I began to know my story then. Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

There are lots of bad things that can happen to a food economy that's both extensive and centralized. There's no substitute for petroleum. To have a growth economy based on a declining fuel supply is bound to be stressful.

Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.

THE WILD ROSE” – BY WENDELL BERRY Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart. Suddenly you flare again in my sight A wild rose at the edge of the thicket where yesterday there was only shade And I am blessed and choose again, That which I chose before.

I like the way that the history of the tree shapes the tree. There's no distinction between the tree and its history. You can lose yourself in that thought.

Waking up from a dream of violence is much the same as waking up from a dream of love. You must go on living your life.