He (Marilyn Manson) has a woman's name and wears make-up. How original.

- Alice Cooper

The city of paper, which grows cell by cell during the summer months, is left empty and deserted when winter comes. The host of its inhabitants, with the exception of a few hibernating queens, are slain by the cold. The story of the city and the story of the wasps, in the main, is the record of a single summer. 
From The Strange Lives of Familiar Insects
By Edwin Teale

It seems to me that sanctuaries are akin to monasticism in the dark ages. The world was so wicked it was better to have islands of decency than none at all. Hence decent citizens retired to monasteries and convents. Once established these islands became an alibi for lack of private reform. People said: "We pay the bills for all this virtue. Let goodness stay where it belongs and not pester practical folks who have to run the world." ...The more monasteries or sanctuaries the grimmer the incongruity between inside and outside.

From "Land Use and Democracy"

By Aldo Leopold

But my only weapon was stillness, and my only wish its continued presence before my eyes.

From A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

By Annie Dillard

Then, you may know, the last round came, and with it pride.   

   I swivelled round to face my own whiskey

recalling anecdotes in turn of ancestral

   snowfields and running wolves and fireside.

From "The Memory of Barbarism is the Recollection of Virtue"

By Richard Emil Braun

Now the strong wind blew straight into the drawing room. It shook the dust off the gauze around the chandelier, and it fanned the ashes in the porcelain stove. It flapped the decals that were pasted on the walls. One of them came off and was carried away.


 The room was filled with a smell of night and firs, and Moomintroll thought: “Good. A family has to be ventilated at times.” He went out on the steps and stared out into the damp darkness.

“Now I’ve got everything,” Moomintroll said to himself. “I’ve got the whole year. Winter too. I’m the first Moomin to have lived through an entire year.”

- From Moominland Midwinter

By Tove Jansson

What is a Friend? I’ll tell you.

It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself.

Your soul can go naked with him.

He seems to ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you really are.

When you are with him, you do not have to be on your guard.

You can say what you think, so long as it is genuinely you.

He understands those contradictions in your nature that causes other to misjudge you.

With him you breathe freely – you can allow your little vanities and envies and absurdities and in opening them up to him they are dissolved on the white ocean of his loyalty.

He understands. – You can weep with him, laugh with him, pray with him – through and underneath it all he see, knows and loves you.

A Friend – I repeat – is one with whom you dare to be yourself.

-Anonymous

Rain, rain, go away

My lost head will likely drown

Happy St. Patrick's

Old adage: Let yin yang dogs lie

'Therefore I say: Ea! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be; and those of you that will go down into it.' And suddenly the Ainur saw afar off a light, as it were a cloud with a living heart of flame; and they knew that this was no vision only, but that Iluvatar had made a new thing: Ea, the World that Is.
- From The Silmarillion
By J.R.R. Tolkien

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes

To pace the ground, if path be there or none,

While a fair region round the traveller lies

Which he forbears again to look upon;

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,

The work of Fancy, or some happy tone

Of meditation, slipping in between

The beauty coming and the beauty gone.

If Thought and Love desert us, from that day

Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:

With Thought and Love companions of our way,

Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,

The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews

Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

"Most Sweet It Is"

By William Wordsworth

I was ready for all that might happen

Head lowered

         Feet touching my head

And everything that moved in the corner

Against the wall

         Opposite me and beside me

The mirror as it faded had begun to tremble

There was a light

                                                   Long ago

and the face that I see

                           Midnight

            Would this be the hour

Under the roof the rain-pipe weeps

And a far-off train that was calling

The room stretched beyond the walls

At that moment they might have caught me

            Or I could even have stumbled

World was falling over and over into slumber

"Abyss"

By Pierre Reverdy

I have been a gipsy since those days,   

And lived again in the wild wood ways.

Wise with the lore of those hidden things,   

Learnt from Lord Christ in His wanderings,

Beggar and reaper and shepherd and slave,   

I am one who rests not in any grave;

I will follow each stormy light divine,   

And the secret of all things shall be mine.

These things have I seen, would you bid me mourn   

That I was never an Emperor born?”

From "The Vagrant's Romance"

By Eva Gore-Booth

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

"I Hear America Singing"

by Walt Whitman

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ²And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁵While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.


Matthew 17:1-8

The great hurrah about wild animals is that they exist at all, and the greater hurrah is the actual moment of seeing them. Because they have a nice dignity, and prefer to have nothing to do with me, not even as the simple objects of my vision. They show me by their very wariness what a prize it is simply to open my eyes and behold. 

From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

By Annie Dillard

The Philosopher And The Cobbler

            There came to a cobbler’s shop a philosopher with worn shoes. And the philosopher said to the cobbler, “ Please mend my shoes. ”

            And the cobbler said, “ I am mending another man’s shoes now, and there are still other shoes to patch before I can come to yours. But leave your shoes here, and wear this other pair today, and come tomorrow for your own. ”

             Then the philosopher was indignant, and he said, “ I wear no shoes that are not my own. ”

            And the cobbler said, “ Well then, are you in truth a philosopher, and cannot enfold your feet with the shoes of another man? Upon this very street there is another cobbler who understands philosophers better than I do. Go you to him for mending. ”

From The Wanderer

By Kahlil Gibran

1, 2, 3 SLIDE

1, 2, 3 SLIDE

oh, to be an otter

Ice Abstracts

Grandpa Lake snowshoe

Morning following snowfall

Not first visitors

(here moosey-moosey moosey...)