“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver
Writing for me is my deepest place of concentration, even deeper than meditation. To me, such attention/focus is a form of prayer.
Here's the rest of the poem-
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
For me, writing is pure magic. If I can envision it, then it can happen. The world I inhabit there is boundless and all my own. The more dense and complex the story, the more lost in that universe I can become. And yet also, I love biographies. They are so grounded in the research and in the details. One of the things I love about all of the biographies that I have read is that life is usually far more unexpected and surreal than whatever it is that I can imagine. Einstein's story is no different in that way. His life was so bold and fearless and unexpected, in both good and hard ways. But for him, his work required the attention and imagination of prayer.
The success is in the details. I tried to figure out what it was that flew out into my face on Sunday when I was running. It turns out it wasn't a dragonfly but a type of butterfly I hadn't seen before. It was very delicate and sweet, once again showing me the limits of my own imagination.
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver
Writing for me is my deepest place of concentration, even deeper than meditation. To me, such attention/focus is a form of prayer.
Here's the rest of the poem-
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
For me, writing is pure magic. If I can envision it, then it can happen. The world I inhabit there is boundless and all my own. The more dense and complex the story, the more lost in that universe I can become. And yet also, I love biographies. They are so grounded in the research and in the details. One of the things I love about all of the biographies that I have read is that life is usually far more unexpected and surreal than whatever it is that I can imagine. Einstein's story is no different in that way. His life was so bold and fearless and unexpected, in both good and hard ways. But for him, his work required the attention and imagination of prayer.
The success is in the details. I tried to figure out what it was that flew out into my face on Sunday when I was running. It turns out it wasn't a dragonfly but a type of butterfly I hadn't seen before. It was very delicate and sweet, once again showing me the limits of my own imagination.
RSS Feed