Small Wonders: A Vanished Year

Small Wonders: A Vanished Year: And you wait, you wait for that one thing that will infinitely enlarge your life; the gigantic, the stupendous, the awakening of ...

A Vanished Year

And you wait, you wait for that one thing that will infinitely enlarge

your life; the gigantic, the stupendous, the awakening of

stones, depths turned round toward you

The volumes bound in rust and gold flicker dimly on the shelves; and 

you think of lands traveled across, of paintings, of the clothes

of women found and lost.

And then suddenly you know  it was then.  You rise, and before

you stands the fear and prayer and shape of a vanished year.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, "Memory" translated by Edward Snow

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed

by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbour.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.  Dream.  Discover.

-Mark Twain-

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

- Henry Ward Beecher -

"Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled-- to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.  I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.  I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-- that the light is everything-- that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading.  And I do."

- Mary Oliver,  House of Light -