A Poet Reflects

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.

—Jonathan Safran Foer (via rarararambles)

(via captainstickylove)

I’m an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It’s an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner.

—Christine Feehan, The Twilight Before Christmas (via flentes)

(via elysskama)

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (via litverve)

You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life, you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock.

You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.

—Don Miguel Ruiz (via elige)

(via elysskama)

You ask “What is life?” That is the same as asking “What is a carrot?” A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more.

—Anton Chekhov, letter to his wife, Olga Knipper Chekhov (April 20, 1904)

(Source: pornforblind, via corwood)

At the beginning of my life, I received my teachings directly from the natural world. I understood the rhythm of existence through the interplay of light and shadow and the subtle changes of the air and climate. I learned that for every mood there is a corresponding season and that our lives are seamlessly connected to the great life of the earth.

When I withdrew in winter and found myself in dark and inaccessible regions, I came to know that darkness is a time for the migration of the soul: I saw then what we hold in common with the roots and seeds—a stage of mute and invisible growth. My inner changes and emotions were often triggered by the land: I would feel the breakthrough of the spring as the windswept sky and a sudden movement of the clouds brought forth a new round of activity. I would become like the hard, insistent shoots sprouting upward from the earth, and something in me would be heartened and encouraged as I stretched my spirit toward the light.

The eruptions of the crocus and the daffodil still remind me that in the days ahead I will know the exhilaration of opening that belongs to the buds and flowers. By such observations, we discover that life is not static or fixed; one thing flows into the next, and we are standing in the midst of it, wide-eyed and innocent.

—Valerie Andrews   (via moreofamore)

(Source: fernsandmoss, via dulma)

And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life.

—Donald Barthelme, “The School” (via awritersruminations)