Stand Still Like the Hummingbird (New Directions Paperbook)

by Henry Miller

for what is creation but imagination made manifest?

He was just an interpreter, a mouthpiece, an actor doing his part. You felt easy and rested when he had finished his story. You knew that another was coming if you’d just give him time to finish his drink or wipe his mouth. He made you feel that there was all the

time in the world, that there was nothing better to do than just what you were doing. Part of him wasn’t off somewhere trying to catch a train or organize a strike. He was all there and giving of himself in his easy, steady way (“easy does it!”), giving what was ripe and ready to fall to the ground, not straining, not pumping it up, not wondering if it were just the right quality or not. And that’s how I like to think of him now that he’s gone.

I like to think of him as a quiet, easy spirit seated at a round table under a shady tree holding converse with other departed spirits. Probably talking about celestial trivia, the ...

The greatest miracle is the discovery that all is miraculous. And the nature of the miraculous is—utter simplicity.

but the importance of it will he not in the getting there but in knowing more about ourselves.