I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality”. ~ Frida Kahlo

What is it that we want? To fully experience our aliveness. To feel in our bodies a streaming, like the rush of a river over stones. To be awake, alert, and responsive in our limbs and sensitive in our fingertips to the textures we touch; to be infused with our own whispering current of wind; to feel as if our outer and inner reality is congruent and that our efforts are rewarded by a sense of satisfaction. We carve out our own identity and possess our own purpose, and yet we also yearn to shed the isolation we feel within the envelope of our skin. We desire union. We aspire to have our private lives nestle within the valley of a public world that we can affirm. We long to feel connected with each other. Like the woods that harbor wild creatures, creekbeds, and fertile pastures that rest upon a mound of earth that spreads into a vast range of mountains and plains-we want to feel a part of a community that spills into and becomes part of a larger universe. We want to be able to embrace and be embraced. We want to live the life of our bodies and want our bodies to permit us to fully live our lives. ~ Harriet Beinfeld, Between Heaven and Earth - A guide to Chinese Medicine

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. ~ Herman Hesse

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical storm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us. ~ Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See