quoted

"The dying have a quality that even a child senses. Not because they are already removed, but because even young hearts sense their inability to stay longer. Behind the looks of sickness or fear is also the look of the long distance traveler, bags on the floor, eyes tired but nervous for any change that may come. They are the ones going on the twenty-hour flights, and although we don’t envy their coming discomfort or time-zone skips, tomorrow they will be *there*— the place that both terrifies and thrills us. We peek at the ticket they hold, the inconceivably far destination written there, impossible yet monstrously alluring. What will it smell like where they will be tomorrow? What is it like to sleep there?" 

JONATHAN CARROLL

tiny steps

I'm feeling more and more ready to take these little steps we have been dreaming about for so long. The picture of that life has become so much clearer over the past few days (weeks maybe?). I want a small simple house. I want to grow food. I want to create and get paid for it. I want my husband to be home more. I want my daughter to be outside more. I want to be barefoot more.

Vanishing

"I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better."

A poem by Mary Oliver

A friend lost her father last night and the honest peace and dignity of her mourning is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen