[Image: “Stay Put,” by photographer Akiva Shapero. Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). In their different ways, the couple in this photo struck me as iconically impatient and dissatisfied with their setting: looking elsewhere, apparently trembling with a desire to get moving — elsewhere, anywhere — and, in any case, physically there but psychically adrift.]

From whiskey river:

Whence all this hurry to arrive at a state? Are you not already face-to-face with the eternal mystery? Take it easy for a while; just watch the snow falling or the kettle boiling, and not so much hurry.

(Alan Watts [source])

…and:

Watchful Waiting
(excerpt)

It’s where you are in your imagination
That’s important, for the life of simply staying where you are
Is a shadow’s life, that leaves you by yourself, alone and scared.
Why can’t we just move on? The light up ahead is soft
And seems to beckon us, glowing with a promise of beginning
Once again, as if there were still time.

(John Koethe [source])

…and:

Blinding, the White Horse in Front of Me
(excerpt)

…I’m the one into whose
arms you fall when you fall through all of space. The one
who tells you infinity is another hoax. I’m the being
who has no manners, or mannerisms. I have no style.
I settle on nothing; I decide nothing. This is not
a final place. There is no such place. I am the being
who whistles to you and distracts you from self-absorption.
I am the mosquito in your ear, an iridescent fly, a lightning bug.
This clearing is full of false lights, flickers that stop
when you look. I’m the being that’s tricky because you
try to make me conform to your senses. You
have no senses here. You have nothing.

(Alice Notley [source])

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