Time is as Sand
Flesh is as glass
Sand quick is Run
Life soon doth pass.
—Author Unknown—
source: wellcomecollection.org
I like people who don’t take life too seriously but who do take very seriously the gratitude for being alive.
Once, long ago, I heard an old man say,
“Two pounds of sorrow is the price you pay
For every pound of bliss.”
But I was young and such a reckoning
Seemed far too steep; now, in a later spring,
I’d gladly offer far, far more than this.
—Alice Mackenzie Swaim, “Now, in a Later Spring,” Crickets Are Crying Autumn, 1960
when the things you want
to stay the same forever
do nothing but change —
and the things you’re ready
to be done with forever
keep relentlessly hanging on.
“He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. Dad never was a money-maker, and, as nearly as I can make out, he never wanted to be. He worked mighty hard when he worked, but his real job was living.”
—Clarence Budington Kelland, 1927
“My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’”
—Harmon Killebrew, 1984
“What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t
—Bertolt Brecht, Jungle of Cities, 1923, translated by
“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to
—J. M. Barrie, The Little Minister, 1891
Saw this trash bin today. Call me crazy but not only does it look kinda pretty, it also seems to suggest many metaphors for the past fifteen years.
Nature grows beautiful new life over old scars.
Life is a repeated shattering and gluing back together of the heart.
I know a guy.
Angry. Festering
in disappointment
of the world
and of himself.
A little depressed.
Sick of doing
the same. freaking.
thing. every day.
Wondering where
his lost youth went.
Hungering to replace
the comfort and
all the good things
in his life that
have gone away.
But resolutely
continuing on
doing his duty.
Living with the pain.
Loving while he can.
Taking any little
laugh he can find.
Then doing it all
over again. Perhaps
you know him too.
Perhaps we all do
— inside.
Nothing is really any fun,
because you’ve always got to pay for everything.
—D. H. Lawrence, Pansies, 1929
At a certain point, some of us just sit down and watch the rest of our lives