“What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what…
“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….
“On the 26th of March, 1602, old style. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold set sail from Falmouth, England, for the North part of Virginia, in a small bark called the Concord… ‘The 15th day,’ writes Gabriel Archer, ‘we had again sight of the land, which made ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason of a…
“The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that…
“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…
“That’s what makes death so hard – unsatisfied curiosity.” – Beryl Markham, West with the Night Where does restlessness come from? I believe it comes from that unsatisfied curiosity that Markham references above. What will you regret on your deathbed? The restlessness of the unexplored: unsatisfied curiosity. This phrase from such an accomplished woman, such…
If you watch a commercial on television, or a reporter out on a city street, or even the cast intro on Saturday Night Live in February 2021, everyone is wearing masks. A year ago you’d have wondered at it, even as the pandemic rapidly descended on the world. Today it’s commonplace, and I’m more often…
“So long as I am hanging onI want to be young and noble.I want to be bold.” – Mary Oliver, Desire There’s that word again. Bold. I chase it down, let it challenge me. Take a deep breath and get after it yet again. To rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures,…
Looking back on this maddening year, I found I read a lot of poetry that inspired and a lot of page-turner novels that distracted. It would be easy to make half this list collections of Mary Oliver poems, but I subtracted poetry from the list altogether to focus on the craft of the written novel…
“Though it be the hottest day in July on land, and the voyage is to last but four hours, take your thickest clothes with you, for you are about to float over melted icebergs.” – Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod The stretch of water between Cape Sable Island in Nova Scotia and Cape Cod in…
