• April the One
  Coming in from Wolfgang’s Vault…Concerts on the computer.

   

  In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina
  Can’t you see the sunshine
  Can’t you just feel the moonshine
  Ain’t it just like a friend of mine
  To hit me from behind
  Yes I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

  James Taylor

• April Second
  

  A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

  – Antoine de Saint-Exup’ery

• April 3
  

  Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.

  ~ Danny Kaye

• 4th of April
  I Meant To Do My Work Today by Richard Le Gallienne

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand –
So what could I do but laugh and go?

From Judith Polakoff Photographs

• The Fifth Day, Fourth Month
  

  The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chainsaws. It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

  Edward Abbey ~ From YES! Magazine

• April 6th
  Beyond the Fields We Know: Thursday Poem -In Muir Woods

   

  Masters of stillness,
  masters of light,
  who, when cut by something
  falling, go nowhere and heal,
  teach me this nowhere,who, when falling themselves,
  simply wait to root
  in another direction,
  teach me this falling.Four hundred year old trees,
  who draw aliveness from the earth
  like smoke from the heart of God,
  we come, not knowing
  you will hush our little want
  to be big;we come, not knowing
  that all the work is so much
  busyness of mind; all
  the worry, so much
  busyness of heart.As the sun warms anything near,
  being warms everything still
  and the great still things
  that outlast usmake us crack
  like leaves of laurel
  releasing a fragrance
  that has always been.

  Mark Nepo, In Muir Woods

• April, 7
  

  in seasonal rain
  along a nameless river
  fear too has no name

  Buson (via The Haiga Pages).

April, 8

There are certain core beliefs, I guess. Well, let’s go with that. I think a lot about this relationship between cynicism and hope. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. But hope without critical thinking is naïveté. I try to live in this place between the two, to try to build a life there, because finding fault and feeling hopeless about improving our situation produces resignation of which cynicism is a symptom and against which it is the futile self-protection mechanism. But on the other hand, believing blindly that everything will work out just fine also produces a kind of resignation because we have no motive to apply ourselves toward making things better. And I think in order to survive, both as individuals and as a civilization, but especially in order to thrive, we need to bridge critical thinking with hope.

Maria Popova
Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age