Gretel Ehrlich
Gretel Ehrlich
Gretel Ehrlich is an American travel writer, poet, and essayist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEssayist
Date of Birth21 January 1946
CitySanta Barbara, CA
CountryUnited States of America
islands departure reminders
Islands are reminders of arrivals and departures.
despair sin humans
Perhaps despair is the only human sin.
ocean fog blue
The fog lifted in the evening and a blue-black band at the horizon marked the end of the sea and the beginning of thought. Where does a beginning begin when nothing has gone on before?
running moving land
I designed furniture that pulled apart, folded, and broke down into neat stacks. Since arriving in California, I had moved four times and it looked as if I would move again. Was it the land running under my feet or my feet running over the land?
war hate play
I understood why war zones are called 'theaters' because they frame a kind of play acting or, worse, deceit, that can stain a human life forever: the deceit of hate on hearsay - hating an enemy one doesn't know ...
autumn water long
Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.
animal giving body
Animals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals.
fall stories building
Am I like the optimist who, while falling ten stories from a building, says at each story, I'm all right so far?
nature spring june
June marked the end of spring on California's central coast and the beginning of five months of dormancy that often erupted in fire. Mustard's yellow robes had long since turned red, then brown. Fog and sun mixed to create haze. The land had rusted. The mountains, once blue-hued with young oaks and blooming ceanosis, were tan and gray. I walked across the fallen blossoms of five yucca plants: only the bare poles of their stems remained to mark where their lights had shone the way.
narcissistic ears way
It's no wonder human beings are so narcissistic. The way our ears are constructed, we can hear only what is right next to us or else the internal monologue inside.
dust wind wyoming
If anything is endemic to Wyoming it is wind. This big room of space is swept out daily, leaving a bone yard of fossils, agates, and carcasses in every stage of decay. Though it was water that initially shaped the state, wind is the meticulous gardener, raising dust and pruning the sage.
memories ocean fog
Fog rolled in like a form of sorrow. To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma. ... The sea was a memory bank into which everything fell and was lost. I dove in but came out empty-handed.
mean eye thinking
I like to think of the landscape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet. To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its mulitplicity and endless variety, come in.
thinking landscape rooms
I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.