By Mary Oliver
This morning the red
birds’ eggs
have hatched and already
the chicks
are chirping for food.
They don’t
know where it’s coming
from, They
just keep shouting
“More! More!”
As to anything else, they
haven’t
had a single thought.
Their eyes
haven’t yet opened, they
know nothing
about the sky that’s wait-
ing. Or
the thousands, the mil-
lions of trees.
They don’t even know
they have wings.
And just like that, like a
simple
neighborhood event, a
miracle is
taking place.
I love paper: scratching down words and drawings, moaning onto the page, writing my bad poetry, recording wise/interesting ideas I come across, imagining possibilities and building stories. Managing the physical space to support all of this paper is another thing. Going through it takes a big emotional effort. But, I get round to it once or twice a year. This is one of those times.
I have a little quote collection I frequently add to. Maybe you’ll appreciate some of the good ones I found today:
Originality does not consist in saying what noone has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself. -James Fitz, James Stephen
Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life; in understanding as in creating. -Rainer Maria Rilke
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. -Anais Nin
I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside oneself, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity – to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone. -Edith Wharton
Just enough space to breathe a bit, to make some things and to think about the important things in life. Not someone else’s list of important, but my own. And, believing what Rumi said:
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
I doubt I can post a photo of this work, but I’m sure I can post a link and you can see something I consider really beautiful in many ways. What do you think?
Em Grimm 