Ash

“The moisture is predatory in this part of the world, and no element, be it stone or wood or tin or steel, lasts very long without losing some part of its composition to the nag of precipitation.”
― Timothy Egan, The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest

“It took a while to figure out that my problem wasn’t a lack of a ten-point plan. Rather, it was my general inability to boil issues down to their essence, to tell a story that helped explain an increasingly uncertain world to the American people and make them feel that I, as president, could help them navigate it.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“We too had branched off from the people who had come before us, a family that made the family that made us, and we were shining in the darkness and casting our light all around us.”
― David Gianadda, Everything You Say Is Goodbye

“I spent most of eight years in that room, grimly listening to intelligence reports, hosting heads of state, cajoling members of Congress, jousting with allies and adversaries, and posing for pictures with thousands of visitors. With staffers I laughed, cursed, and more than once fought back tears. I grew comfortable enough to put my feet up or sit on the desk, roll around on the floor with a child, or steal a nap on the couch. Sometimes I’d fantasize about walking out the east door and down the driveway, past the guardhouse and wrought-iron gates, to lose myself in crowded streets and reenter the life I’d once known. But I would never fully rid myself of the sense of reverence I felt whenever I walked into the Oval Office, the feeling that I had entered not an office but a sanctum of democracy. Day after day, its light comforted and fortified me, reminding me of the privilege of my burdens and my duties.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land