Leaf Pattern Quotes

Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (NIV).

Whether through the patterns left in snow, or geese honking in the dark, or through the brilliant wet leaf that hits your face the moment you are questioning your worth, the quiet teachers are everywhere, pointing us to the unlived portion of our lives. When we think we are in charge, the lessons dissolve as accidents or coincidence. But when we’re humble enough to welcome the connections, the glass that breaks across the room is offering us direction, giving us a clue to the story we are in.

I only thought Of lying quiet there where I was thrown Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her To prick me to a pattern with her pin, Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf, And dry out from my drowned anatomy The last sea-salt left in me.

He read the veinings of a leaf, the pattern on a mushroom cap, and divined mysteries, relations, futures, possibilities: the magic of symbols, the foreshadowing of numbers and writing, the reduction of infinitudes and multiplicities to simplicity, to system, to concept. For all these ways of comprehending the world through the mind no doubt lay within him, nameless, unnamed, but not inconceivable, not beyond the bounds of presentiment, still in the germ, but essential to his nature, part of him, growing organically within him. And if we were to go still further back beyond this Rainmaker and his time which to us seems so early and primitive, if we were to go several thousand years further back into the past, wherever we found man we would still find - this is our firm belief - the mind of man, that mind which has no beginning and always has contained everything that it later produces.

Here's the plain truth, at least as it has been shown to me: We are never far from wonders. I remember when my son was about two, we were walking in the woods one November morning. We were along a ridge, looking down at a forest in the valley below, where a cold haze seemed to hug the forest floor. I kept trying to get my oblivious two-year-old to appreciate the landscape. At one point, I picked him up and pointed out toward the horizon and said, "Look at that, Henry, just look at it!" And he said, "Weaf!" I said, "What?" And again he said, "Weaf," and then reached out and grabbed a single brown oak leaf from the little tree next to us. I wanted to explain to him that you can see a brown oak leaf anywhere in the eastern United States in November, that nothing in the forest was less interesting. But after watching him look at it, I began to look as well, and I soon realized it wasn't just a brown leaf. Its veins spidered out red and orange and yellow in a pattern too complex for my brain to synthesize, and the more I looked at that leaf with Henry, the more I was compelled into an aesthetic contemplation I neither understood nor desired, face-to-face with something commensurate to my capacity for wonder. Marveling at the perfection of that leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires.

The days diminished. Light lasted just six hours, and it was a feeble light. Mabel organized her hours into patterns - wash, mend, cook, wash, mend, cook - and tried not to imagine floating beneath the ice like a yellow leaf.

Each leaf on the maples and lindens was sharply outlined, as if chiselled from black stone. Taken as a whole, however, the great mass of trees seemed like a flat black pattern against the bright sky. The world’s beauty had surpassed itself. It was one of those moments when everyone stops to gaze in wonder—not only the idler with time on his hands but also the shift worker on his way home and the traveller half-dead on his feet. At times like this we cease to have distinct perceptions of light, space, silence, rustlings, warmth, sweet smells, the swaying of long grass or leaves—all the millions of ingredients that make up the world’s beauty. What we perceive then is true beauty, and it tells us only one thing: that life is a blessing.

The nonhuman world has patterns , too. Look at veins of a leaf, your hand, a tree, gold through rock, a river headed to sea, lightning. And again, again not just in the visible but also in the invisible. In the airflow, particles, sound waves, ley lines, too, veining across this poor, battered home of ours. Again, again, again. Everything predicts everything else. Everything affects everything else.

Where the piano is, there is one's treasure, as far as I am concerned....nothing, surely, is more delightful than sitting down at the piano on a summer day, and playing Chopin or Debussy while the natural sunlight drifts over one's shoulders through the vines outside, creating a filigree of shadow in the printed page...a shifting pattern of ghostly leaf and blossom that dances to the mood of the music.

a perfect red leaf from the ground, examining the intricate pattern of vessels mapping its thin surface. So beautiful, yet only created to last such a short time before its role on this planet was over, and it would decay into mulch. An unremarkable existence, and yet to look at it—how remarkable.

I think of two landscapes- one outside the self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see-not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology… If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush… the smell of the creosote bush….all elements of the land, and what I mean by “the landscape.” The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape. Relationships in the exterior landscape include those that are named and discernible, such as the nitrogen cycle, or a vertical sequence of Ordovician limestone, and others that are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter light falling on a particular kind of granite, or the effect of humidity on the frequency of a blackpoll warbler’s burst of song….the shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes. Among the Navajo, the land is thought to exhibit sacred order…each individual undertakes to order his interior landscape according to the exterior landscape. To succeed in this means to achieve a balanced state of mental health…Among the various sung ceremonies of this people-Enemyway, Coyoteway, Uglyway- there is one called Beautyway. It is, in part, a spiritual invocation of the order of the exterior universe, that irreducible, holy complexity that manifests itself as all things changing through time (a Navajo definition of beauty).

