"Waiting is work." My father, on the telephone, waits for the return of my mother, away in Sweden. One fills her eyes with her history and with the world; one fills his eyes with the familiar and with a brief emptiness. But a small emptiness echoes the greater one, just as a shadow in the …
One of the great strengths of the human psyche is its ability to create structures where there appears to be chaos, to build shelter in a storm of metaphorical proportion, and raise walls in the perceived world which are duplicated in physical form around us. The walls of our houses go up, and we count on them to protect …
" Mountains did look in the windows of the thin aluminum room over loud tar paper roofs We could see how peaks covered with lime or snow backed away a little wounded from their literal distance " – Mary Kinzie I wondered, tonight, as the full moon flooded my room as it flooded the landscape …
Circle of golden sunlight and at its margin, shadow; obscuring body of midnight and of its limbs, meadow if I walk from one place I find the road leads to the other I loved the easy glance of youth and tried all ways to keep it: circle of golden sunlight we’re dancing …
When, despite the gales and throes of the day, there is a spark of beauty… There is a kind of strength which cannot be culled, when you are able to lift your voice in a song. Tonight there were a few old standards of mine, which I revisited in a few free minutes; the heart softened more than ever …
My daughter called this evening; in fact, she called several times today. I miss you, Daddy, her words said. I am sad, said her voice. And that textured, tangible pain somewhere deeper within her rose up and troubled her mind, and she began to speak of things that aren't, and imagined things that never were. …
Robin Chase, Founder of ZipCar and MIT-trained scientist, on transportation and communication networks. It is a far greater challenge to have and to be without, to open the hands, than it is to live without and be without. The river of life sees scarcity, and through those eyes, the hands that claim a prize reluctantly …
In many conversations over the years I have found myself planted on one side of a fence, leaning in, looking over. And according to my companion's words — through words thoughts, in thoughts timber, trimmed timber rails, rails become fences, fences framed vision, in pictures a mirror of one's Self — there was a way …
A phrase often heard in physical training programs, from triathletes to bicyclists to climbers to yogis, is "working your edge." No matter what level of experience we have attained in a given sport, there is always a level of activity or mental acuity beyond that which we are familiar. There is always a more open …
Beautiful in its glory, the mask as thin as gossamer as fragile as the mist rolls in, as vagueness is its glory; the child leaves the hospital without a mark upon her but the cipher of her living is the mark she carries in her and she staggers as though broken, she's the standing-stone forever: …
"… hope she is feeling better. Have a good night yourself." The ember of the day fading, so the small electric sparks that lead from corner to corner all the way home are now apparent, where before their minor lights were lost in the grander, warmer rays of the sun. A friend departs. The engine …
Better to travel with someone who is looking for God than with someone who has found him.