You can neither lose what is precious to you nor keep the box it came in.
From The Anticipation of Loss, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The woman in the yellow house put a box out on the curb this morning, flattened, with the tape still on it. Switch sat on it for a while, which is what he does with flat things. I remember when my mother died I kept her sewing tin for eleven years and opened it maybe twice, and I was certain the tin was doing some work. It was not. You can neither lose what is precious to you nor keep the box it came in, and I had that backwards for most of my forties, thinking the holding was the having. The tin went to a thrift store in Denton and I have not thought about it since, though I thought about her twice this week, once at the feeder and once for no reason at all. What I cannot work out is why I still flinch when somebody throws a thing away.
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
- A strawberry uneaten will not long remain a strawberry.
- A life with endless sunshine would be a life without starry nights.
- Everything is new, but few things are seen anew.
- Looking way ahead is not very farsighted.
- It is hard to be in two places at once and harder to be in one.
- Nothing you do matters if you’re not there when it happens.