“If I could think of a way to do it right now, I’d head back to Louisville, sit on the porch drinking beer, drive around Cherokee Park for a few nights, and try to sink back as far as I could into the world that did its best to make me. It’s not hard to get tired of interminable palms and poinciana, and I could do at the moment with a single elm tree on a midnight street in the Highlands.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
This blog is an accumulation of writings, quotes, images and other random things that I have stumbled upon in various ways. If you see a pattern going on here, please let me know!
“For my twenty-seventh birthday, I was really looking forward to your father’s gift…But there was no box. There was no bag with tissue sticking out of the top. We sat down on his bed, in his closet room, as he gave me an envelope…Instead, there was a blank card with these instructions: ‘Write down all of your goals.’ Then he had me recite them back to him. And after every goal I read out loud to him, he replied, ‘So it shall be. ‘
― Ali Wong, Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life
Passing this along…..
“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.” Rilke
“ It is a peculiarity of knitters that they chronically underestimate the amount of time it takes to knit something. Birthday on Saturday? No problem. Socks are small. Never mind that the average sock knit out of sock-weight yarn contains about 17,000 stitches. Never mind that you need two of them. (That’s 34,000 stitches, for anybody keeping track.)
Socks are only physically small. By stitch count, they are immense.”
― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit’s End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much
“Travel is the epitome of expansion, connection, and discovery – both of the world and one-self. It’s a profound experience that transcends geography, opening our hearts to the mesmerizing tapestry of our world. Travel invites us to shatter the confines of our daily routines and perspectives, guiding us to embrace fresh outlooks, alternative lifestyles, and mind-boggling traditions.”
― Anastasia Pash, Travel With Style: Master the Art of Stylish and Functional Travel Capsules
“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”
― Rolf Potts, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
Duomo di Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. Martina Strihova/Shutterstock
“In November of 2018, just days before President George Herbert Walker Bush drew his final breath at his Houston home at the extraordinary age of ninety-four, something happened that almost no major news outlet ever stopped to fully tell: former President Barack Obama quietly made a private visit to Bush’s bedside, the two men sitting together in the kind of gentle, unguarded conversation that transcends party lines and political rivalry entirely, with no cameras, no press releases, and no political theater of any kind. It was a moment of pure human decency, and it was entirely in keeping with the character of a man who had devoted more than seventy years of his life to serving a country he loved beyond all personal ambition. George H.W. Bush had enlisted in the United States Navy on his eighteenth birthday in 1942, becoming the youngest commissioned naval aviator in American history at the time, flying fifty-eight combat missions over the Pacific before being shot down near Chichi Jima island, rescued by a submarine while two of his crewmates perished, an experience so shattering that he rarely spoke of it in public for decades. He went on to serve as a congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of the CIA, Vice President, and then the forty-first President of the United States, and yet those who knew him best said the title he wore most comfortably and most joyfully was simply ‘Dad’ and ‘Granddad.’ When Michelle Obama wrote her tribute after his passing, calling him an extraordinary example of decency and a guiding light, she was echoing a sentiment that cut across every political boundary in America, because even Bill Clinton, the man who had defeated Bush in the 1992 election, said with unmistakable emotion that he would forever treasure their unlikely and deeply genuine friendship. Bush’s last recorded words before he slipped away were spoken to his son George W., who had called to say goodbye, and the former president replied with complete simplicity: ‘I love you too.’ Some lives are so full of grace that even their final chapter leaves the whole world a little better than before.
along the way 