Fleeting summer

Leaf with frost

Leaf frosted fallen
On the snowy marshy grass
Skim of ice sparkles

A good education

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences, than it would have done, in their correction, by a good education.

- Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818

Zinnia bud

My repugnance to the writing table becomes daily and hourly more deadly and insurmountable. In place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading. And I indulge it, because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path through the dreary wilderness of time before me, whose bourne I see not. Losing daily all interest in the things around us, something else is necessary to fill the void. With me it is reading, which occupies the mind without the labor of producing ideas from my own stock.

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1818 May 17

A summer's day

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . . .

Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

Perennial

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disappointment
it is as perennial as the grass.

- Max Ehrman, 1927

Right feeling

Art is simply a result of expression during right feeling. It’s a result of a grip on the fundamentals of nature, the spirit of life, the constructive force, the secret of growth, a real understanding of the relative importance of things, order, balance. Any material will do. After all, the object is not to make art, but to be in the wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

- Robert Henri

Trusting

When I am trusting and being myself as fully as possible,
everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily,
often miraculously."
- Shakti Gawain

To blossom

And finally the day will come when the risk it takes to remain
tight in the bud will be more painful than the risk it takes to blossom.

- Anais Nin

A new era

"The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit;
to choose our better history;
to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea,
passed on from generation to generation:
the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free
and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
- Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

The air was warm

Balmy
Breezy
Barefoot
Sipping
Swimming
Strolling

In the duff

Reflection

Only when the clamor of the outside world is silenced
will you be able to hear the deeper vibration.
Listen carefully.

- Sarah Ban Breathnach

Dewdrops

Red leaves and frostdrops
Diamonds on huckleberry
Angel tears or dew

Leave a trace

All I can do is leave a trace.
I can leave it on a piece of paper;
or on the ground,
but the best place to leave it
is in the heart and memory of someone else.
- Eli Wiesel

Center of the anemone

Anemone glows
Maple leaves twist and shimmer
Gold crimson scarlet

Near Junction Lake

In the sun

The grape harvest

If the heavens were not in love with wine,
There’d be no Wine Star in the sky.
And if earth wasn’t always drinking,
There’d be nowhere called Wine Spring.
I’ve heard that pure wine makes the Sage.
Even the cloudy makes us wise.
If even the wise get there through drink,
What’s the point of True Religions?
Three times and I understand the Way,
Six and I’m one again with Nature.
Only the things we know when we’re drunk
Can never be expressed when we’re sober.

- Li Po (699 – 762 AD)

Cosmos

There are times in one's life - when one simply has to stop, step out of one's routine and take the trouble to think. It's not a luxury but an obligation: how else to even try to make measured, considered decisions based on deliberation and self-awareness rather than on impulse or fear?

from Running to the Mountain by Jon Katz