A fabulous memoir by Isabel Allende. I read it a couple of years ago, but turned back to its pages last night for some reason. I won’t even attempt to say anything that Allende can’t say better herself. Some of my favorite passages:
Never do harm, and wherever possible do good.
All the air blew out of [...]
Photograph taken yesterday evening, walking to dinner with Grace. The iphone, while valiant in its effort, could not really capture the light on the branches. It seemed alive, warm, full of promise and the hope of spring.
I love the Dixie Chicks. One of my favorite of their songs is Easy Silence, and it runs often [...]
Love is necessity, all else about it is up for grabs. Love’s hold is primal, its manifestations baroque, arcane. In the tended garden of the personality or soul, love is the weed of startling loveliness. Flowers of a more acceptable configuration – duty, kindness, citizenship, concern – may take deliberate root and [...]
This song is playing on repeat today. In my house and, even when I’m not here, in my head. Ryan Bingham’s voice is haunting to me, as are the lyrics. I guess I feel weary. And the sense of somewhere not feeling like home anymore feels familiar. It’s been a [...]
The sky tonight reminded me of a quote I love:
Openings come quickly sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light. (Tennesse Williams)
The sky from this picture actually changed and became almost all those dove gray clouds, but they were moving fast and occasionally showing a [...]
…I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream….
…one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and [...]
Light the first light of evening, as in a room,
In which we rest, and for small reason think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl,
Wrapped tightly round us, since we [...]
This poem was scrolling through my thoughts as I ran yesterday, and as I wrote about the elegaic quality of January’s light. It epitomizes for me the resignation and sadness that inhabit a January day’s 4 o’clock glorious golden light. And, in truth, the resignation and sadness that are inextricably intertwined with life’s [...]
It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, [...]
Danielle posted this gorgeous video of Sarah McLachlan singing the Prayer of Saint Francis. I watched it this morning in the darkness of my bedroom and am tremendously moved. This prayer, along with May the Road Rise to Meet You and Reinhold Neibuhr’s famous words asking God to grant me the serenity often moves [...]
