Center of all centers, core of cores, almond self-enclosed and growing sweet — all this universe, to the furthest stars and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you; your vast shell reaches into endless space, and there the rich, thick fluids rose and flow. Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke (The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after. ~ Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
But here there was not a sound, and the air was scented with the white flowers of the night. It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body. ~ W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon & Sixpence)
Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Flight to Arras)
I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable lines between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves — we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny. ~ Mary Oliver (Upstream: Selected Essays)
The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb-time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night. ~ John O’Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)
For some reason I’ve been sleeping very well this winter. After the excitement of the holidays drifted away the days now seem very peaceful, the nights long and restful, and my dreams full of sweetness. Perhaps I am creeping back into my own nature. I’ve been “pruning” my family tree by day because it needs a lot of editing every once in a while.
A few Alberta clippers (fast moving snowstorms that seem to originate in Alberta, Canada) have passed through, leaving delightful snow flurries and light coatings of powdery snow. The bitter cold snaps have been more remarkable. The lowest temperature we’ve had here by the shore so far was 2°F (-17°C). Inland has been much colder. Today I will start putting away the solstice decorations. It would be nice to have at least one big snowstorm, a nor’easter, this winter…
To see the fire that warms you or, better yet, to cut the wood that feeds the fire that warms you; to see the spring where the water bubbles up that slakes your thirst and to dip your pail into it; to see the beams that are the stay of your four walls and the timbers that uphold the roof that shelters you; to be in direct and personal contact with the sources of your material life; to find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to find a quest of wild berries more satisfying than a gift of tropical fruit; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wild flower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~ John Burroughs (John Burroughs’ America: Selections from the Writings of the Naturalist)
I am somewhat afraid at night, but the Ghosts have been very attentive, and I have no cause to complain. Of course one can’t expect one’s furniture to sit still all night, and if the Chairs do prance – and the Lounge polka a little, and the shovel give its arm to the tongs, one doesn’t mind such things! From fearing them at first, I’ve grown to quite admire them, and now we understand each other, it is most enlivening! ~ Emily Dickinson (Letter to Elizabeth Chapin Holland, March 2, 1859)
The Kate is a relatively small venue, very cozy and intimate, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dar Williams perform there. We didn’t even mind having to sit a row apart, in the same seats, Tim in the row behind me. But Tim wasn’t in his seat much, poor guy. He still has a lingering cough from the bad cold he caught early in January. For much of the concert he was out in the lobby, where he could listen to the music without disturbing the rest of the audience.
Dar was amazing! These are some of the songs I remember her singing – no doubt there were some more: February ~ The Light and the Sea ~ The Beauty of the Rain ~ If I Wrote You ~ Buzzer ~ I Have Been Around the World ~ When Sal’s Burned Down ~ Mercy of the Fallen ~ Crystal Creek ~ Storm King, which she dedicated to Pete Seeger. All of us joined her in singing If I Had A Hammer in memory of him, too. Her stories in-between the songs were heartwarming and funny. It was wonderful spending an evening immersed in her music and inspiring lyrics. Beyond wonderful…
Oh my fair North Star I have held to you dearly I had asked you to steer me ‘Til one cloud scattered night
I got lost in my travels I met Leo the lion Met a king and met a giant With their errant knight
There’s the wind and the rain And the mercy of the fallen Who say they have no claim To know what’s right
There’s the weak and the strong And the beds that have no answer And that’s where I may rest my head tonight
There’s the weak and the strong And the many stars that guide us We have some of them inside us