We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves. — Leonora Carrington, The House of Fear. (Plume March 30, 1990) Originally published 1988.
At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts us to make roses stand before thorns. Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse— at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older, I to love and you to be… Continue reading William Carlos Williams
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 own feet, and learn to be at home. It is a journey we can… Continue reading Wendell Berry
Is my soul asleep? Have those beehives that work in the night stopped? And the water- wheel of thought, is it going around now, cups empty, carrying only shadows? No, my soul is not asleep. It is awake, wide awake. It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches, its eyes wide open far-off things, and listens… Continue reading Antonio Machado
I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world. — Evelyn… Continue reading Evelyn Waugh
I Want to Tell You About a Woman She used to put her thoughts on simmer and let them cook down to gravy. Her eyes were dark, with a crescent-shaped scar under the left, like a lost parenthesis or a boat slipped from its mooring. The scar disappeared when she smiled. This strikes me… Continue reading Michael Bazzett
All through the dark the wind looks / for the grief it belongs to. —W.S. Merwin, from “Night Wind,” The Second Four Books of Poems. (Copper Canyon Press, 1992)
You came to me while we were sleeping, we were both sleeping, and you asked me to hold this for you. I am holding this for you. — Richard Siken, from “Turpentine,” War of the Foxes. (Copper Canyon Press, 2015)
Love, too, was just a question of time. ― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym. (Harper July 3, 2006) Originally published 2000.
When do you realize the selves you left behind have gone on without you, living the many lives you now begin to resemble? — Richard Jackson, from “The Trail,” Retrievals (C & R Press, 2014)
The Vale of Soul-Making 