Far away and up close.
June 17, 2012 § Leave a Comment
“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Lacy Boxwork Rocks form sheets of delicate sandstone in the Wave of Coyote Buttes North
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“How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?” – Mary Doria Russell
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Lace Rock, Coyote Buttes North, Paria Canyon
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/12112047
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“Living alone,’ November whispered, ‘is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn’t overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being.” – Catherynne M. Valente
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Aerial GC
http://www.pbase.com/ckuhn55/grand_canyon
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“A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Crazy Lace Agate Cabochon
http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/lapidary/Interesting
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“But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I’m told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society… but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.” – Harold Bloom
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MODIS GrandCanyonEast
http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/FieldImages2.html
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“written works do not produce fast reactions as pictures and sculptures and music do. it takes no effort to see or hear. but to read – to grasp what the writer has done – requires commitment. engagement. as is the case with most art, the relationship between the maker and the audience is remote in time and space. the writer is nowhere to be seen when the reader takes up the book, or even dead. but most often, books go unread…thus the writer, knowing this as writers do, is even more alone…yet writers write. and knowing what they know makes their isolation almost a sacrament.” – Anneli Rufus
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Crazy or Mexican Lace Agate
Crazy Lace Agate, or Mexican Lace Agate, is a variegated form of chalcedony displaying lace configurations or paisley patterns in a combination of red, white, gray and yellow.
http://anitabeads.blogspot.com/2011/04/about-stones-crazy-lace-agate.html
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Grand Canyon Aerial
http://www.placesfacts.com/the-grand-canyon/
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“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” – Harold Bloom
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Laguna Lace Agate
http://www.dipity.com/tickr/Flickr_lace_agate/
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“Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.” – Brennan Manning
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Aerial view GC
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/53939153
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“Not too long ago thousands spent their lives as recluses to find spiritual vision in the solitude of nature. Modern man need not become a hermit to achieve this goal, for it is neither ecstasy nor world-estranged mysticism his era demands, but a balance between quantitative and qualitative reality. Modern man, with his reduced capacity for intuitive perception, is unlikely to benefit from the contemplative life of a hermit in the wilderness. But what he can do is to give undivided attention, at times, to a natural phenomenon, observing it in detail, and recalling all the scientific facts about it he may remember. Gradually, however, he must silence his thoughts and, for moments at least, forget all his personal cares and desires, until nothing remains in his soul but awe for the miracle before him. Such efforts are like journeys beyond the boundaries of narrow self-love and, although the process of intuitive awakening is laborious and slow, its rewards are noticeable from the very first. If pursued through the course of years, something will begin to stir in the human soul, a sense of kinship with the forces of life consciousness which rule the world of plants and animals, and with the powers which determine the laws of matter. While analytical intellect may well be called the most precious fruit of the Modern Age, it must not be allowed to rule supreme in matters of cognition. If science is to bring happiness and real progress to the world, it needs the warmth of man’s heart just as much as the cold inquisitiveness of his brain.” – Franz Winkler
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