I regularly break the accepted rules of gardening. Rules like putting the tall plants in the back of the garden. But when something like a balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) or bee balm (Monarda) are shoved way to the back you lose something intimate that you gain when they’re right in your face. So my apologies…
“When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake. You’re moving toward wakefulness. Wakefulness, happiness—call it what you wish—is the state of nondelusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are, insofar as this is possible for a human…
“For Sayonara, literally translated, ‘Since it must be so,’ of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado ‘Till we meet again,’ any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue…
“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne The march through time continues. What will the shadow that we cast behind our lives look like? I’m reading through a couple of weighty tomes that run through evolution. Don’t know why the stars aligned in such a way that I’m diving deep…
“Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours.” – Publius Syrus We’re all in a relationship with time. Some relationships are abusive, some are blissful. Time teases us. We think we have so much of it, but that’s a fabric of our imagination, like the belief that we might just live forever….
“Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don’t have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power….
But at my back I always hearTime’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;And yonder all before us lieDeserts of vast eternity… Let us roll all our strength and allOur sweetness up into one ball,And tear our pleasures with rough strifeThrough the iron gates of life:Thus, though we cannot make our sunStand still, yet we will make him…
“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” Neil Gaiman This rather cheery quote by Gaiman prompts a challenge of sorts from me. For making something isn’t what makes the world brighter, making something you care about making is what brightens the world. For in the making of something…
“Man, like a bridge, was designed to carry the load of the moment , not the combined weight of a year all at once.” – William A. Ward I’m not going to run a postscript on what happened over the last year – plenty of people have already written about that. A year ago we…
“A stone, because of its makeup, will return to earth if you throw it up in the air. Likewise, the more one pushes the intelligent person away from the life he was born for, the more he inclines towards it.” – Musonius Rufus What of our makeup? Are we drawn towards our inclinations, like gravity…
