Willow Garden

We arrived in Liuyuan, which was our destination for the night. "Liuyuan" means "willow garden."
"There are no willows in the Willow Garden," I said, observing the brown treelessness around.
"It's the dream," Zhongmei said. "Sometimes you name things after what you don't have."

from Ultimate Journey
by Richard Bernstein

Stay Engaged, Keep Moving

Planting My Cabbages

Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.
(I want death to find me planting my cabbages.)

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

With Today in My Eyes

"Buddy, the wind is blowing."

The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till we've run to a pasture below the house... [where] we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and peel Satsumas and watch our kites cavort...

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are...just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

from A Christmas Memory
by Truman Capote

Mental Path

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau