If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you,
if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~Eleonora Duse
quotations
A reminder on this solstice
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
~ Charles Dickens
Nature for the win
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
Free bird!
Fiction is such a world of freedom,
it’s wonderful.
If you want someone to fly, they can fly.
~ Alice Walker
Holding to the vision
As I continue to work on the YA-manuscript-with-many-warts, I take solace in this bit of wisdom:
Every great work,
every big accomplishment,
has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision,
and often just before the big achievement,
comes apparent failure and discouragement.
~Florence Scovel Shinn
The way I see it, I’m currently smack-dab in the middle of an enormous puddle of failure and discouragement which means Big Achievement could very well be nigh.
*scans horizon before getting back to revisions*
Shine on
Yeah we all shine on,
like the moon,
and the stars,
and the sun.
~ John Lennon
Unidentified Flying Object
Psst…my guess is Black-capped Chickadee. Photo by Zippy
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
~ Albert Einstein
I’m aiming for the heart
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
~ Maya Angelou
Iris bloom as work of art
Art is all in the details.
~ Christian Marclay
Tree Legacy
Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.
~ John Greenleaf Whittier
Magpies R Us
I am a magpie. My eye collects details.
~ Patrick Cox
Owned by Emma
Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.
~ Terry Pratchett
Maple seed pods: Propagators or Helicopters?
From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.
~ Aeschylus
And from a helicopter seed, much fun may be had.
~ Tracy
Twas a good night, moon
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago … had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
~ Havelock Ellis
Sunday post-run portrait
Not sure when the lady beetle hopped on board, but I was happy to have its company on this gorgeous spring afternoon. It’s been a very difficult week and I welcome any overture of friendship.
It’s the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events.
Joy comes in sips, not gulps.
~ Sharon Draper
Me and Ingmar Bergman
I’m very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.
~ Ingmar Bergman
Welcome, beauty
Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
My iris haven’t begun blooming yet, so I’m posting this photo from last April in anticipation of the splendor that’s in store for us.
I’m forever grateful to my former neighbor, Tina, for sharing her iris-love with me. She had many different iris in her vast gardens and when I first began digging in the soil, creating my own little patch of beauty, she’d toss iris tubers over the fence. I’m pretty sure this photographed iris is one of those long-ago gifts.
In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.*
Sometimes I read a scene I’ve written and think, “Whoa, that’s way too much choreography. You’re doing a play-by-play of your character’s every move.” Then I cut some verbiage, chastising myself for cluttering yet another scene with too much distracting movement.
Today, I came across this photo of Zebu and me taken last spring in Uppsala, Sweden.
There’s a whole lotta movement going on in this slice of real life and the photo is a good example of what I want from the choreography in my scenes. I want the movement to tell a story.
* Edgar Degas
Today’s memory of yesterday
This morning we woke to six inches of snow on the deck railing. The yard was blanketed in white. Tree limbs and branches were layered with pristine fluff. And now? Much of that snow is already gone.
Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.
~ Khalil Gibran
March music
Music comes from an icicle as it melts,
to live again as spring water.
~ Henry Williamson
Unhelpful hints
Contrast is what makes photography interesting.
~ Conrad Hall
I’m pretty sure this isn’t what ol’ Conrad meant.
However, this once-boring squirrel photo is now kinda interesting.
Kinda.
Bunny Monday
I’m writing writing writing, but am not yet finished with this draft. I need to send the manuscript to my critique group in a few days. The clock is ticking.
No time to say hello, good-bye . . .
A pain too lonely
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
~ Khalil Gibran
Heartbeat at my feet
My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet.
~ Edith Wharton
The importance of activist work
I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever, but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.
~ Angela Davis
Angela Davis at a political rally in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 4, 1974. Photo courtesy of Bettmann/CORBIS.
There is so much work to be done.
Tracy Abell 