Sometimes the past opens like a newly turned page.

"Time and space - time to be alone, space

to move about - these may well become the

great scarcities of tomorrow."

from Autumn Across America, 1956

by Edwin way Teale

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. 

I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.

Anais Nin

Venice was very much a de Chirico moment, one of our favourite 

artists, with it's statues and plazas and vistas glimpsed between

lovely buildings coloured in muted earth tones.

"Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments 

on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence 

and distraction of common men."

by Giorgio de Chirico

Canadian Poetry Gift

"With sealed eyes, still bosom,

And folded feet I fare

To that country under dream

Where Eternity and Time

Are two sides of a drum."

from THE TWO SIDES OF A DRUM

BY A.J.M. SMITH (News of the Phoenix) 1943

Last week I received a gift of some beautiful old

Canadian poetry books, many inscribed by the authors, as well

 as a lovely collection of books by and about Dylan Thomas.

What a special and generous gift.

"Now lift your eyes

To see the nightly patterned skies

How did they come there

The Hunter and his Dog, The Virgin and the Bear?"

from Ideas of Order

by Jay MacPherson (Nineteen Poems) June 1952

"There is a mountain  everyone must climb,

Different for all and yet it is the same.

We start to climb before we have a name,

And nick the summit in our nick of time."

from The Mountain

by Robert Finch (The Strength of the Hills) 1948

"Time is measured in change

whether by the movement of

instruments or in the appearance

of our bodies. We often feel the 

need to escape to places where time 

will not follow. To the solitude of a 

cathedral or an untouched forest

floor. Here, as we contemplate the

scope of human existence, we

cannot forget that even cathedrals

crumble and forests die. The 

computations of astronomers bear

witness to the gradual alteration 

of the constellations as the stars

move across the firmament. The 

works of nature and man disintegrate

and are gone,  and nothing endures

on the vault of the sky of the surface

of the sea. Only the shapes of the

land seem eternal."

from A Vanished World, T

he Dinosaurs of Western Canada

by Dale A. Russell

"I obtain great satisfaction out of using my intellect. "

Temple Grandin

Beyond The Fields We Know

From my favourite blog, one I have followed many years.

http://www.beyondthefieldsweknow.org/2017/01/the-winter-solstice-came-and-went-and.html

Resolutions this year??? No resolutions scrawled on paper 

or etched in stone, only the same old work in progress 

- trying to be fully present and paying attention, cultivating 

an intimate connection with my native woods and fields, 

getting out of my own way and letting the camera see 

what it will see, just breathing, in and out, in and out.  

In the words of Surya Das, 

"There's nothing to do but remain in the view".

stripped bare,

 in the cold the trees let fall ~

a new beauty.

Guy

"Within the last few decades, since the complete triumph

of industrialization, the image of our earth's surface has been

entirely altered and rearranged; every city and landscape in

the world has suffered monstrous change and a corresponding

revolution has swept the souls and minds of men.

In the years since the outbreak of the world war this

development has been so rapid that one can without

exaggeration announce the death and destruction 

of that culture in which we older people were educated

as children and which seemed to us at that time eternal

and immutable."

 from Our Age's Yearning for a Philosophy of Life 

1926-1927 by Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse, My Belief, Essays on Life and Art

I have dipped into this book hundreds of times, simply to 

read, not necessarily taking much from it, often not 

finishing the essay. So why have I placed this book by my

bed for so many years? In these essays Hesse demonstrates

that there is a life of the mind. That someone read and 

thought about our intellectual history, our spirituality, our 

morality. He mulled over what he has read and heard and 

experienced in an attempt to understand his place in the

world and that of his fellows. And I suspect this is a 
worthwhile pursuit, an subject that everyone would 
be better off reflecting on and working through.

" Over there the pale snow lay in a different fashion

than on my roof, over there the beech forest and the

black pine trees were indescribably beautiful and 

reserved in a way I never saw in my neighborhood;

perhaps God Himself walked over there along the 

slopes, and whoever met Him there could touch Him

and speak to Him and look closely into His eyes."

from At Year's End 1904

              by Hermann Hesse