Tag: the living
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Impermanence
“Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?” – Rainer Maria Rilke The days have shortened, but summer has stretched long. It is mid-October, and the thermometer reads upwards of 80 degrees. I live in a liminal space where the heat beats and time is suspended. My sight turns inward; I move through my…
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Small Things, Simple Things, Nothings
What can anyone give you greater than now, Starting here, right in this room, when you turn around? William Stafford, from “You, Reading This, Be Ready” I dreamed last night I was sitting at K and E’s kitchen table, drinking tea and eating a slice of pear and stem ginger cake. It was cold and…
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Look, I Am Alive
D used to study his hands. He stretched his fingers out wide, curled them into fists. He turned his palms over and back, tracing veins and creases. He said to me, “Look, these are my hands. Look, I’m alive. How strange.” How strange indeed. It is August 29th, 2014, and look, I am alive. *…
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The Life I Have Let Live for Love of You
More blessed in you than I know, I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing not belittled by my saying that I possess it… I give you what is unbounded… I give you the life I have let live for the love of you… I give you my love. Wendell Berry, “The Country of Marriage”…
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Beauty-Stalker
I have become a stalker of beauty, for moments of extravagance. My life has recently intensified in terms of busyness; my schedule tightened and became rigid. My remedy: leave my desk, take long winding walks, steal time for conversation. It’s counter-intuitive and seems frivolous, but these stolen moments of beauty, these soul-feeding moments, bring me…
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Awakening
What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch—with an electric hiss and cry—this speckled mineral sphere, our present world. – Annie Dillard It could be almost nothing—morning haze hovering on a hillside, a shimmer on the palm of my hand, the cool of evening coming in the window, words on…
Kathryn Kong 