tomfoolerys

[tomfoolerys]

It could happen that in a few days my father might tell me he forgives me, and I will reject his forgiveness like it’s an organ my body doesn’t recognize.

Will I be allowed, then, to come apart? Will I have earned it?

Meg Howrey, They’re Going to Love You

[tomfoolerys]

I want my work to be seen, to be part of the conversation of my art form, to collaborate with people I admire and respect. But these things are only important. They aren’t sacred. The sacred thing is to feel—if only for a moment—that I am not consuming or forgetting or losing the things of this world but adding to them. That I have made something true or beautiful or both. That I might do it again.

Meg Howrey, They’re Going to Love You

[tomfoolerys]

After you injure your body, the biggest temptation is to constantly test yourself for pain. Does this hurt? Does this? Does it hurt now? You want to poke and provoke.

Meg Howrey, They’re Going to Love You

[tomfoolerys]

Fear is miserable, as is pain. As is hunger. Every animal is hardwired to do absolutely anything to stop those feelings as fast as possible. We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid.

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

[tomfoolerys]

“Are you afraid of that?” they asked. “Of death?”

“Of course,” Mosscap said. “All conscious things are. Why else do snakes bite? Why do birds fly away? But that’s part of the lesson too, I think. It’s very odd, isn’t it? The thing every being fears most is the only thing that’s for certain? It seems almost cruel, to have that so…”

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

[tomfoolerys]

I am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can’t define what that something more is simply by our raw components

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

[tomfoolerys]

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing. Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi. Disturbing these lives through digging was a violence—though sometimes a needed one, as demonstrated by the birds and white skunks who brashly kicked the humus away in necessary pursuit of a full belly.

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

[tomfoolerys]

I found in the human soul all the forces in the world, and none of them was dormant, and in the mad whirlpool each soul became like a fountain, whose source is the abyss of the sea and whose summit the sky.

Leonid Andreyev, The Man Who Found the Truth

[tomfoolerys]

I awoke when the light spilling in the window touched my face. I opened my eyes but lay still. The pale light filling the room after the dark of the storm was like being immersed in clear water. I felt curiously empty, as one does when one has been ill for a long time and then begins to mend. I caught at the edges of a fleeing dream, but clutched only the edges of a shining morning, the sea below me and wind in my face. Sleep had left me, but I had no inclination to rise and face the day. I felt as if I were inside a bubble of safety, and that if I remained motionless, I could cling to this moment in peace.

Robin Hobb, Fools Errand

[tomfoolerys]

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves,

equally, to hug another body.

Mary Oliver, “On The Beach,” from The Swan

[tomfoolerys]

There is nothing sentimental about this world. Like the weather, this world asks only to be acknowledged. There is nothing comforting about it, and yet if you are afraid to see it in its own terms and look to it for comfort, for solace, you will be left worse off than you were before.

Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

[tomfoolerys]

To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not a cure for it. But it is a step towards seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.

Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

[tomfoolerys]

As I started writing, I realized that having a bagful of stories to tell is not enough. The bigger chunk of the problem lies in the telling of these stories. Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night when I would feel this "itch" of a memory waiting to be written down. But as I would start writing it, I'd be suddenly stumped, sometimes looking out the window for hours. I couldn't find the right words to describe a memory. No descriptive detail to illustrate the remembrance. All that would remain was the "itch."

John Jack G. Wigley, Falling Into the Manhole: A Memoir

[tomfoolerys]

A long rest out in the country, amid nature's soothing beauties; the contemplation of village life, which is so simple and bright; the absence of the noise of the city, where hundreds of wind-mills are stupidly flapping their long arms before your very nose, and finally the complete solitude, undisturbed by anything – all these have restored to my unbalanced view of the world all its former steadiness and its iron, irresistible firmness.

Leonid Andreyev, The Man Who Found the Truth

[tomfoolerys]

In the spring of the that wonderful year, I was in Beirut. The gardens were full of Nisan flowers and the earth was carpeted with green grass, and like a secret of earth revealed to Heaven. The orange trees and apple trees, looking like houris or brides sent by nature to inspire poets and excite the imagination, were wearing white garments of perfumed blossoms.

Spring is beautiful everywhere, but it is most beautiful in Lebanon. It is a spirit that roams round the earth but hovers over Lebanon, conversing with kings and prophets, singing with the rives the songs of Solomon, and repeating with the Holy Cedars of Lebanon the memory of ancient glory. Beirut, free from the mud of winter and the dust of summer, is like a bride in the spring, or like a mermaid sitting by the side of a brook drying her smooth skin in the rays of the sun.

Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

[tomfoolerys]

The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word “Mother,” and the most beautiful call is the call of “My mother.” it is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is every thing – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.

Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

[tomfoolerys]

I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the Park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby