. Poem Source from “More Than Ideas“
  3. 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 & Learn26 Comments

These contrasts of inside and outside, and lightness and darkness, create little thresholds we pass through from hour to hour. These simple transitions, such as walking through a trellis, or sitting down for breakfast, can change your whole mood. A room is a mood, and we need different moods, small and capacious. The past is more past when it happened somewhere else, with other qualities of light. The changes are needed—they make time more felt…

Le Corbusier defined the function of a house as “1. A shelter against heat, cold, rain, thieves and the inquisitive. 2. A receptacle for light and sun. 3. A certain number of cells appropriated to cooking, work, and personal life.” Everything else is merely decorative, this suggests.

— Elisa Gabbert, Any Person is the Only Self: Essays (FSG Originals, June 11, 2024)

Notes:

  1. Book Reviews of “Any Person is the Only Self”
  2. 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 & Learn22 Comments

The summer morning, its gentleness, the sense of great work being done through the grass where I stood scarcely trembled.

— Mary Oliver, from “The Perfect Day” in “Long Life: Essays & Other Writings“

Notes:

  • DK Photo from this morning @ 5:10 am. 69° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.
  • Quote Source: petaltexturedskies
  • 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.

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Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn42 Comments

Recently, I read a book about hard decisions at the late stages of life that moved me: Don DeLillo’s Zero K. In one passage that has stayed with me, a character reflects on the small, beautiful elements that make up a life. She describes a shower to her stepson: “I think about drops of water,” she says. “I think about drops of water. How I used to stand in the shower and watch a drop of water edge down the inside of the sheer curtain. How I concentrated on the drop, the droplet, the orblet, and waited for it to assume new shapes as it passed along the ridges and folds, with water pounding against the side of my head.

— Lora Kelley, P.S., The Atlantic Daily Newsletter (July 20, 2023)

Notes:

  • Special Note. Friends, my apologies for the blog malfunctions in the past week, 99% were self inflicted wounds that I’m still working to resolve. I have lost my posts for the past week and a half along with all of your wonderful comments. My apologies. Thank you for your patience. (And given my state of mind in this repair progress, all maddening because it could have all been avoided, I thought this post was particularly timely for me. A big shout out to the WordPress staff for their patience, guidance and support.
  • 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.