Lost in the wilderness

— Helen Keller

Sometimes I dwell in the sky, loose like a kite without a string, sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder if my father has come back to life, maybe to sit me down as he often did, calm words, that furrow in his brow steady, sometimes I fall asleep on the bottom of the river, wake in the night to the constant stars, my head filled with constellations and the next day I feel like I have come back from Alpha Centauri, my life packed so densely into my skin that it might be impossible to die, sometimes I mark the nights with a notch I carve into a piece of river cedar, a surface mottled with the trails carved by wood borers, that language buried deep in bone marrow, and sometimes, because I have taught my tongue to fly, you might hear it close to you, words uttered into your sleep trying to describe the immense distances I travel every night.

that they didn’t live boldly enough,

that they didn’t invest enough heart,

didn’t love enough.

Nothing else really counts at all.”

~ Ted Hughes

To turn your existence into joy,

Mix them

Mix them!"

"To Build a Swing" written by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Children dancing on hillside, Naples, Italy, 1948, by Chim Seymour.

In the painting, he meets our gaze with intensity and fatigue.

Behind the brush and smock lies not just the artist—but the struggle to stay whole through art.

— Haruki Murakami

Christmas in Madison Square Park, 1910

‘Self-Portrait without Beard’, 1889 © Private collection