Word Crumbs

crumbs for your journey

Enjoy following these word crumbs left behind by recent Hotel visitors--artists, writers, scientists, family members of note. [Note to Front Desk: Where are all the musicians? Consider adding live entertainment to our accoutrements. ]

Maya Angelou  “At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself. The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled.”

Emily Carr  “The spirit of the thing calls to your soul. First it hails it in passing and your soul pauses and shouts back, ‘Coming.‘ But the soul dwells in your innermost being and it has a lot of courts and rooms and things to pass through and round all this impedimenta before she can get out in the open and catch up and sometimes she can’t go on at all but is all snarled up in obstructions…But, oh, if you could only go far enough to see the beauty of the whole complete thought that has called out to you. ”

Lewis Carroll / Alice in Wonderland  “But I don’t want to go among mad people,”  Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,”  said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.  “You must be,”  said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”                   

Emily Dickinson

We introduce ourselves
To Planets and to Flowers
But with ourselves
Have etiquettes
Embarrassments
And awes  [poem #1214, 1872]

Rumer Godden “Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”  A House with Four Rooms

Frida Kahlo “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” 

Sally Mann “If it doesn’t have ambiguity, don’t bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography—the mendacity of photography—it’s got to have some kind of peculiarity in it or it’s not interesting to me.” 

Agnes Martin “We all have the same inner life. The difference lies in the recognition. The artist has to recognize what it is.” 

My Friend Mary’s Aunt Alice  “Don’t be a guest in your own life. ” 

Adrienne Rich “The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.” 

Oscar Wilde  “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” 

 Virginia Woolf / Mrs. Dalloway “It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.” 

Carl Sagan  “Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.”

Yoko Ono “I do feel that I am starting a new life at 80, a second life that will have so many things I didn’t have in the first life. I don’t know how long I am going to live, but my prediction is that we will have heaven on Earth in 2050. When I tell people this, they say, ‘Oh, but you won’t be there,’ and I say, ‘Well, who knows?’ ” (Japan Times interview) 2013

Yoko Ono  “If you have too many quotes from other people in your head, you can’t create. You have to keep your head empty. That’s why I am constantly enjoying the sky, the park, the walk. Anything in life is beautiful.”

Each artist, and the source of their quote, will be discussed in more detail in the future. In the meantime visit Brainpickings, the genius site of Maria Popova, for real  inspiration and delight.   

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