photograph by Danica Tanjutco via Unsplash
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die: and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
— William Stafford, “The Way It Is”
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.
— Emerson, epigraph to “Self-Reliance”
Image by Myriam Zilles via Pixabay
MY Wheel is in the dark,—
I cannot see a spoke,
Yet know its dripping feet
Go round and round.My foot is on the tide—
An unfrequented road,
Yet have all roads
A “clearing” at the end.Some have resigned the Loom,
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ,
Some with new, stately feet
Pass royal through the gate,
Flinging the problem back at you and I.
— Emily Dickinson
cf. photograph by Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash (edited)
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
— Emily Dickinson, “Hope” is the thing with feathers (excerpt)
Jack Delano, “Flagman walks back to flag any oncoming trains…” (1943)
Do not wear your soul out with tears but be as usually brave and look hopefully to the future.
— Letter to James Joyce from his mother (quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce)
Ferdinand Hodler, The Good Samaritan (1885)
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Bain News Service, “listening to records” (detail)
“Only when he touches earth does he, like Antaeus, recover his true strength.”
—Letter from Ivan Turgenev to Pavel Annenkov (referring to Tolstoy) quoted in Isaiah Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox”
Before leaving Saint-Rémy, he wrote to Émile Bernard:
“…And yet, once again I let myself go reaching for stars that are too big —
a new failure — and I have had enough of it.”
John Sapiro 