quote by henry david thoreau

photo via visualize

words by gandhi

words by gandhi

words by ray lamontagne

  words by mary oliver

photos via visualize

words by isadora duncan

photo via visualize

i wanna touch the earth
i wanna break it in my hands
i wanna grow something wild and unruly

i wanna sleep on the hard ground
in the comfort of your arms
on a pillow of bluebonnets
in a blanket made of stars

i wanna walk and not run
i wanna skip and not fall
i wanna look at the horizon
and not see a building standing tall

i wanna be the only one
for miles and miles
except for maybe you
and your simple smile

~ dixie chicks said it all in a song

now I become myself.  it’s taken
time, many years and places;
i have been dissolved and shaken,
worn other people’s faces,
run madly, as if time were there,
terribly old, crying a warning,
“hurry, you will be dead before—”
(what?  before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem is clear?
or love safe in the walled city?)
now to stand still, to be here,
feel my own weight and density!
the black shadow on the paper
is my hand; the shadow of a word
as thought shapes the shaper
falls heavy on the page, is heard.
all fuses now, falls into place
from wish to action, word to silence,
my work, my love, my time, my face
gathered into one intense
gesture of growing like a plant.
as slowly as the ripening fruit
fertile, detached, and always spent.
falls but does not exhaust the root,
so all the poem is, can give,
grows in me to become the song,
made so and rooted so by love.
now there is time and time is young.
o, in this single hour I live
all of myself and do not move.
i, the pursued, who madly ran,
stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

~ may sarton

don’t worry about what the world sees when it looks at you. how do you see yourself?

the picture they paint of you makes no difference. discover for yourself where you want to be, what you want to do, who you are when the voices outside of you are silenced. it is only then, when we become detached from others’ forecasts and opinions of our life, that we can truly be content with who we are as an individual, as a lover, as an artist, as a human being, revelling in our very own unconventional world.

it has been three years since i last drove halfway across the country, but 23 hours behind the wheel seemed far longer than i remembered.

if i had to sum it all up in one word, i’d choose liberating. there were moments i felt freer than i have in a long time, with the windows rolled down, wind blowing in my face, no phone service, miles upon miles of wide, open space (just one reason i moved back to texas) and not a soul in sight.

this aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives. this freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth. to be one with the truth for just a moment, is worth more than the world and life itself.

~ rumi

 my reflective excursion was spent drifting between a meditative silence and a private party in my car as i transformed into a rock star, belting out some of my favorite tunes, thanks to an old cd collection that i came across while packing and gina‘s mad cd-burning skills.

here are just a few of the songs that kept me company as i trekked along the highway of life.

1. get what you give – new radicals
2. let’s get it on – marvin gaye
3. make you feel my love – bob dylan
4. sleep while i drive – melissa etheridge
5. faith - george michael
6. more than a memory - garth brooks
7. little red corvette – prince
8. hurt so good – john cougar mellencamp
9. here i go again – whitesnake
10. fast car – tracy chapman

one day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“mend my life!”
each voice cried.
but you didn’t stop.
you knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
it was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~mary oliver