Jane Kenyon

I feel as though everyone should have some Jane Kenyon in their lives.

"Happiness" has always been one of my favorites and currently, among the chilling air and all the newness in my life growing ever so slightly more familiar, with the smell of good coffee and sunlight seeping through the window I am feeling quite content and even (dare I say it?) happy. I am often wary of this feeling for it always ebbs and flows in a crazy unreliable fashion, however I'm beginning to realize (as long as you never go too deep into the depths of despair) that this makes the moments of sheer happiness all the better (or at least I feel that way as I revel in this time of happiness.)

The other quote is from "Dutch Interiors." I just love it. That's all.

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. "Now tell me that the Holy Ghost does not reside in the play of light on cutlery!"