Will Harrison
Will Harrison
morning coffee reading
This infantile sense of order tended to infect my life at large. Up at 5:30 a.m., coffee, oatmeal, perhaps sausage (homemade), and fresh eggs giving one of the yolks to Lola. Listening to NPR and grieving more recently over the absence of Bob Edwards who was the sound of morning as surely as birds. Reading a paragraph or two of Emerson or Loren Eiseley to raise the level of my thinking. Going out to feed the cattle if it was during our six months of bad weather.
self understanding losing
I can maintain my sense of the sacredness of existence only by understanding my own limitations and losing my self-importance.
nurse world woods
The world that used to nurse us now keeps shouting inane instructions. That's why I ran to the woods.
wonder true-north
Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North
marriage cooking together
Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot.
jumping holes bloody
I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump.
fire house forget
We set this house on fire forgetting that we live within.
dad reading too-much
Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.
boredom people pace
I have closely noted that people who watch a great deal of TV never again seem able to adjust to the actual pace of life. The speed of the passing images becomes the speed the aspire to and they seem to develop an impatience and boredom with anything else.
fun war firsts
The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.
thinking essentials mystery
We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small.
moving kids vacation
Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.
wine giving advice
The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.
slumps
Strangely, when I totally emerged from this slump I couldn't comprehend how I had almost drowned it it.