Go softly in the world.
Place the smallness
Of what is known
Beside the greatness
Of what is not known.

From the Tao of Being


If you let go a little you have a little peace.
If you let go of a lot you have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely you have complete peace.

Ajahn Chah

My favorite passage of all time from Italo Calvino's
"If on a winter's night a traveler".

Lovers' reading of each other's bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear. It starts at any point, skips, repeats itself, goes backward, insists, ramifies in simultaneous and divergent messages, converges again, has moments of irritation, turns the page, finds its place, gets lost.

A direction can be recognized in it, a route to an end, since it tends towards climax, and with this end in view it arranges rhythmic phases, metrical scansions, recurrence of motives. But is the climax really the end? Or is the race toward the end opposed by another drive which works in the opposite direction, swimming against the moments, recovering time?