Gretel Ehrlich
The lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life. ― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (Penguin Books, December 2, 1986)
Category: Enviromental
Gretel Ehrlich
Now what looks like smoke is only mare’s tails—clouds streaming—and as the season changes, my young dog and I wonder if raindrops might not be shattered lightning. ― Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, the Universe, Home Home (Penguin Books, October 1, 1992)
Gretel Ehrlich
All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call “aware”–an almost untranslatable word meaning something like “beauty tinged with sadness. ― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (Penguin Books, December 2, 1986)
Gretel Ehrlich
Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons. — Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (Penguin, 1986)
Gretel Ehrlich
Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.” ― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (Penguin Books, December 2, 1986)
Gretel Ehrlich
Some days I think this one place isn’t enough. That’s when nothing is enough, when I want to live multiple lives and be allowed to love without limits. Those days, like today, I walk with a purpose but no destinations. Only then do I see, at least momentarily, that everything is here. ― Gretel Ehrlich,… Continue reading Gretel Ehrlich
Peter Matthiessen
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 .… Continue reading Peter Matthiessen
Rebecca Solnit
The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to… Continue reading Rebecca Solnit
Lucia Perillo
The body tells a story mostly about loss. —Lucia Perillo, from “Rotator Cuff Vortex,” Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)
Wendell Berry
How to be a Poet (to remind myself) Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity… Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a… Continue reading Wendell Berry
The Vale of Soul-Making 