[Image: “Morning with Chair,” by John E. Simpson.
(Shared here under a Creative Commons License;
for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Wordsworth studied himself and found the subject astonishing. Actually what he studied was his relationship to the harmonies and also the discords of the natural world. That’s what created the excitement.
(Mary Oliver [source])
…and:
14. Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone, and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?
(Marcus Aurelius [source])
…and:
The Spring Flowers Own
(excerpt)This unfinished business of my
childhood
this emerald lake
from my journey’s other
side
haunts hierarchies of heavensa palm forest
fell overnight
to make room for an unwanted
garden
ever since
fevers and swellings
turn me into a river
(Etel Adnan [source])