Echoing Words

“You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it’s worth something.  Well let me tell you, it’s not worth shit.  Let it go.  Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“What do you think?  You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you’re alive!  What’s a little pain compared to that?”

“It can’t be so simple.”

“What if it is?”

Nathaniel Fisher and David Fisher
“Six Feet Under”

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke
The Waking

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

To ski, however well or poorly, is a reminder – whatever one may for a long time have suspected – that one is alive, and that living is tremendous fun. There isn’t any other game to compare with it in the world.

James Riddell

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Aristotle

The sacred and profane,
pleasure and the pain

Dire Straits
On Every Street

One man looks at a dying bird and thinks there’s nothing but unanswered pain. That death’s got the final word, it’s laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it.

Pvt. Witt
“The Thin Red Line”

At any moment, a great moment.

New York Yankees slogan

Life is a moment between two eternities.

Blaise Pascal