Your mother’s favorite bird was the one in front of her.
— Richard Powers, Bewilderment: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company, September 21, 2021)
Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:23 am, September 24, 2021. 58° F. Heavy Rain. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
Intoxication with color…often fierce, may express itself as a profound attachment to landscape
September 14, 2021 by 34 Comments
Notes:
- DK @ Daybreak. 6:34 to 6:40 am, September 14, 2021. 65° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25 on Instagram)
- Post title by Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (via Brain Pickings)
Lightly Child, Lightly.
August 26, 2021 by 24 Comments
Sometimes I get tired of the everythingness of everything, so I retreat to my bed and read. I read and let time fly like a bird that’s hit by a truck, and I’m in a place where peace is timeless. I overthink about doing everything that I need to do all at once, that I drown in the anxiety of heaviness. Reading is coming up to the surface to breathe, and I am learning to perceive before I judge. I am learning to refine my mind before taking action, and I am learning to think with my heart. Because literature, fantasy, and getting my mind caught in the clouds … these are the things that inspire me to live better in reality. And so I close my book, draw the curtains and let the light in everything I’m supposed to do and let the chapter of today be enough.”
— Juansen Dizon, “A Diary Entry about Reading” from The Boy Who Cries Wolf
Notes:
- Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
- Photo Credit
- Post inspired by: “There is no better use of my time than to write, second only to reading. As I write, sequential time alters. The usual clock face of seconds marching into minutes, and those minutes adding up to hours, fails to operate in that way for me. Time takes on elasticity and springiness. It seems to stretch so much that I lose track of those passing seconds. It seems to jump from its linear march so high and so far that one moment it is such and such a time, and the next an entire hour has elapsed.” — Fred D’Aguiar, Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 (Harper, August 3, 2021)
- 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.
August 12, 2021 by 19 Comments
I am trying to teach my mind
to bear the long, slow growth
of the fields, and to sing
of its passing while it waits.
The farm must be made a form,
endlessly bringing together
heaven and earth, light
and rain building back again
the shapes and actions of the ground.
~ Wendell Berry, from “From The Crest” in “Quest for Place. The Poetry of Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry.”
Notes:
- Quote: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
- Photo: Aleksander Kanizaj via Expressions-of-Nature
- 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.”
Sunday Morning
August 8, 2021 by 18 Comments
T.G.I.F.: Waking the pond for another day
August 6, 2021 by 28 Comments
On the far side of the pond, an egg-yolk sun rises out of the dense tree line like a hot air balloon, slow, graceful. It hovers, suspended for a moment, before breaking free of its tethers—the break of dawn. In that instant, the smallest breeze shirrs the water, waking the pond for another day.
— Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace: A Novel (Riverhead Books, July 6, 2021)
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 65°F. 6:08 a.m. August 6, 2021.
- Debut novel. Book, highly recommended.
- NY Times Book Review: Summer After Summer, a Clan Returns to Cape Cod
Lightly Child, Lightly.
August 5, 2021 by 37 Comments
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.”
Easy now. Gently. Slowly. Boom!
August 3, 2021 by 44 Comments
Lightly Child, Lightly.
July 29, 2021 by 14 Comments
All we ever talk of is light—
let there be light, there was light then,
good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that.
So many hours between the day
receding and what we recognize
as morning, the sun cresting
like a wave that won’t break
over us—as if light were protective,
as if no hearts were flayed,
no bodies broken on a day
like today. In any film,
the sunrise tells us everything
will be all right. Danger wouldn’t
dare show up now, dragging
its shadow across the screen.
We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf
of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark
the beginning of a day is.
— Maggie Smith, “How Dark the Beginning”
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. July 14, 2021. 4:45 a.m.
- 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.
July 22, 2021 by 21 Comments
Watching the first sunlight
touch the tops of the palms
what could I ask […]
I dream I am here
in the morning
and the dream is its own time […]
There I am
morning clouds
in the east wind
No one is in the garden
the autumn daisies
have the day to themselves […]
I needed my mistakes
in their own order
to get me here […]
I call that singing bird my friend
though I know nothing else about him
and he does not know I exist […]
In my youth I believed in somewhere else
I put faith in travel
now I am becoming my own tree. »
— W.S. Merwin, “Wild Oats” in The Moon Before Morning
Notes:
- Quote via Alive on All Channels via exhaled-spirals. Photo: Jose Kevo – Caribbean Sunrise
- 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.”
