Tag: smell

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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I have become aware: nature breathes, smells, listens, feels in all its parts; it adds to itself, couples itself, falls to pieces, and finds itself.  I see myself evaporate and breathe forth more and more strongly; the oscillations of my astral light become swifter, sharper, simpler.

– Egon Schiele, from a diary entry written c. September 1911

Notes:

  • Photo: Aberrant Beauty. Quote: Violent Waves of Emotion
  • 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.”

 

Saturday Morning

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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

Saturday Morning

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Smoke: tobacco burning, coal smoke, wood-fire smoke, leaf smoke. Most of all, leaf smoke. This is the only odor I can will back to consciousness just by thinking about it. I can sit in a chair, thinking, and call up clearly to mind the smell of burning autumn leaves, coded and stored away somewhere in a temporal lobe, firing off explosive signals into every part of my right hemisphere. But nothing else: if I try to recall the thick smell of Edinburgh in winter, or the accidental burning of a plastic comb, or a rose, or a glass of wine, I cannot do this; I can get a clear picture of any face I feel like remembering, and I can hear whatever Beethoven quartet I want to recall, but except for the leaf bonfire I cannot really remember a smell in its absence. To be sure, I know the odor of cinnamon or juniper and can name such things with accuracy when they turn up in front of my nose, but I cannot imagine them into existence.

~ Lewis Thomas, A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Photo: (via mennyfox55)

Lightly child, lightly.

Live & Learn20 Comments

feet-hands

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

―Wendell Berry, from The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

 

Notes:

  • Photography (via Mennyfox55)
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Related Wendell Berry Posts? 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.”