Dark nebulae

"In my frigid room I read about dark nebulae - immense clouds composed of the detritus of dying stars. The nebulae are made of molecular hydrogen, high concentrations of gas and dust whose effect in the universe is to produce "visual extinction". Yet the nebulae are detectable because of the obscuration they cause. I looked up at the sky: the dark patches between constellations are not blanks but dense interstellar clouds through which light from distant stars cannot pass. They are known variously as the Snake, the Horsehead, the Coalsack. Darkness is not a blank, a negation, but a rich and dense obstruction, a kind of cosmic chocolate, a forest of stellar events whose presences are only known by their invisibility. "

from This Cold Heaven, Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich

Every time you tell your story

“Every time you tell your story you change it: you add adjectives, you add color, you end up forgetting all the grays in between and you only remember the highlights and the darklights. People who don’t tell their stories, who don’t have to reinvent themselves, have, I’m sure, a different memory of their lives than a person who only has to grab the big moments, good or bad. Those are the ones you tell. Those are the ones that end up defining you.”

Isabel Allende in A Sense of Place, Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Lives by Michael Shapiro

It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us.

- Barry Lopez

Cure for loneliness

"The cure for loneliness, I have come to understand, is not more socializing. It’s achieving and maintaining close friendships."

- Barry Lopez