When there are too many, and not enough, words

Excerpts from Beth Kirby's, Local Milk. Images are my own, ©r.k.rivera photography.

We have to live in time, accepting that our joy will fade the same as our pain, and both will come around again just the same. Summer fades to fall... All the days where your heart isn’t breaking and you aren’t falling in love. The leaves aren’t changing, no snow has fallen, nor are garlic scapes sprouting up... That’s when you really need to see the art in your daily life, when you need to fall in love with the sacred ritual that is washing your hair, the miracle that is butter, flour, water, and heat.

When I long for electricity & season change, that’s when I have to remember that the world is not a long line. It’s not some concrete, corridor. It’s a living, breathing disc, a circle. A wise serpent. And for every joy that fades another lies in front of me. But more than learning to wait for the great joys, the seas of oxytocin that crash over you and just as quickly ebb, you can learn to find ecstatic experience in the everyday... The everyday magic is the only way to be happy. If you live to find the highs and to avoid the lows, you’ll always grasp & be forever hungry.

We all have a story. Some wear their trials like a sad crown of thorns and use their pain as an excuse. Others use their stories to show just how resilient, buoyant, and adaptable the human spirit can be.

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” | Ernest Hemmingway |