Ned Hayes's Blog, page 88
August 20, 2014
You Reading This... Be Ready.
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
—William Stafford
“On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our...

“On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our camp, around us echo faint sounds of that other hidden world—the one of meadow and forest in the night. The melody of whip-poor-will, the cry of hunting owl, the scurrying rush of vole and chasing fox. It is as if some great razor scraped the life from this sheet of white-edged vellum, leaving only blank.”
August 19, 2014
“I can see her now. On the day we take the forest path to the...

“I can see her now. On the day we take the forest path to the deep stream beside the alder copse. There a plover calls in the deep woodsy stillness, and then a pair of martins dart across the over-grown path. Through the trees can be seen the thick and fast-moving line of flowing water, a steep bank beneath our feet and flowering at the edge of the water, the purple loosestrife and meadowsweet of spring.”
August 18, 2014
jennnotjenny:
What She Read: The Night Circus by Erin...

What She Read: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Image from Shannon Donnelly
I usually avoid books with paranormal plot twists. The mention of…
"Music and silence… combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of..."
- Marcel Marceau (via un-control)
August 17, 2014
Book Quote:
"People come to me on waves of memory, but all of...

Book Quote:
"People come to me on waves of memory, but all of them are ghosts. The sound of a distant ocean covers me with surf, that tide that bears me back eternally into the past, back to the place where I was born. My mother took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea. The thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the breaking rhythm never ceasing. My mother waited until we were out of sight of land. She waited to tell me the secret."
PHOTO: matialonsorphoto: by matialonsor
August 16, 2014
galaxiesanddust:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë + Catch-22...
"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the...

"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the day before she died, my mother took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea—the thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the rhythm never ceasing. And she taught me something: strange and secret words in a foreign tongue, a lilting singsong cadence to it."
August 15, 2014
"The fire blazes, sparks rioting above the earth, rising into...

"The fire blazes, sparks rioting above the earth, rising into the night. In the reflected blaze, the masks of the players packed in a cart glimmer behind us, false faces shifting in the light."