Going Through Old Notebooks Part 31: "You’re supposed to ask yourself, what would I do? How would I live, if I had just six months, or a year, but wasn’t going to change anything major..."
The frog hunting passage is doing something the six-months exercise can't quite get to on its own. It's showing what full attention actually felt like before you knew to call it that. The instincts sharpened for hours afterward. That's the essay knowing more than the essayist. The body remembers what it felt like to really look.
Since I am 85, this was a gentle reminder for me. While reading your lovely story I realized I was enjoying I so much that I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing at that moment. Thank you for the realization how very precious every moment is, whether big or small. I needed this.,
"When I remembered to be alive, it was sometimes like dancing, or like some miracle of the body that I’d never achieved with the body itself. There was a feeling like cliffs under bright sun and sea spray, or that place where the green of a coastal trail finally meets the sand, and a spring runs down to the beach, with water that has traveled however far it has traveled that can now, finally, and like a poem, dissolve into the waves."
I will remember this last paragraph for a long time.
The frog hunting passage is doing something the six-months exercise can't quite get to on its own. It's showing what full attention actually felt like before you knew to call it that. The instincts sharpened for hours afterward. That's the essay knowing more than the essayist. The body remembers what it felt like to really look.
Since I am 85, this was a gentle reminder for me. While reading your lovely story I realized I was enjoying I so much that I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing at that moment. Thank you for the realization how very precious every moment is, whether big or small. I needed this.,
Frances, this means so much to me. Thank you.
Beautiful!
What a lovely read and a great reminder. *Takes sunglasses off* Thank you. x
Beautiful, Summer. ♥️
Thank you!
"When I remembered to be alive, it was sometimes like dancing, or like some miracle of the body that I’d never achieved with the body itself. There was a feeling like cliffs under bright sun and sea spray, or that place where the green of a coastal trail finally meets the sand, and a spring runs down to the beach, with water that has traveled however far it has traveled that can now, finally, and like a poem, dissolve into the waves."
I will remember this last paragraph for a long time.
Thank you.
This is an amazing paragraph. I often think of you, Summer, when I go to Point Reyes, because you describe it so well.
beautiful read, thank you for sharing! ❤️
“We were monsters in our innocence” Perfection
That line stopped me too. The innocence making it worse, not better.