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
August 1850
As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadow–sweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it flavor? It is now the royal month of August.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Excerpt from the book: The Journal 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau
butterflies and dragonflies and dragons (admittedly not far since their wings are often smaller than their bodies)
insects and bats and some squirrels (although in a mostly coasting fashion)
planes and helicopters and some pigs (almost never, but who am I to say?)
imagination and time (not exclusively when having fun) and excuses (some are said to not fly, but the best ones often try)
time falls and drifts
like rain that mists
on a hot summer day,
evaporating before our very eyes–
slanting sideways into the future
“I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses.”
from the book, This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920
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