Morning, peeps!

GM

“Do not be hardened by the pain and cruelty of this world. Be strong enough to be gentle, to be soft and supple like running water, gracefully bending around sudden turns, lithely waving in strong winds, freely flowing over sharp rocks, all the while quietly sculpting this hard world into ever deeper beauty, gently eroding rigid rock into silken sand, tenderly transforming human cruelty into humankindness. Remember, true strength is not found in the stone, but in the water that shapes the stone.” L.R. Knost Kayla Janes - Echo, 2025.

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Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter." Rachel Carson - Silent Spring, 1962. Rockwell Kent - Sturrall, Donegal, Ireland, 1927

GM

GM https://npub1x95l2dxqqz0szeanud0cvftkkzcj3zqxsl8x48y8dszql6k49r3s42tdv7.blossom.band/7b89459e5cc04782ce1d32602f774c0ca119396b7d7c5b8332965a6695689f97.jpg“ Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust Eric Bowman - Goodbye Summer, 2016

Cleverness always knows. Bewilderment is willing to not. The mind that has an explanation for everything has stopped receiving anything new. Cleverness protects itself by naming what it encounters, filing it, closing the file. It mistakes recognition for understanding. Bewilderment refuses to close the file. It stands in front of the mystery without reaching for a label, and in that unguarded state, something is actually allowed to enter. Rumi wasn’t rejecting intelligence. He was pointing at its ceiling. Cleverness can navigate the world, but it cannot be transformed by it, because transformation requires the very uncertainty that cleverness is built to eliminate. To be bewildered is to admit the map has run out, and admitting that is the only way a larger map ever gets drawn. This is why the deepest encounters in a life rarely announce themselves in language you already have. Love, loss, awe, the sudden collapse of an old belief, none of it arrives pre-explained. It arrives as disorientation first. Those who insist on understanding immediately often miss what the moment was actually offering. Wonder is not the absence of intelligence. It’s intelligence that has stopped defending itself.

GM

Street art #dogstr

GM

RIP Wendell Berry

Who knows this film?

The sun is setting over the first half of my life...

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