Living in a black-and-white world drains life not only of its color, but its wisdom.
From Leaving No Stone Unthrown, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Fog came up the field this morning and took the color out of everything, the red barn, the sumac, all of it gray on gray, and for an hour I could not tell the hawk's shadow from the fence post's. I used to think that was clarity. For years I kept my judgments that way, a thing was good for me or bad for me, a man was a friend or he was a crow, and I was proud of how quickly I could sort. Living in a black-and-white world drains life not only of its color, but its wisdom. What I lost in the fog was not beauty, I could do without beauty for an hour; what I lost was the ability to tell what anything was. Switch waited it out on the low branch and said nothing, which is unlike him, and by noon the sumac came back red and I still could not say whether I had been seeing less or just seeing slower.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
