Nan Shepherd

[Image: “Parking Lot Meet-and-Greet, February 2021,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) Recently I learned a new phrase (although the concept was familiar): “vernacular photography.” I’ve always thought of such photos as just, y’know, snapshots… but a whole aesthetic, a mystique — and, probably, an academic discipline — has developed about them over the years. The gist is: not self-consciously “arty”; amateur(ish); casual/unposed; everyday/mundane; etc. During the time of COVID-19, I imagine, conscientious photographers — however “amateur” — have been composing their casual/unposed and everyday/mundane group portraits rather more carefully.]

From whiskey river:

To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It’s unwise, though, to think you know how it’s going to go, or how it’s going to end. That’s to be known only when it’s over.
And even when it’s over, even when it’s somebody else’s life, somebody who lived a hundred years ago, whose story I’ve heard told time and time again, while I’m hearing it I hope and fear as if I didn’t know how it would end; and so I live the story and it lives in me. That’s as good a way as I know to outwit death. Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can’t understand that they end in him, but they don’t end with him.
Other people’s stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.

(Ursula K. Le Guin [source])

…and:

List of Seemingly Unrelated Observations
Distance, like snow, melts.
Walking in deep yellow leaves
drowns out your voice.
Thinking, like a deep river,
eats canyons in your mind.
Everything blossoms that can.
Everything blossomed that could.
Stars move if they are airplanes;
wish fast.
You can live in as many places
at once as you need to.
For some places you don’t go anymore,
you still have a key.
A dream brings you into morning
one way or another.

(Grace Butcher [source: unknown])

…and:

Have an uncomfortable mind; be strange. Be disturbed: by what is happening on the planet, and to it; by the cruelty, and stupidity humanity is capable of; by the unbearable beauty of certain music, and the mysteries and failures of love, and the brief, confusing, exhilarating hour of your own life.

(Kim Addonizio [source])

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[Image: “Disembodied Legs,” by Miguel Tejada-Flores; spotted this on Flickr, of course, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). The photographer explains, “Disembodied legs protruding from an automobile transmission – advertising an automotive repair shop, in Central Point, Oregon.” He also includes an epigraph: “You don’t get to have legs and not use them. / Dance”; the quotation seems to have come from this book, by author Dianna Hardy.]

From whiskey river:

Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves or looked like we were playing by ourselves.
I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played, seems to play back.
If playing isn’t happiness or fun, if it is something which may lead to those things or to something else entirely, not being able to play is misery.
No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn’t able to, though I wanted to—
There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it ‘writer’s block’. For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don’t usually know them.

(Lynda Barry [source])

…and:

There is no hope anywhere but in this moment, in the karmic terms laid down by one’s own life. This very day is an aspect of nirvana, which is not different from samsara but, rather, a subtle alchemy, the manifestation of dark mud in the pure, white blossom of the lotus.
“Of course I enjoy this life! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!”

(Peter Matthiessen [source])

…and:

Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was—a whisper.
What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth dead falling or tiger-trapping.
In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspot outside your grandparents’ window long ago.

(Ray Bradbury [source)

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To Tell Your Life and Your Self

An Image in a Ball of Glass