--Mary Oliver
I decided it was time to throw down my favorite quote. Today, I picked black berries. They are right now in my freezer, with plans to be made into a pie in the next couple days. Hours ago they were settled on bushes in Oak Creek Canyon, listening to the sound of water splashing and falling against rock. They were hidden underneath green leaves, waiting for us to pluck them off their springy vines. It was so fun and so darn painful! The bushes are full of thorns. This is why black berries are so expensive! I'm sure I ate a hundred, and brought home a few hundred more.
Even Jay, who is an avowed fruit hater, was dipping into the bucket and tossing back the berries. They were so juicy and sweet. And the sun and the water and the laughing were perfect little pieces all falling together to make the day whole and fine. I needed a good day.
It was a great day. Blackberry metaphor for Carolyn: Picking blackberries is like life; you think you have found all the best, biggest berries, and then you take a step, or turn around, and there is the perfect clump of purple-black morsels, hidden and waiting just for you. Ha! Cheeeeessey.
Getting back to that quote, isn't it funny how one thinks in terms of the future...as in, what AM I going to do with my one wild and precious life? When, in fact, we are all LIVING our precious life now. I love that quote. I first found it on one of the doors in the Liberal Arts building at NAU when I was a student there. It stuck with me for months. I wrote it down, copied it on my computer in an amazingly excellent font and huge letters. I hung it up on my fridge. I tried to live my W&P life more on purpose. And then, I think I must have stuck it in a file cabinet and let the whole idea go. That's something I love about words; how they can compel you to live more, or better. How they can make you look at your life or situation and re-evaluate. It's so easy to put the good ones in a file though. That's why we should all pick our favorite quote and paint it on the living room wall :) Or write it with a Sharpie on the dashboard of the car. I won't go as far as to say tattoo it on your forehead backwards, although that is an option. Keep it in sight.
3 comments:
Lol forehead... That is a GREAT quote, except.. it makes me cringe too 'cause I'm so not doing it. Yet, there's time, right? But dangit that sounds like a regret. Oh boy, now I'm gonna do some thinkin'.
You have my dad's email, yeah? Tell him to give you mine (which means I may have to check it more than once a month heh heh).
Hey H.G., I'm WAY older than you and I'm just now getting started. I think the quote, any quote, (or maybe not even a quote but an experince, a moment, a thought)is, at times, merely the seed that begins the process. Let the process of finding our wild and precious life take a long dang time if necessary. Of course, thinkin's always good too:)
tattoo on the forehead? who ever heard of such a thing. words, like life, are good. We can either just speak them, or like silly putty we can stretch and play with them. we can make them meaningful or meaningless. my favorite quote, well two favorites, "no sense makes sense", and "money doesn't talk it swears". judging by my financial status i keep control of my tongue.
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