Cathleen

“A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.”
― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“I say, if your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.”
― Bill Watterson

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”
― G. K. Chesterton