Sunday Dinner: Nostalgia II

Colonial Williamsburg 2016

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“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof,

thinking of home.”

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  William C. Faulkner

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Colonial Williamsburg, 2016

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“It is strange how we hold on

to the pieces of the past

while we wait for our futures.”

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  Ally Condie

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Colonial Williamsburg 2016

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“The Greek word for “return” is nostos.

Algos means “suffering.”

So nostalgia is the suffering caused

by an unappeased yearning to return.”

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Milan Kundera

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Colonial Williamsburg 2016

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“Memory believes

before knowing remembers.

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  William Faulkner

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Colonial Williamsburg December 2015

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“Remembrance of things past

is not necessarily the remembrance of things

as they were.”

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Marcel Prous

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Colonial Williamsburg 2015

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“There are a few moments in your life

when you are truly and completely happy,

and you remember to give thanks.

Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment,

you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.”

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David Benioff

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December 2016

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“For children, childhood is timeless.

It is always the present.

Everything is in the present tense.

Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them

and Christmas comes round in the end.

But they don’t feel it. Today is what they feel,

and when they say ‘When I grow up,’

there is always an edge of disbelief—

how could they ever be other than what they are?”

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Ian McEwan

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December 2016 Powhatan Creek

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“The ‘what should be’ never did exist,

but people keep trying to live up to it.

There is no ‘what should be,’

there is only what is.”

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Lenny Bruce

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Rose window, Bruton Parish, Williamsburg VA December 2017

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We each find ourselves in uncharted territory this December as we struggle to adapt to the changes swirling around us.  We are haunted by memories, sweet and sad; even as we look ahead with hope.  Let us focus on the eternal ‘Now,’ finding peace and happiness in this present moment.  One day we will look back with nostalgia at this unique time, as rich in opportunities as in limitations. 

As we approach Winter Solstice and a fresh new year, let us mine the sweetness of this moment, share the love always bubbling up in our hearts, and spread the light of understanding, one to another.

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Colonial Williamsburg, December 2016

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Woodland Gnome 2020

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December 2020

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Please visit my other site, Illuminations, for a daily photo of something beautiful and a positive thought.

 

Sunday Dinner: Ever Widening Circles

Monarda fistulosa

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“I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Daucus carota with Cyrtomium falcatum

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“I beg you, to have patience with everything

unresolved in your heart

and to try to love the questions themselves

as if they were locked rooms

or books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers,

which could not be given to you now,

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future,

you will gradually, without even noticing it,

live your way into the answer.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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“To love is good, too: love being difficult.

For one human being to love another:

that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,

the ultimate, the last test and proof,

the work for which all other work

is but preparation.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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“We need, in love, to practice only this:

letting each other go.

For holding on comes easily;

we do not need to learn it.”

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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Zantedeschia albomaculata

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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Heuchera ‘Midnight Rose’

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“Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now,

lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words

that sometimes do you good.

His life may also have much sadness and difficulty,

that remains far beyond yours.

Were it otherwise,

he would never have been able to find these words.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Clematis

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“It is spring again.

The earth is like a child

that knows poems by heart.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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