It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.
— Bill Brandt, Camera in London (Masters of the Camera) (Focal Press; January 1, 1948) (via Cultural Offering)
Years ago in a high green pasture near timberline I watched a small black bear on its back rolling back and forth and shimmying to scratch its back, pawing the air with pleasure, not likely wanting to be anywhere or anyone else.
— Jim Harrison, from In Search of Small Gods (Copper Canyon Press, August 17, 2010) (via The Hammock Papers)
Slow down, look, listen, and witness what is happening. Let the landscape tell you what to do, make meaningful decisions or adjustments, versus forcing your ideas or expectations. Take a breath and find the alignment. Nature takes time, all of our growth does.
— Elliot Page, Pageboy: A Memoir (Flatiron Books, June 6, 2023)
Already one day has detached itself from all the rest up ahead.
It has my photograph in its soft pocket.
It wants to carry my breath into the past in its bag of wind.
I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear
Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.
— Charles Wright, “Reunion” from Country Music: Selected Early Poems. (Wesleyan University Press, 1982) (via Alive on All Channels)
Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile…
So these moments
count for a lot—peace, you know.
Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.
This is what the whole thing is about.
—William Stafford, from “Just Thinking” in Allegiances (Harper & Row; January 1, 1970) (via Alive on All Channels)
Like ghosts we pass back and forth
between times,
stunned,
unable to feel
what we touch.
We believe in abstractions.
That’s one way to explain
our failure to prepare.
— Rae Armantrout, from “Preparedness” in NY Times, June 8, 2023
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
— Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” from Another River: New and Selected Poems (Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005).
I began working on a series of paintings called Strata . I walked paint across the canvas in horizontal rows, pushing it from right to left with my palette knife in layers of blue, yellow, pink, and black, like the poet in Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia, who walks a lit candle across a muddy pool, his road to Calvary.
— Alfonse Borysewicz, “Naked Grace,” Image, Issue 32 (Fall 2001), p. 26, 34. (via Alive on All Channels)
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, from “The Art of Disappearing” in Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995) (via Alive on All Channels)
If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives. Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves.
— Elliot Page, Pageboy: A Memoir (Flatiron Books, June 6, 2023)
At what instant does the summer change?
What subtle chemistry of air
and sunlight on the clean and windsmooth sand?
The small birds at the water’s edge—
yesterday they were not there.
So suddenly the magic door is shut,
the trio suddenly is done,
the clasped hands inexplicably apart;
however clear, however bright,
the road we traveled on is gone.
— Jane Tyson Clement, Growth (Plough, September 13, 2019) (via Alive on All Channels)
