Tag: quiet

5:00 PM Bell!

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From here she could see a whole teeming mass…running about the city like ants, all dedicated to the same pointless task. She stepped back. It felt good to escape above, free of the noise… “It’s lovely here,” she said.”

Go now. Find your peace… Let your mind wander. Skim like a dragonfly over the pool of your consciousness and let go… you can quiet your mind.

— R.F. Kuang, Katabasis: A Novel (William Morrow, August 26, 2025)

Notes:

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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“And the part about light as a living creature,” he said. “What a beautiful thought. I hadn’t really heard that idea before…It really got me for a second,” he said. “I had to think about it. Is light alive? I mean, it doesn’t excrete anything. It doesn’t reproduce. And yet it gives life, so it must have some kind of life to give…” He’d isolated the ultimate kernel…the very idea that I’d fallen in love with, the idea of light as a kind of amniotic fluid flooding the cosmos.

— Jon Raymond, God and Sex: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, August 5, 2025)

Notes:

  • DK Photo @ 5:23 am this morning. Nobadeer Beach. 57° F. Nantucket, MA. More photos from this morning’s glorious walk 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.

Walking. Sunday Morning.

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4:00 a.m. Another restless night. Deep sleep, waits for another day.

It’s time.

I walk.

It’s been 1,902 consecutive (almost) days on this twilight walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I’m walking at the top of the Marina, warily making my way around rocks, glistening and coated with algae.

I hear soft murmurs.

What is that? I stop, to listen.

Continue reading “Walking. Sunday Morning.” →

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

— C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity (Tingle Books, May 17 2024) (via The Hammock Papers)

Notes:

  • 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

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I also painted a study of a seascape, nothing but a bit of sand, sea, sky, grey and lonely—sometimes I feel a need for that silence—where there’s nothing but the grey sea—with an occasional seabird. But otherwise, no other voice than the murmur of the waves.

— Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo, 17 September 1882 (via Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters)

Notes: DK Photo, 5:21 am. Saturday July 6, 2024. Quote via More Than Ideas.