Hand-built clay sculpture, Jazmeen, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals

[recorded 6/10 for 6/17]

"What would I have done differently in my 20s and 30s if I had known then what I know now?  For one thing, I would have laughed more; seen more Laurel and Hardy movies.  And I would have grieved less.  I would have understood earlier that not all losses are permanent and that some things lost were not worth keeping.

"I would have taken more time to note the changing seasons.  (‘Can you believe it?’ an elderly friend asked me one spring day.  ‘Can you believe that even if I live to be a hundred, I will see all this only 100 times?’)

"I would have been more daring.  Emotionally daring, that is; in the spirit of Eudora Welty’s observation that ‘all serious daring starts from within.’

"I would have understood sooner how profoundly satisfying the ordinary transactions of daily life can be:  the perfect cup of morning coffee; the son shouting down ‘Good night’ from his room; the ginger-colored cat caught napping in a triangle of sunlight."  Alice Steinbach, from the Baltimore Sun, as quotes in Reader’s Digest

"When people know their death is close, they often lose the hope that life will turn out the way they wanted it to.  Then they can see that life is so delicious – because that is all there is, this very moment. "  Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."  George Santayana

"What do you want them to say about you when you’re gone?  Say I never toed a line, I went my own sweet way to the last."  Goethe

All above quoted in Heron Dance:  Waswinipi-Water-Whales-Wildernness, Issue 30

Nothing like cleaning out the bookshelves.  Even though I won’t keep it all, I will keep some of it here.