Lately What Preys On My Mind
I photograph trees, obsessively. I have for decades. In some strange way, I need to. There’s a spiritual nourishment I get from wandering through wooded places, but its also an opportunity to explore my thoughts and feelings. And that’s where the captions come from. Some of the words are mine, some are expressions of others more elegantly worded than my own, but capture my feelings precisely.
I’m trying to find friends in the forest. Individuals I can relate and connect to in some way. They listen to me, patiently, and I love them for that. I wish I could do that for my real friends. Just be there and listen, and not add or interject anything. It’s such a lovely feeling to be really heard.
In many ways these trees are my mentors. I admire them in so many ways. I love their organic forms and lines, so alluring, so very sexy. I love their gesture, posture, and body language. I love the variety, the individuality, not only of their appearance, but also of their experience. I love their commitment to place, their stoicism, and love of sunlight. I love their changes. I love their impartiality. I love their availability. I love their transparency, candor, and generosity. I love trees for these qualities, and I want to learn all these things from them, for myself.
I don’t wanna be a tree, I just wanna be like them.
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take up some god damn space
....we live in a society of “can’ts” and “shouldn’ts” and “sorrys” rather than “fuck yeses” and “hell yas” and “fuck NOs” all I have to say to women is this one simple thing take up some god damn space you’re amazing perfection the Rolls Royce of the world women everywhere you’re worth it without Maybelline telling you so you deserve to linger when you’re ordering coffee you’re allowed to take a breath before you make everyone’s day take an hour to decide what you want to wear take a lifetime to choose a mate you’re allowed to stutter in yoga class if it’s pushin -
However little we may be attached to the world......
However little we may be attached to the world, we never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of mankind, the misanthrope flies from it, resolves to become a hermit, and buries himself in the cavern of some gloomy rock. While hate inflames his bosom, possibly he may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which he bore with him to his solitude, think you that content becomes his companion? Ah! no, Rosario. -
No one can know in advance how and where the night will come
We don't need to retire to a cloister or the desert for years on end to experience a true dark night; we don't even have to be pursuing any particular "spiritual" path. Raising a challenging child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is at least as purgative as donning robes and shaving one's head; to endure a mediocre work situation for the sake of the paycheck demands at least as much in the way of daily surrender as do years of pristine silence in a monastery. -
Piety is a discipline of the will through respect
Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego. Richard M. Weaver Ideas Have Consequences -
they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting
I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still. Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’ I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five -
I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?
Dusk is such an illusion. The sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are, there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel, I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart? Nicholas Sparks -
there is no Leader; there is no Guru; there is no Master, no Savior
Here is a fundamental question: is life simply a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture for centuries, from ancient times to present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he never seems to find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in other ways. What we are trying to do, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. Not simply to accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. -
only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. -
Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful
I daydreamed a lot about the sycamore tree, too, which at first I thought was because I was feeling melancholy. But then I remembered how my mother had called the sycamore a testimony to endurance. It had survived being damaged as a sapling. It had grown. Other people thought it was ugly, but I never had. Maybe it was all in how you looked at it. Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful. Wendelin Van Draanen -
face the challenge of change
One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. Martin Luther King, Jr.
