If we were having coffee: Blustery day edition

Passing by the beach again. (From Thursday’s outing in the kayak on the Manokin River.)

Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.

~ Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Secret societies

First light

Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast.  Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing.  Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people.  So it must be all around us.  In this garden — in all places.

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

The day begins with a blood-red sky, a flap of wings, the remains of man’s flight streaked across alternating bands of light and dark.

Five Photos, Five Stories: At last

Thirst quenched.

I stood in the yard watching as the moon floated up from behind the trees that line the back of the lagoon.  Thunder rumbled low and quiet in the distance, flickers of lightning joined in to create a call and response of flash-rumble, flash-rumble.  I could hear the woosh of heavy rain coming from behind me, traversing from west to east.  Within minutes, the clouds moved in, shrouding the moon.  The rain followed.

Chronicles

Icy times.

Advice to Young Journal Keepers.  Be lenient with yourself.  Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions, and temptations.  Give yourself all the good and interesting qualities you want and haven’t got.  If you should die young, what comfort would it be to your relatives to read the truth and have to say: It is not a pearl we have lost, but a swine?

~ Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz

Jumping in puddles

Puddle reflection, after the rain.

The rain began again.  It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfillment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.

~ Helen Garner

The dreamer

Feathers

Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking.

~ Margaret Fuller