Remembering that time …
when we had unrealized possibility,
the drifting period of our youth.
— Kate Zambreno, Screen Tests: Stories and Other Writing (Harper Perennial, July 23, 2019)
Photo: Alain Laboile
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
August 3, 2020 by 8 Comments
The first moment I wrote in my notebook again, I wrote of that fleeting feeling in the morning, of possibility.
That’s what I want Drifts to be, my desire and longing for it.
— Kate Zambreno, Drifts: A Novel (Penguin, May 19, 2020)
Portrait of Kate Zambreno by Nikola Tamindzic
Saturday Morning
January 7, 2017 by 6 Comments
Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house.
~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey, “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating”
Photo: via Hidden Sanctuary
to see a good end in all that and to find a good beginning in myself
January 1, 2017 by 28 Comments
I had gone back again to my little house and stood up on its roof and wanted to see a good end in all that and to find a good beginning in myself. And now, let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to his wife in The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: 1892-1910
Notes: Quote – Anne Sexton Appreciation. Photo: DistantPassion
Monday Morning
February 1, 2016 by 9 Comments
She sips her coffee, sets it down, stretches her arms.
This is one of the most singular experiences,
waking on what feels like a good day,
preparing to work but not yet actually embarked.
At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead.
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Credits: Quote: Et in Arcadia Ego*. Image: Falling To Pieces
Lightly child, lightly
August 6, 2015 by 8 Comments
Take the piano teacher, for example. He always says, Relax, relax. But how can you relax while your fingers are rushing over the keys? Yet they have to relax. The singing teacher and the golf pro say exactly the same thing. And in the realm of spiritual exercises we find that the person who teaches mental prayer does too. We have somehow to combine relaxation with activity…
The personal conscious self being a kind of small island in the midst of an enormous area of consciousness — what has to be relaxed is the personal self, the self that tries too hard, that thinks it knows what is what, that uses language. This has to be relaxed in order that the multiple powers at work within the deeper and wider self may come through and function as they should.
In all psychophysical skills we have this curious fact of the law of reversed effort:
the harder we try, the worse we do the thing.
~ Aldous Huxley, The Divine Within
Credits:
- Image Source: Anka Zhuravleva (via Ishtyaks)
- Quote Source: Brain Pickings
- 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
July 23, 2015 by 10 Comments
An absurd lightness
draped itself around him;
all things were possible,
all things were manageable.
~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Half of a Yellow Sun
Credits:
- Image Source: Precious Things. Photographer: Samo Vidic. Athlete: Jorge Ferzuli
- Poem Source: the distance between two doors
- 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.”
Live & Learn 