Jantine

“Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Like the bear who went over the mountain, I went out to see what I could see. And, I might as well warn you, like the bear, all I could see was the other side of the mountain: more of same. I propose to keep here what Thoreau called ‘a meteorological journal of the mind,’ telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights dizzyingly lead.

I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been set down, if we can’t learn why.

So I think about the valley. It is my leisure as well as my work, a game. It is a fierce game I have joined because it is being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against an unseen adversary- the conditions of time-in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else. I risk getting stuck on the board, so to speak, unable to move in any direction, which happens enough; and I risk the searing, exhausting nightmares that plunder rest and force me face down all night long in some muddy ditch seething with hatching insects and crustaceans.

But if I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing and I resound like a beaten bell.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?”
― Mary McCarthy, Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949-1975