I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.

The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair.

Her tarot readings were reputed to be so accurate that several of her friends nervously refused to let her tell them their fortunes. After the family moved to Vermont in 1945, she never had fewer than six cats at a time. A friend of her elder daughter recalled a dinner when a grey cat jumped on Shirley’s shoulder and seemed to whisper in her ear, at which point she announced that the cat had told her a poem - which she then repeated. Joanne reported another light side to her witchcraft. She kept all the small kitchen tools crammed in one drawer. When she wanted one, she would slam the drawer shut, call out the desired utensil’s name, and open the drawer. According to Joanne, it would always be on top.

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

OLIVIA: How does he love me? VIOLA: With adorations, fertile tears, With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there are rules that determine the reaction of most lifeforms to emerging technologies. One: Anything that is in your world when you are born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way things work. Two: anything that’s invented in the first third of your lifespan is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Three: anything invented once you are middle-aged is against the natural order of things.