While on a walk with Juliet, I saw a stack of books through a window. A stack of books lined up, just so and a lamp with an orange glass shade. And I wondered what the books were and why these books were stacked in this way. I wondered if this was a bedroom, or a library room, or an office. Or maybe, these books belong to a student—a young student with a lifetime of dreams before them, with a lifetime of books before them, with a lifetime before them.
The real adventure, he thought, is the flow of time; it’s as much adventure as anyone could wish.
Excerpt from The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler, 1985
we pulled the leaves from the dill plants and the night fell with its fragrance
with their humble happiness, the pumpkins beckoned
there was a bit of melancholy about the place; the distressed beauty of willful neglect but also a prescience in the way the sun fell in random slices through the thick afternoon clouds
she laughed when I ran outside to shoot the morning frost on the leaves and so I scampered, crunching the grass, taking the shots quickly, leaving an exhaled breath behind me
feel the thin space between the living and the departed today—
listen for their names on the wings of the changing winds
Leaves stick to the bottom of our boots and gather in the kitchen where the shoes are haphazardly discarded. But the leaves, in all of their brittle and scampering leafiness, travel throughout the house on the edges of a passing breeze— resurfacing on a worn blanket or in the corner by a basket of pine cones.
oh yes, you will always remain a locked door
youth, sadness and shooting stars,
rainy mornings and happy afternoons,
sometimes a broken heart and sometimes a broken promise,
anger and a small child’s laughter,
a full moon and an autumn breeze,
a late summer sun on fresh flowers,
a day at the lake, a lark, a laugh, a life
Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered, but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what’s evident forever affected by the gravity of what’s concealed.
Excerpt from: “O” Is for Outlaw, by Sue Grafton, 1999
At my house, there are books. There are open books, stacks of books, groupings, families, renegades. There are plants and flowers; dried and fresh flowers, long leaves in vases, old pottery with lavender. You may find sticks on the table, or maybe a rock, a wing, pens and pencils, a lipstick, a moth.
There is an old hand-made quilt with a tiny rose print and there is art. Some is mine and some is not mine. There is chocolate and Spanish ham, cheeses, fruit, sometimes wine, sometimes good dark beer and sometimes whiskey. There are little statues of birds and fawns. There is music from the 60’s and 70’s and 90’s; occasionally opera, or Gregorian chants, mostly folk, rock, country, classical guitar.
At my house, there are candles and incense. There is a stained glass lamp with ruby spiders and there are hurricane lamps and sand dollars.
What is your safe place? I was asked recently—and I answered, “my house”.
your green eyes and
the way the sun shone through the pink petals—
Rita’s painted egg and two sand dollars on the toy chest,
Queen Anne’s Lace in the wild lane
where I walked alone on a late summer’s day
spanishwoods 