But truly, 2014 is already passing by at an alarming rate. How am I going to finish anything?! Let alone take photos and blog.
Even as I write this, I feel rather guilty--I have a million other things that should take precedence. I feel embarrassed--I don't really have any photos to share. Distracted, solitary, anxious. I do not even have words to say.
Well, here are two excerpts from a book I finished recently (how I still manage to make time for novels...?) titled "The Night Circus." The first quotes Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
And from the penultimate chapter of Erin Morgenstern's "The Night Circus,"
"Stories, tales, bardic chronicles," Widget says. "What you care to call them. The things we were discussing earlier that are more complicated than they used to be. I take pieces of the past that I see and combine them into narratives. It's not that important, and this isn't why I"m here--"
"It is important," the man in the grey suit interrupts. "Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battle are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that."