CALIFORNIA

Now that my family has moved there, and I’m left behind to sell the house, I feel like I’m standing, facing West, in the direction of California.

I found a book on the shelf, "Paintings of California" which has, on the page facing each painting, some suitable words from the likes of John Muir. I find these short quotes to be what fills my loneliness for the time being.

This one is from Walt Whitman. "Song of the Redwood Tree" -- 1873.

"Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,
That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but the future."