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as difficult to attain as a pair of wings and a halo

December 21, 2021 by 16 Comments

9/13/42. The most spiritual and “beautiful” literature has already been written—in the Bible, in the Greek dramas, in their philosophies. What we have to attain is at best the material representation, a poor substitute for the eternities we cannot logically hope to emulate. Spirituality in our day is as difficult to attain as a pair of wings and a halo.

— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021)

Photo: DK @ Daybreak. December 20, 2021. 22° F, feels like 16° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.

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Lightly Child, Lightly.

October 21, 2021 by 17 Comments

What I want is the other world in this world. What I want is the way up and the way down, the way in and the way out. What I want is the poem that rears up like a mythic creature from the dark place of origins, only to transform into the holy, unrepeatable faces of the living. What I want is the mythic wings still thrumming inside them.

—  Joseph Fasano, from “Supernovae and Dark Stars: Some Notes on Universality in the Lyric Poem,” American Poet (no. 50, Spring/Summer 2016)

Notes:

  • Photo: DK – Moon @ Daybreak. 6:18 a.m. Wednesday, October 20, 2021. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
  • Quote via Memory’s Landscape
  • 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.”
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Daybreak

October 19, 2021 by 14 Comments

Some gulls soared in the air above me.
They seemed almost to be enjoying the warmth and stillness.
A stillness so seldom here.

—  Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Morning Star: A Novel. (Penguin Press, September 28, 2021)

Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:57 am, October 19, 2021. 45° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT

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The faith that gives us wings. Or at least a soft place to land.

October 17, 2021 by 20 Comments

Notes:

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T.G.I.F.: Such longing…to lift our wings even a single time…

August 13, 2021 by 21 Comments

  

Notes:

  • DK @ Daybreak. 5:50 to 6:00 am, August 13, 2021. 76° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
  • Post Title from “Such longing. How large the muscles in our shoulders must be to lift our wings even a single time.” David Romtvedt, from “Dilemmas of the Angels: Poems” (Louisiana State University Press, 2017)
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5:00 P.M. Bell! Happy Hour!

July 30, 2021 by 32 Comments

Hummy in Backyard. July 30, 2021. 5:05 pm.

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Walking. You Would Never Break the Chain.

April 18, 2021 by 40 Comments

Morning Walk. 348 consecutive days. Like in a row. 

This morning, 6:00 a.m. Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk, CT.

I’m at the end of the Pier.

I wait. Sunrise @ 6:11 a.m.

And wouldn’t you know it, my playlist flips to The Chain, by Fleetwood Mac.

…Listen to the wind blow / Watch the sun rise…

I reach for the iPhone and press repeat.  And turn the Volume up.

And, I stand, and wait.

Because they don’t disappoint. My Canada Geese.

They’re out in the distance.

I turn the volume down, their call, barely audible over Stevie Nicks.

They turn slightly left, heading my way.

I hoist the camera up.  Steady DK, Steady. Breathe.

Here they come.  Come on Team, keep coming. Stay your course.

They’re in my viewfinder.  Bearing down straight at me. Now DK. Now!

I put camera down to watch.

Entire flock honking, wings beating.

So much sky. So much land. And they pass directly overhead. Over MY head.  Goosebumps.

I turn volume back up.

…I can still hear you saying / You would never break the chain…

Notes:

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It’s been a long winter…

February 23, 2021 by 30 Comments

Hanover Bald Eagle Live Cams (Via Your Eyes Your Blaze Out)

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Sunday Morning

February 14, 2021 by 20 Comments

we touch each other.

how?

with wings that beat…

— Rainer Maria Rilke, in an inscription to Marina Tsvetaeva, from Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke

Photo: DK. Gull. 6:56 am, February 14, 2021. 28° F, feels like 20° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.

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Happy New Year!

January 1, 2021 by 45 Comments

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter…
I feel my boots trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart pumping hard…
I want to be light and frolicsome…
and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

— Mary Oliver, “Starlings in Winter” in “Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays”

Notes:

  • Photo: DK, Birds @ Daybreak. Jan 1, 2021. 6:45 to 7am. 30° F, feels like 23° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT. More amazing scenes from this morning here and here.
  • Mary Oliver’s poem “Starlings in Winter” was edited. Full poem here @Mindfulbalance.  Thank you Karl for sharing for the Mary Oliver poem and the inspiration.
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Miracle. All of It.

September 8, 2020 by 32 Comments

My eyes graze his binoculars and without a word he passes them over. And like that the birds are no longer smudges, but elegantly detailed and purposeful and real. They steal my breath as they always do, these creatures who think nothing of having wings.

— Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations: A Novel (Flatiron Books, August 4, 2020)

Notes:

  • Photo: Cormorant. Spirit Bird. Sept 7, 2020. 6:48 am. The Cove. Stamford, FT
  • Back Story: Walking. In Search of my Spirit Bird.
  • Post title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
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this is how I would…

September 27, 2019 by 20 Comments

The startled blue heron erupts out of its long-legged
inwardness and flies low to the pond over its
shadow. My eye flickers between its great sweep

of wing and its blurred mirror motion almost white
in the pond’s sky-shine. At the end of each wingbeat,
the long body dips toward its rising shadow. Now

the heron settles back down onto itself as far away
from me as the pond allows and I finish my walk half gangly,
half graceful thinking if I were a bird, this is how I’d fly.

~ Nils Peterson, “Blue Heron” from All the Marvelous Stuff (2019)

Notes: Poem via 3quarks Daily. Blue Heron photo: Pennington

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call. Up!

September 9, 2019 by 34 Comments

lift of water,
bracing
smooth—
a lubricant
to be part of
this synchrony,
able to lean
on others, ride
the breastbone
of a bird,
without wings or
even a feather.

~ Diane DeCillis, from “To Lean”

Notes: Poem – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels). Photo: via Mennyfox55.

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Saturday Morning. And then, little by little…

August 10, 2019 by 16 Comments

You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.

Like so.

– Paul Auster, Mr. Vertigo

Notes: Quote – Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Jacqueline Green, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Richard Calms. (via Mennyfox55)

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T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week

July 19, 2019 by 12 Comments

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There is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that’s going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: “You’ve turned up in the right place at the right time. You’re doing fine. Don’t ever think that you’ve been forgotten.”

– Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC

Notes:

  • Inspired by another quote from Whiskey River: “Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 
  • Painting “Swallow” (2011) by Nicky Loutit (via Your Eyes Blaze Out).
  • Quote via Whiskey River
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Saturday Morning!

June 29, 2019 by 14 Comments

(via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

March 18, 2019 by 38 Comments

I wake from a dream,
reach towards day as it hatches,
its tiny beak presses against
the delicate shell of sky.
Today I might learn to fly.

~ Christine Valters Paintner, “Wings” in Dreaming of Stones: Poems

Notes:

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

November 12, 2018 by 28 Comments

Notes:

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Lightly Child, Lightly

November 7, 2018 by 31 Comments

I discovered that in the early part of the morning a mist hovered in the hollows of the estate and the grass was wet with dew. There was a smell in the air of bonfires, the land already preparing for autumn…The morning welcomed me and I felt lighter, more confident, walking with my head up, ready for anything.

– Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange (Tin House Books, October 9, 2018)

Notes:

  • Photo: Ed Stockard.
  • 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.”
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Lightly Child, Lightly

November 1, 2018 by 13 Comments

And only the enlightened can recall their former lives;
for the rest of us, the memories of past existences
are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows,
disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped,
like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.

~ Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Notes:

  • Photo: Marta Navarro (via Newthom). Quote via Alive on All Channels (Thank you Beth)
  • 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.”
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