David Kanigan
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes: Photo: Mennyfox55
On the Mediterranean beaches of France, in summer, you hear one cry repeated endlessly: Elle est bonne. That is, It’s good. Meaning the seawater. Cautious, modern inhabitants of cities thus assure one another that it’s safe to go in the water, they won’t be stunned by its arctic cold. But in its essence this cry affirms the world, nature. Elle est bonne.
~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay (April 4, 2017)
Photo: South of France via Oliver’s Travels. Related Posts: Adam Zagajewski
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes: Photo: Mennyfox55
Why does the sound of rain gently tapping on the roof and windows instantly relieve stress?
It is a reminder of survival, an appreciation for being safe, dry, and warm, the most basic of needs.
Therein lies a secret to contentment; to remind ourselves regularly of the satisfaction of our basic needs, to appreciate another moment of survival, and forget the extraneous factors that cause us undue stress.
Image: Frank Telli Blog
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes:
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected. But those days are the exception now, not the norm.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes:
As for the querencia,
we all have a place where we feel safest,
even if it is only the idea of a place,
maybe an idea by itself,
the place that all our being radiates out from,
like an idea of friendship or justice
or perhaps something simpler
like the memory of a back porch
where we laughed a low
and how the setting sun
through the pine trees shone on the green chairs,
flickered off the ice cubes in our glasses.
~ Stephen Dobyns, from “Querencia,” Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1992
Notes:
