“Life expands or contracts in proportion to one’s courage” ~ Anaïs Nin
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus
What is it in the universe that’s sending so many words of wisdom my way lately?
Maybe I’m just paying attention. It’s a good time to be observant, at least here in my corner of the world, which is blessed with white snow covering the scars on the ground, blue skies that range from palest aqua to intense, nearly purple depth, bare trees that reach up up up like so many finely wrought sculptures. The beauty here, as it almost always does, stuns the eye and the mind, and especially this week, when we’re all wrung out by powerless sympathy with the too-traumatized people of Haiti, it provokes intense attention and gratitude.
I wrote a post a while back on The Sister Project about the tradition of the commonplace book. Also known by the insanely evocative Latin phrase silva rerum, meaning ‘a forest of things’, these are journals of bits of found wisdom, collections of quotes and sayings and our reactions to them. We do this now, of course, whether in our Moleskines or our Facebook pages or our blogs, but the naming of the practice is all but lost, and I think that’s a shame. How do you keep track of the words you discover that move or provoke you? Can you share some of them with me, here, or over at The Sister Project?
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West
Don’t move. Stay still. Once you find a place that feels halfway right, and it seems time, settle down with a vow not to move any more. Take a look at one place on earth, one circle of people, one realm of beings over time. ~Gary Snyder
I have little to none these days, not patience, not time to create, but this is a beautiful reminder of the immense pleasures in both. Hoping you are all having happy holidays.
THAT NOT SO great picture above shows the pot full of kale and broccoli the kids and I harvested tonight, after four inches of snow, our first snow to speak of this season, fell all over the garden and the rest of the farm. We were supposed to have a dinner party tonight, but I started running a fever late this morning, and fearful of flu, we cancelled. So it was just the five of us (kids, the H, my mom) home today, decorating our tree, hanging wreaths on the porch, and (the kids, not me) sliding down the snowy hill, over and over and over again. For an illness-addled day, it was perfection.
That’s more than I can say about most of the last 30 days preceding. The last month has, in a word, sucked. Between the H’s terrifying accident, and its aftermath, both physical and emotional, I am completely spent. I used nanowrimo as intensive therapy, escaping into my fictional world every.single.day, even if I didn’t commit any new words to my draft. It was an amazing outlet, and exhilarating to prove to myself that I could actually write a piece of fiction–something I literally haven’t done, save fragments, since high school.
This month, I’ve got a new immersion project, which I’ll reveal at some point, and I am, as a wise friend counseled, just trying to get through the month.
@PatriciaJinich Such a great museum. Lucky you! 2010/09/05
@MarthaBeck YOU give me hope for mankind. Sorry if that sounds hyperbolic, but it's true. Smart, witty self help? Who knew it was possible?? 2010/09/05
@jenniferehle That is really cool. Thanks for sharing. I loved owls even before they took over our family for a while.... 2010/09/02
