This morning. Cove Island Park: Empty, but for DK and gulls. 55° F. Rain. Blustery, with wind gusts up to 32 mph. Cloud Cover: 98%. Post Title from: The Great Offshore Grounds: A Novel by Vanessa Veselka.
Tag: Wind
Lightly Child, Lightly
Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.
– Don DeLillo, The Body Artist: A Novel
Notes:
- Quote: Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Arend Ruizendaal with World Wide Web
- 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
So, when it’s bad now,
when I can’t remember what’s lost
and all I have for the world to take
means nothing,
I go out back of the greenhouse
at the far end of my land
where the grasses go wild
and the arroyos come up
with cat’s-claw and giant dahlias,
where the children of my neighbors
consult with the wise heads
of sunflowers, huge against the sky,
where the rivers of weather
and the charred ghosts of old melodies
converge to flood my land
and sustain the one thicket
of memory that calls for me
to come and sit
among the tall canes
and shape full-throated songs
out of wind, out of bamboo,
out of a voice
that only whispers.
— Garrett Hongo, from ‘Something Whispered in the Shakuhachi’
Notes: Quote, thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo of bamboo by Elisa.
Hi Ho, Hi Ho. Off to Work We Go.
May you hear in your own stories
the moan of wind around the corners
of half-forgotten houses
and the silence in rooms you remember…
May you study your craft as you would study
a new friend or a long time, much loved lover.
And all the while, lost though you may be in the forest,
drop your own words on the path like pebbles
and write your way home.
– Pat Schneider, from “Blessing for a Writer” in “How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice”
Source: Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Anka Zhuravleva. Inspired: “This is what poetry is: not a kind of public posturing but a private language of music and imagery that is strange and compelling enough that it can speak privately to thousands of people at the same time.” ~ Ilya Kaminsky, from “Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky” by Garth Greenwell, March/April 2019 (Feb 13, 2019)
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Read: Dear Edward
Just before lunch service, Veronica takes a short break in the front corner of the cabin, next to the kitchen… Wind is what she misses most, up in the sky. The airplane air isn’t as bad as passengers say it is; she never likes when people spout opinions without bothering to gather the facts first. Airplanes take about 50 percent of the air collected in the outtake valves of the passenger compartment and mix it with fresh air from outside. The air is then passed through filters to be sterilized before it’s introduced to the passengers. So the air on the plane is clean, and not worthy of complaint, but still, Veronica can taste the effort in it. Every time she leaves an airport, she appreciates the unpredictability of each inhale. There might be a soft gust of wind, or the smell of popcorn, or the heaviness that precedes a rainstorm. She notices nuances in the air that everyone else is immune to, with the exception of submariners, probably, and astronauts. People for whom the earth is not enough; their freedom is off the ground. Veronica enjoys the unbridled nature of the outside world in small doses, but this is her home. She is the fullest version of herself at thirty thousand feet.
~ Ann Napolitano, Dear Edward: A Novel (The Dial Press, January 6, 2020)
Highly Recommended.
Notes:
- An Amazon Best Book of the Month (January 2020)
- NY Times Book Review: A Plane Goes Down, Killing 191. Only a 12-Year-Old Survives.
- NY Times 12 New Books We Recommend this Week (Jan 23, 2020)