Sifting

Lightning in a bottle.

It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.

~ George Harrison

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?

~ Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters

In the morning

An early morning in January when the moon and sun gazed at each other.

And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”

~ Mary Oliver

A breath of fresh air

High tide in the marsh.

You can’t change who you are, but you can change what you have in your head, you can refresh what you’re thinking about, you can put some fresh air in your head.

~ Ernesto Bertarelli

Slowness means cleaving perfectly to time, so closely that the seconds fall one by one, drop by drop like the steady dripping of a tap on stone. This stretching of time deepens space. It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar. Like the regular encounters that deepen friendship.

~  Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

A Monday meander: Biting the hand that feeds you

Stalking.  (Bella)

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

~ Ernest Hemingway

What would you do if your cat suddenly went psycho and started to attack you for no apparent reason, lying in wait and pouncing or stalking you with a faraway look reminiscent of its predatory cousins and ancestors?

~ Nicholas Dodman

A Monday meander

Hiding in the grass.

All you can do is this: Whatever you experience, whether tangible or intangible, look underneath the experience, like a child looking for a lizard under a stone. You’re not expecting anything to be there, but you’re always wondering if there might be.

~ Richard Leviton

Catnap

Bella

Laziness works.  And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap.

~ Tom Hodgkinson

Izzy, who doesn’t want to be disturbed.

 

Holidays

The Festivus Flamingo

Frank:  Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son.  I reach for the last one they had — but so did another man.  As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way!

Kramer:  What happened to the doll?

Frank:  It was destroyed.  But out of that, a new holiday was born.  A Festivus for the rest of us!

~ From the 166th episode of “Seinfeld”