Category: Everything Else

If you want to be happy,
set a goal that commands your thoughts,
liberates your energy,
and inspires your hopes.

-Andrew Carnegie

I have a crazy busy day today, so I can only offer a through-the-kitchen-window view of the sunrise. I do love a winter sunrise!

I will check back in later! Have a good Monday.

I fly because it releases my mind
from the tyranny of petty things.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I know but one freedom,
and that is the freedom of the mind.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I love Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Cassidy and I are currently reading The Little Prince together and I don’t really know how much of the story or nuance of meaning is getting through to her, but she is definitely under the spell of the prose, so precise and delicate; and the beautifully romantic illustrations.

And I’m sure that, to some extent, she can hear the caress in my voice.

I love this story. It is so simple and pure and true and universal; it is the sort of story that makes me want to curl up into a ball and give up on the idea of writing, anything, ever.

I first read this book in French and still the words had the power to move me.

I’ve never read any other of his writings, although Wind, Sand and Starssits on my bookshelf waiting for me to get to it.

I do have quotes of his scrawled all over my notebooks, discovered here and there and noted for later. Taken together, they are a powerful force.

“We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones.
We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men. “

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.”

“How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become – to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.”

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
To live is to be slowly born.”

I bring this up because I have been mulling over the question, “What would you do if you could not fail?” It is not an easy thing to answer precisely. Write, yes, of course; but what, and why?

I think for me the answer is this: I would teach my words to fly.

What does that mean, exactly? I’m not sure yet. But it is a beginning.

What would you do if you could not fail?

The first fall of snow is not only an event,

it is a magical event.

You go to bed in one kind of a world

and wake up in another quite different,

and if this is not enchantment

then where is it to be found?

J. B. Priestley

And like that everything is new and beautiful again.

I walk in a world of crystals with the wondering eyes and heart of a child.

Enchantment.