Photo: Delano Hotel, South Beach. Post title: Mary Oliver
Saturday Morning
June 2, 2018 by 13 Comments
A cluster of seals rises behind the skiff when I idle away from Peril Island. I feel as if they’re ushering me off, and as if the other animals are watching with relief while I depart: the seals stretched out on warm rocks; the blinking oystercatchers; the fretting gulls and shorebirds; the eagle who flew when I arrived; the peregrine, perched in some distant tree or soaring invisibly against the sun’s corona. I can almost sense the whole place breathing out as its tranquility returns. My deepest impression is that Peril Island and its animals belong to one another, and that there is no rightful place among them for humans.
~ Richard Nelson, The Island Within
Notes: Photo Credit: conservationaction.com. Related Posts: “Richard Nelson”, The Island Within
Saturday Morning
May 19, 2018 by 10 Comments
Many an hour I spent there lying in the grass; it was so quiet and mysterious—the only voices were those of the leaves and the birds. But I never saw the place clothed in such beauty as I did that spring. Like me, the bees had already gone out into the meadow, and now they wove and hummed in and out of the myriad violet flowers which burst open in a blue lustre from grass and moss. I gathered them and filled my pocket handkerchief; it was as if I was enchanted, in the midst of the fragrance and sunlight.
– Theodor Storm, (1817-1888) from A Quiet Musician, The Lake of the Bees
Notes: Quote via a-quiet-green-agreement. Photo: Chris A with Field.Always ( Ain, Rhone-Alpes, France)
Saturday Morning
May 12, 2018 by 30 Comments
To rise early, reconsider, rise again later
to papers and the news…
Another day of what we bring to it-
matters unfinished from days before,
regret over matters we’ve finished poorly.
Just once you’d like to start out early,
free from memory and lighter for it…
nothing
to shrink from, nothing to shirk,
no lot to carry that wasn’t by choice.
And at night, no voice to keep him awake,
no hurry to rise, no hurry not to.
~ Tracy K. Smith, from “The Ordinary Life”
- Photo: Your Eyes Blaze Out
- Post inspired by:
He sees that this emptiness of self—that this alone—makes a life worth living, a life worth writing. He has been rinsed of ambition, of pride in himself, rinsed of shame over his failures, emptied of his grudges. He has even let go of time, of history—the sources of our regret, our sense that we have done it all wrong. Once reality has stabbed you in the heart like this, you are indeed free—or, when that sweet pain does leave you …the realization remains, a sure memory. This realization, not your ego, is your true self. Alone, outside time, but paradoxically within the moment. There he is, a poet suspended on planet earth in that most ephemeral piece of furniture, the hammock, swinging in the eternity of the moment, and he is empty of himself—at last. The whole world rushes in.
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Penguin Publishing Group. April 17, 2018)
Saturday Morning
April 21, 2018 by 13 Comments
Still looking for bliss in nothing at all, the cloudy mind moving over existence, outside time.
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Published April 17, 2018)
Notes:
- Post Inspired by Patricia Hampl: “Daydreaming doesn’t make things up. It sees things. Claims things, twirls them around, takes a good look. Possesses them. Embraces them. Makes something of them. Makes sense. Or music. How restful it is, how full of motion. My first paradox. I couldn’t care less what it’s called. It’s pure pleasure. Infinite delight…This is what is called the life of the mind. It’s what I want to do. It’s where I want to be. Right here.” (Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day)
- Photo by Mikael Aldo (via see more)
- Related Posts: Patricia Hampl
Saturday Morning
April 7, 2018 by 23 Comments
Stand still,
stand still, and
stop the sun.
~ May Sarton, from “Now I Become Myself” in Halfway to Silence: Poems
Photo: Louis Caya with Shiba Inu
Saturday Morning
March 31, 2018 by 13 Comments
Come to my quietness
I shall cover you with it,
like a white sheet that has blown all day in the sun,
like a mountain lake filled with spring,
it shall slip over you…
~ Diane Di Prima
Notes: Photo & Poem sources unknown
Saturday Morning
March 17, 2018 by 34 Comments
She is making a pot of tea and I am clearing plates from the table. We both step around the room, around the dog, around the circular table, around each other, by instinct. I could navigate this space with my eyes closed, if called upon to do so. From down the corridor, the voices of my children, playing with the array of toys my mother keeps in her cupboards, can be heard, rising and falling, exclaiming and negotiating. Tea-making is a sacred, circumscribed ritual in this house. I would never presume to undertake it, would never encroach on this most delicate of tasks. There are several steps that must be followed, one leading mysteriously from the next: I can never quite remember the sequence, have always been too impatient to learn, unlike my sisters, who enact the same ritual in the same way in their own kitchens. The correct pot must be selected, as should the most suitable cosy. Warming must take place, for a prescribed amount of time, and this water must absolutely be discarded, with a quick, derisive flick into the sink. Only then may the tannin-dark pot be filled, first with tea leaves, measured out with a specially appointed pewter spoon, then boiling water. On goes the cosy—knitted or quilted, mostly embroidered—then steeping occurs. On the draining board, cups (bone china, always) and milk at the ready.
~ Maggie O’Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death (Feb 6, 2018)
Notes: Photo – Antique Passion. Related Posts: Maggie O’Farrell
Saturday Noon
March 3, 2018 by 8 Comments
the hour of twelve noon
And so you feel
your hair caught up in the sun’s fingers
holding you free in the light and the wind.
~ Yiannis Ritsos, from “Summer,” in Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses
Notes: Poem via the distance between two doors. Photo: Alexander Kozhevnikov (via see more)
Saturday Morning
February 24, 2018 by 25 Comments
Silence is radical. When sustained, it has an effect on your perception comparable to that of any number of chemicals with which you might seek change. Your vision transforms, to start with; you suddenly find yourself absorbing what’s on the periphery, massive amounts of once-invisible data assailing your pupils. When you’re not preparing your next remark, your hearing capacity expands, too: the changing rhythms of the wind; the muted thud of a teardrop hitting the wooden floor; your neighbor’s beating heart. And taste, and smell, they’re amplified and shifted, as well — a cup of tea sipped without the surrounding dialogue is a more intricate cup of tea. Silence gives you the opportunity to know any number of an object’s facets that typically disappear behind the verbal screens we erect constantly, unthinkingly, between our selves and our environments. And surely the power of wordless touch is one each of us knows; I need not expand on that.
~ Anna Wood, “A More Intricate Cup of Tea”
Notes: Photo by Ezgi Polat. Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
