Bloomstrandilotus - Kviknar Von

Anne Sexton, from a letter featured in Anne Sexton; A Self-Portrait In Letters

“You should know, if you never open up you’re never going to heal.”

— Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter featured in The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis

– Naomi Shihab Nye || from "Kindness"

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

— Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Ashley M. Jones, "Lullaby For The Grieving", You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

Instead of asking why they left, now I ask, what beauty will i create in the space they no longer occupy?

Rudy Francisco