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“I always wonder, Isn’t being a good listener worth anything? Can’t you do something good for the world without standing in a crowd or shouting from a podium?”
How to explain that, despite the tragedy of it, she had found it strangely enticing, had almost wished the rain and thunder had gone on longer. These were not things she could say out loud, and it was never good enough for most people in her life to have her reasons and keep them to herself.
I’m only doing this because I can’t bring myself to do anything else,” Bea said. “Life is just too wild for words sometimes, so then you’re left with paintbrushes.”
How many times did you sit in a room and try and fail to understand yourself? A hundred? A thousand? You felt your own energy, your thoughts and emotions, all bouncing around, seemingly disconnected vibrations, and you could never quite pin them down or predict what they would do next. You could never tell when they would begin, or from which direction they would come, or when they would fade, or if they would simply cease abruptly, without warning.
“All great ideas are dangerous.”
They had been there before, and they were there again. They would always be there.
I wished I could say something to her, reassure her in some way that what she’d done had meant a lot. That her life had meant a lot. That people leave in the middle of a path sometimes, and we have to keep walking. That small things done with great love become great things.
lost and found a thousand times. It wasn’t until she put her palms on the rock beneath her and closed her eyes that the wild land she’d once been so afraid of really spoke to her. It kept repeating, roaring above the thundering of waves, like a reverberation of Earth’s very voice. From all around us the response came: I’m here.
