“When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.”
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
I hope to die during Autumn.
I want fallen leaves to surround me.
The wind blows steady then
with promise of a calm.
The silence of winter
lies a blanket of rest
over earth and the pine box below.
The pine should be unfinished,
filled with knots, imperfections.
Temperate soil,
free from frost,
cluttered with granite,
return me to the land.
“Do or do not. There is no try.” Yoda
Notebook Entry December 2010: NO MORE TALKING ABOUT THINGS…TIME TO JUST DO THEM
Ideas without actions are beginning to feel like broken promises.
I promise myself by filling my mind with the ideas of what could be only to be disappointed with what never is.
In one day I’ve dreamt of building my own house, becoming a farmer, becoming a chef, starting up a restaurant, starting a magazine, building furniture, moving to France, moving to Oregon, rebuilding Athens, living closer to family, mastering the guitar, learning the piano, reading all the books in my bookshelf, and selling all my belongings.
Ideas are beginning to feel like opinions. Opinions spew from the mouths of the uninformed and inexperienced as if they were bad ideas that have come to fruition and gone. What if instead of giving one’s opinion on the state of affairs, instead there was talk of solutions followed by direct action.
There is talk of a need for more “Idea People.” I’m in the favor of people who act.
“Fuck it. It’s a big world,” she claims toward a clear, unresponsive window as if the person beside her would not hear nor care. But she hopes he will.
Words spoken are never erased. They grow scales and slither across the brain.
The world is big, but the space we consume day by day and those devoured by our appetite for the spice of life are finite.
We swing in and out and spread thin our influence. Best of friends are unlimited and families wait patiently in line until they’re needed.
“Sometimes I wonder if I would be better off in a small town with a nice house and shit. Then I see pictures of people on Facebook living that life and I think, ‘No thanks!'”
Anonymous, Life Cafe, Brooklyn, New York
