Clearwater, Florida. June 2, 2018.
In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.
In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
~ Patti Smith
Stealth
quotations
Shades of Browning
Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.
~ Robert Browning
House Finch and sunflower, October 16, 2019.
Behold
Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Mariposa Lily. Centennial Cone Park, July 10, 2019.
Blue fashionista
Fashion is not about clothes,
it is about a look.
~ Carine Roitfeld
Hello, October
October 1, 2019
In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom. ~ John Burroughs
Gone with the bloom
Hustler Gulch Hike. July 26, 2018.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. ~ Wallace Stevens
Note to self: stay strong
True strength is delicate. ~ Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
Unidentified butterfly, South Fork of Cave Creek. May 15, 2019.
Hoping to burst into bloom
Centennial Cone Park hike. July 10, 2019.
I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom,
till you yourself burst into bloom.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I’ve mentioned before that I’m usually a one-project-at-a-time kinda writer. It seems my brain and creative juices struggle when I switch focus. BUT. I think it’s a good skill to cultivate, juggling projects, so I bought myself a brand new notebook for a brand new middle-grade novel idea I’d like to noodle on while working on my work-for-hire nonfiction project. If you hear the sound of shrieking gears, that’ll be my brain right before I burst into bloom.
Tiny matters
Ladybug on Apache Plume in backyard. March 12, 2019.
The older I get, the more I’m conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn’t it?
~ Sandra Cisneros
One beautiful form to another
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down,
creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing,
allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion,
chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
~ John Muir
Wandering trees, wandering me
Cave Creek Canyon hike. May 13, 2019.
Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind,
going and coming like ourselves,
traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day,
and through space heaven knows how fast and far! ~ John Muir
If you know what this is you’re smarter than me
Soon-to-be Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly. Blakeslee, PA. August 18, 2019.
Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn’t look anything like a butterfly.
~ Lynn Margulis
Resting in the grace of the world
Green Heron, Kapok Park. January 11, 2019
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~ Wendell Berry
Thank you, Toni Morrison
We die. That may be the meaning of life.
But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
~ Toni Morrison
She fearlessly wielded language, never backing down from truth. I’m grateful she graced the planet for 88 years, creating books that will keep her fierce genius alive forever.
Rest in power.
My religion
Joy in the universe,
and keen curiosity about it all – that has been my religion.
~ John Burroughs
Monday dipped in glitter
When life gives you Monday,
dip it in glitter and sparkle all day.
~ Ella Woodward
Me and Monet both
My wish is to stay always like this,
living quietly in a corner of nature.
~ Claude Monet
If you’ve got it, flaunt it!
Bockman Campground, State Forest State Park. June 12, 2019.
Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off – and they are nearly always doing it.
~
On being brave
Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off.
Build your wings on the way down.
~ Ray Bradbury
Building that bridge
The biggest emotion in creation is the bridge to optimism. ~ Brian May
Nature’s canvas
The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas. Edvard Munch
Refueling in my solitude
Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away. ~ Barbara De Angelis
Fantasy of nature
I’m always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn. ~ Gunter Grass
I, too, will go on
In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil,
which I have forsaken in my great discouragement,
and I will go on with my drawing. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
A pep talk from my advocate + these sunny flowers = renewed resolve.
An upside down perspective
White-breasted Nuthatch. Portal, AZ.
Try to see things differently – It’s the only way to get a clearer perspective on the world and on your life. ~ Neal Shusterman
