Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty water sliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the beauty and complexity of nature as reflected in sunlight on water.
Cormac McCarthy's quote captures a moment of serene observation, where the interplay of sunlight and water creates a vivid tapestry of light and detail. It evokes a sense of wonder at the intricate and often unnoticed beauty present in the natural world, encouraging mindfulness and appreciation of our surroundings.
In practice
Use this quote to inspire a nature photography project.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
Let the rain kiss you._x000D_ _x000D_ Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops._x000D_ _x000D_ Let the rain sing you a lullaby._x000D_ _x000D_ The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk._x000D_ _x000D_ The rain makes running pools in the gutter._x000D_ _x000D_ The rain plays a little sellp-song on our roof at night-_x000D_ _x000D_ And I love the rain.
...but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing.
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,_x000D_ Of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains._x000D_ I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,_x000D_ Her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land for me!
Running gives me a clearer perspective on the world, and it makes me feel special. I've never been a traditional tourist. I've always seen the world by running, and that has allowed me to view things in a different way. Places look different in the early-morning hours, when the streets are deserted.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
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