I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce. Gretel Ehrlich More Quotes by Gretel Ehrlich More Quotes From Gretel Ehrlich The fog lifted in the evening and a blue-black band at the horizon marked the end of the sea and the beginning of thought. Where does a beginning begin when nothing has gone on before? Gretel Ehrlich fogoceanblue True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere. Gretel Ehrlich solacefindings As fog moved to the mainland I heard a flock of birds fly over. They sounded like a dress rustling, a dress being unfastened and dropping to the floor. Fog came unpinned like hair. On the beach cliffs, great colonies of datura - jimson weed - with their white trumpet flowers, looked like brass bands. Gretel Ehrlich weedflowerbeach To long for love, to have experienced passion's deep pleasure, even once, is to understand the mercilessness of having a human body whose memory rides desire's back unanchored from season to season. Gretel Ehrlich passionmemorieslong Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons. Gretel Ehrlich autumnwaterlong It's no wonder human beings are so narcissistic. The way our ears are constructed, we can hear only what is right next to us or else the internal monologue inside. Gretel Ehrlich narcissisticearsway Animals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals. Gretel Ehrlich bodyanimalgiving June marked the end of spring on California's central coast and the beginning of five months of dormancy that often erupted in fire. Mustard's yellow robes had long since turned red, then brown. Fog and sun mixed to create haze. The land had rusted. The mountains, once blue-hued with young oaks and blooming ceanosis, were tan and gray. I walked across the fallen blossoms of five yucca plants: only the bare poles of their stems remained to mark where their lights had shone the way. Gretel Ehrlich californianaturespring I designed furniture that pulled apart, folded, and broke down into neat stacks. Since arriving in California, I had moved four times and it looked as if I would move again. Was it the land running under my feet or my feet running over the land? Gretel Ehrlich landrunningmoving Am I like the optimist who, while falling ten stories from a building, says at each story, I'm all right so far? Gretel Ehrlich buildingstoriesfall Islands are reminders of arrivals and departures. Gretel Ehrlich remindersdepartureislands What Flaubert refers to as the “mélancholies du voyage” is like the sadness I feel as one season departs and another arrives. Gretel Ehrlich voyagessadnessfeels Perhaps despair is the only human sin. Gretel Ehrlich despairsinhumans History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mélange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves. Gretel Ehrlich dreamwritingthinking A tree is an aerial garden, a botanical migration from the sea, from those earliest plants, the seaweeds; it is a purchase on crumbled rock, on ground. The human, standing, is only a different upsweep and articulation of cells. How treelike we are, how human the tree. Gretel Ehrlich rocksgardencells There is nothing in nature that can't be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration. Gretel Ehrlich mortalitynaturetaken Turbulence, like many forms of trouble, cannot always be seen. We bounce so hard my arms sail helplessly above my head. In evolution, wing bones became arms and hands; perhaps I'm de-evolving. Gretel Ehrlich armswingshands To know something, then, we must be scrubbed raw, the fasting heart exposed. Gretel Ehrlich exposedfastingheart Thirty years ago, my sister, Gale (so named because a gale hit Boston Harbor the night she was born), some friends and I stole a boat in the middle of the night and sailed it out of the Santa Barbara harbor. Suddenly we were becalmed and the current began pushing us toward the breakwall. With no running lights and no power, we were dead in the water. Out of that darkness a steel hull appeared: it was the local Coast Guard cutter. My father, stern-faced and displeased, stood in the bow. Gretel Ehrlich runningnightfather To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. Gretel Ehrlich rainriverswater
