1
" Beannacht / BlessingOn the day whenthe weight deadenson your shouldersand you stumble,may the clay danceto balance you.And when your eyesfreeze behindthe grey windowand the ghost of lossgets in to you,may a flock of colours,indigo, red, green,and azure bluecome to awaken in youa meadow of delight.When the canvas fraysin the currach of thoughtand a stain of oceanblackens beneath you,may there come across the watersa path of yellow moonlightto bring you safely home.May the nourishment of the earth be yours,may the clarity of light be yours,may the fluency of the ocean be yours,may the protection of the ancestors be yours.And so may a slowwind work these wordsof love around you,an invisible cloakto mind your life. "
3
" The majority of people have successfully alienated themselves from change; they tediously arrange their lives into a familiar pattern, they give themselves to normalcy, they are proud if they are able to follow in auspicious footsteps set before them, they take pride in always coloring inside the lines and they feel secure if they belong to a batch of others who are like them. Now, if familiar patterns bore you, if normalcy passes before you unnoticed, if you want to create your own footsteps in the earth and leave your own handprints on the skies, if you are the one who doesn't mind the lines in the coloring book as much as others do, and perchance you do not cling to a flock for you to identify with, then you must be ready for adversity. If you are something extraordinary, you are going to always shock others and while they go about existing in their mundaneness which they call success, you're going to be flying around crazy in their skies and that scares them. People are afraid of change, afraid of being different, afraid of doing things and thinking things that aren't a part of their checkerboard game of a life. They only know the pieces and the moves in their games, and that's it. You're always going to find them in the place that you think you're going to find them in, and every time they think about you, you're going to give them a heart attack. "
― C. JoyBell C.
7
" When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from work, about to begin making dinner, and she throws one at me; it flies surprisingly well, and soon we are standing at opposite ends of the hall, tossing tiny sculptures at each other, testing their aerodynamics. The next day I come home to find that Clare has created a flock of paper and wire birds, which are hanging from the ceiling in the living room. A week later our bedroom windows are full of abstract blue translucent shapes that the sun throws across the room onto the walls, making a sky for the bird shapes Clare has painted there. It's beautiful.
The next evening I'm standing in the doorway of Clare's studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all her stuff, and I realize that she's trying to say something, and I know what I have to do. "
― Audrey Niffenegger , The Time Traveler's Wife
10
" When I want somebody to read to,
To match a dream with tuneful phrase,
It is my nurse that I pay heed to,
Companion of my youthful days,
Or, following a boring dinner,
A neihbour comes in, who I corner,
Catch at his coat tails suddenly
And choke him with a tragedy,
Or, (here I am no longer jesting),
Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache,
I roam beside my country lake
And scare a flock of wild ducks resting:
Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants,
They fly off from the banks at once. "
― Alexander Pushkin , Eugene Onegin
12
" Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain.
Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence.
A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop.
Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight.
Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive.
He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt.
The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her.
The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go.
Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens.
Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon.
She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went.
The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree.
His footsteps pounded close by.
She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his.
She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up.
Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down.
She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension.
Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest.
He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly.
The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her.
His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home.
Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch. "
― Kim Bongiorno , Part of My World
13
" A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise—become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive. Water, land, and even a day, the language a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms. This is the language I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around us.[…]
This is the grammar of animacy. "
― Robin Wall Kimmerer , Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
14
" Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank... "
― Gustave Flaubert