It’s impossible to be lonely
when you’re zesting an orange.
Scrape the soft rind once
and the whole room
fills with fruit.
Look around: you have
more than enough. Always have.
You just didn’t notice
until now.
— Amy Schmidt, Abundance (in memory of Mary Oliver) (Rattle.com, January 20, 2019)
Notes
September 16, 1943.
How smart and understanding nature is, always leading us to the most beautiful!
— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021)
DK @ Daybreak. 7:20 am, January 23, 2022. 20° F, feels like 10° F. Calf Pasture Beach, Norwalk, CT. More photos from this morning here.
Notes:
More from this morning @ DK @ Daybreak. 4:50 to 5: 40 am. June 27, 2021. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
Sometimes you are privileged with a glimpse of the other world, when the light shines up from the west (or the East) as the sun sets (or rises) and dazzles something wet. The world is just water and light, a slide show through which your spirit glides.
— Fanny Howe, The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life
Notes:
We ought to ask ourselves again and constantly: Why fill our lives with such effort and torment, when we know that we will be here only once and when we have such a brief and unrepeatable time in this indescribably beautiful world?
— Semezdin Mehmedinovic, My Heart: A Novel. (Catapult, March 9, 2021)
Notes:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
Photo: Daybreak. Jan 9, 2021. 6:54 am. 24° F, feels like 13° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter…
I feel my boots trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart pumping hard…
I want to be light and frolicsome…
and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.
— Mary Oliver, “Starlings in Winter” in “Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays”
Notes:
Remember when you would have been over-the-moon thrilled to have just a fraction of your life as it is now?
Look around you: it is enough.
KEEP MOVING
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (Atria/One Signal Publishers, October 6, 2020)
Photo: Daybreak. December 15, 2020. 6:39 to 7:09 am. 29° F. Feels like 23° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT
Notes:
Photo: DK, 6:30, 6:35 and 7:12 a.m., Sunday, Nov 29, 2020, 33° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Daybreak. November 14, 2020. 6:40 to 6:50 am, 41° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT. More daybreak shots here.
Notes:
Photos: DK, October 9, 2020, 6:10 to 6:40 a.m. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
Autumn light is the loveliest light there is. Soft, forgiving, it makes all the world an illuminated dream. Dust motes catch fire, and bright specks drift down from the trees and lift up from the stirred soil, floating over lawns and woodland paths and ordinary roofs and parking lots. It’s an unchoreographed aerial dance, a celebration of what happens when light marries earth and sky. Autumn light always makes me think of fiery motes of chalk dust drifting in the expectant hush of an elementary school classroom during story time, just before the bell rings and sets the children free.
— Margaret Renkl, from “Our Days Have Always Been Running Out.” I greet autumn with a stillness I never felt when I was younger and in such a hurry. (NY Times, Sept 20, 2020)
Photo: DK. 10/4/20. 6:17 am. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Daybreak. September 7, 2020. 6:20 to 6:40 am. 67° F. Humidity: 86%. Wind: 6 mph. Gusts: 11 mph. Cloud Cover: 4%. The Cove, Stamford, CT
Notes:
Live & Learn 