In heavy rain, I was blessed with a performance: a subsong in the honeysuckle.
The photos were taken the day when Bobbit was approaching very close to me.
Here's something from another book I heartily recommend, Carl Safina's Alfie and Me, which seems to sum up my philosophy of life. It's right at the end:
Luck plays a role in life. It can play a roll of the dice in death. We think that death is a mystery. But the mystery is life. And look at us: out of the vast non-living universe, for some brief spark and against all odds, we live. That succession of sparks has been sufficient to let life persist, to proliferate, to sense, to wonder, to love. The most important question is not what will happen after death but what will happen after birth. What—in the poet Mary Oliver’s challenging query—will we do with our one wild and precious life? Perhaps the answer can be easy: to care fiercely without apology. If there is a final exam at the end of life and its sole question is “Did you care?,” I hope I might at least pass the course. The meaning of life is not given. Relationships are the meaning we make. The Nobelist physicist Frank Wilczek tells us, “Having tasted beauty at the heart of the world, we hunger for more. In this quest there is, I think, no more promising guide than beauty itself.” If we attain only what we need to survive, survival has no purpose. Beauty makes life worth the effort it takes. Beauty can save us. So we must be those who save beauty. What is the best we can make of our existence? Connection. That is my answer.
It's my answer too.
On a slightly less cheery note, I also agree with this, from Jeff VanderMeer's Hummingbird Salamander:
“Those of us who are different know the world better, know it how it truly is. We can’t edit out parts of it. The horror and the beauty most ignore. When your senses are acute, you can’t escape. And you see the disconnect we have from … everything.”
Why it hurts so much and is so goddam wonderful.
Wonderful video with the beauty of Son of Bob. (And nice to see blackbird too). I had been wondering what you thought of Alfie and Me! I want to get it (prob. as n e-book). I have saved this post as a pdf and it has gone into a folder of Important Things. Caring, Connection. Beauty. Your posts are important to me dear Crone x