We could not have left the sea if we had not carried the sea in our veins.
From A World Worth Saving, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A heron stood in the shallows below the dam all morning, not fishing, just standing, and I sat in the sycamore and watched until my feet went stiff. For years I thought leaving was a clean break, that the animals who crawled up out of the water had put the water behind them the way I put a branch behind me. Then Switch split an acorn on the rock and the meat of it was wet, and I thought about how every egg I have ever sat near was a small pond with a shell around it. We could not have left the sea if we had not carried the sea in our veins. The heron lifted finally and went off east, dry as paper, dragging a whole ocean inside him and not spilling a drop. I do not know whether that counts as having left.
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.
Have it on something
More like it
- Changing yourself is easier than changing the world and has the same effect.
- We have enough oars, if we can find enough rowers.
- Trees never worry about pecking birds or burrowing insects but shake a little when a bulldozer comes near.
- To all the questions pondered looking at the moon, one must add, "What does the moon see looking back?"
- What fool named the wonders of the world when every meadow and wood is filled with magic?
- A mountain is an old giant happy to share its perspective with anyone who will rest a while on its shoulder.