April 21st, 2015 Watching the sunrise leaves us with a greater impression of what a day actually is. When it starts up from the horizon, it does not have its sights set on how high it will go, nor what it must do, but only in giving off light, in clarifying what appears in front of it. Our day already begins as the phantom of something we want to be, or have to be; before our eyes have even focused on the sun, we already think about when we can close them again; and so for many of us it never really rises, or hardly ever sets. Perhaps the only thing decent in the world is to watch the sunlight brighten and fade, and leave all of our other actions to disappear beyond the shadow of doubt. Douglas Thornton
April 16th, 2015 Hiking yesterday along the coast; the water clear blue, turquoise in the shallows. It was warm, but the air felt of the frozen north. A man came up to us and talked of the particular formations of sandstone, of a deep orange or yellow and porous, some able to be climbed into as a shelter, others with the fossilized remains of ancient marine life. All along the trail are green prairies that fall deeply into the ocean and these, seen at a distance, seem to reflect the turquoise of the coves, contrasting with the dark limestone at the shore's edge, enough to think upon profound subjects and lose them in their eternity. The maritime pines were letting out their pollen with each slight gust of wind and on the way back we found a new growth of mint, taken for an evening tea. Douglas Thornton