[Image: “Lodz, PL, 1994.” A photo by Mark Pimlott from his 2008 exhibit, All Things Pass,
at Stroom Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands (click for original)]
From whiskey river:
Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It’s the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now.
(Margaret Atwood, from The Blind Assassin [source])
…and:
Transience is the force of time that makes a ghost of every experience. There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night.
(John O’Donohue, from Anam Cara [source])
…and:
Sleepless
Can’t get clear of this dream,
can’t get sober.Spring breeze chilly
on the flesh: me all alone.My orphan sail
finds the bank
where reed flowers fall.All night
the river sounds
the rain falling:
listen.
(Yuan Mei, from I Don’t Bow to Buddhas [source])