Classic Ballet, Keep away, keep building your creaky fairy castles, keep cloning clones and meaningless manners, hang on to your beanstalk ballerinas and their midget male shadows, run yourself out of business with your tons of froufrou and costly clattery toe shoes that ruin all chances for illusions of lightness, keep on crowding the minds of blind balletomanes who prefer dainty poses to the eloquent strength of momentum, who have forgotten or never known the manings of gesture, who would nod their noses to barefoot embargos ("so grab me" spelt backwards). Continue to repolish your stiff technique and to ignore a public that hungers for something other than a bag of tricks and the empty-headedness of surface patterns. Just keep it up, keep imitating yourself, and, , go grow your own dance makers. Come on, don't keep trying to filter modern ones through your so-safe extablishment. We're to be seen undiluted, undistorted, not absorbed by your hollow world like blood into a sponge. Yours truly, A Different Leaf on Our Family Tree

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind

I liked the way patterns repeated themselves in this universe, the way a solar system could resemble an atom, or a mountain range seen from outer space could look just like a fern leaf covered with frost. I liked the thought that three billion bugs fly over my head in a single month in summer or that an inch of soil might contain millions of creatures from thousands of different species. These things made me feel like I could stand in one place my whole life and never run out of new things to discover. I liked that so many things were out there, waiting to be known.

The cool air Edie speaks of? It drifts down off the mountain, unraveling itself through trees, dipping its fingers in the streams. It comes in through the back door and through the windows cast open for it. The fat possums shiver and return to their meals. It lifts up the months on the calendar and leafs through the newspaper pattern in a pile on the table. It fills up the yellow kitchen and overflows into the hallway and spills into the rooms. Rose closes her eyes again and smiles.

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted. In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it. ("The Graveyard Reader")

That is the fantastic intolerable paradox of my life, that I have gone questing for what I possessed initially -- a belief to invest my days with dignity and meaning, a pattern of behavior through which man might most articulately express his devotion to his fellows.

If there is a "problem of evil" there is also a "problem of good." Wherever we look we see not only confusion but beauty. In snowflake, leaf or insect, we discover structured patterns of a delicacy and balance that nothing manufactured by human skill can equal. We are not to sentimentalize these things, but we cannot ignore them.

An orange carpet of leaves covered the footpaths and a crisp, low light shone through the tangle of tree boughs above her head. She picked up a perfect red leaf from the ground, examining the intricate pattern of vessels mapping its thin surface. So beautiful, yet only created to last such a short time before its role on this planet was over, and it would decay into mulch.

His mother had always been a headstrong woman, and with her grayish-white mane and unsmiling face, she appeared as regal and intimidating as she had ever been. Still, seeing her through other people’s eyes, Hanfeng realized that all that made her who she was—the decades of solitude in her widowhood, her coldness to the prying eyes of people who tried to mask their nosiness with friendliness, and her faith in the notion of living one’s own life without having to go out of one’s way for other people—could be deemed pointless and laughable. Perhaps the same could be said of any living creature: a caterpillar chewing on a leaf, unaware of the beak of an approaching bird; an egret mesmerized by its reflection in a pond, as if it were the master of the universe; or Hanfeng’s own folly of repeating the same pattern of hope and heartbreak, hoping despite heartbreak.

We turned into the rose garden where the pruned bushes appeared as piles of dead twigs, but the elaborate borders of box that surrounded them in sinuous Elizabethan patterns twisted in and out of the moonlight, showing here silver, there black. A dozen times I would have lingered—a single ivy leaf turned at an angle to catch the moonlight perfectly; a sudden view of the great oak tree, etched with inhuman clarity against the pale sky—but I could not stop.

The Garden by Moonlight" A black cat among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still, It is dazed with moonlight, Contented with perfume, Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. Firefly lights open and vanish High as the tip buds of the golden glow Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush. Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, Only the cat, padding between the roses, Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. Then you come, And you are quiet like the garden, And white like the alyssum flowers, And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? They knew my mother, But who belonging to me will they know When I am gone.

She was, after all, one with the others covered over when the house sank, those whose names concerned the old Joel, whose names now in gnarled October freckling leaves spelled on the wind. Still Idabel was back, a ghost, perhaps, but here, and in the room: Idabel the hoodlum out to stone a one-armed barber, and Idabel with roses, Idabel with sword, Idabel who said she sometimes cried: all of autumn was the sycamore leaf and its red the red of her hair and its stem the rusty color of her rough voice and its jagged shape the pattern, the souvenir of her face.

A Different Holding Pattern If I am to hold the world in my heart, then let me hold it the way leaves hold sunshine, trapping the energy not for the sake of holding it, but to transform it into nourishment. Though the process isn't simple, it's common. All around the globe, in every season, leaves hold and synthesize whatever the day gives them. On a day when the energy of the world seems to much to hold let me bid my heart turn like a leaf to the sun and make sugar. The way Rilke turned grief into sonnets. The way Sibelius turned war into song. by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty. Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, 40 Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.   II   Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree. The trilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars And reconciles forgotten wars. The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before 60 But reconciled among the stars.   At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor

Absence " Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song have patterned your name. Then the green bowl of the garden filling with light is your gaze. Then the lawn lengthening and warming itself is your skin. Then a cloud disclosing itself overhead is your opening hand. Then the first seven bells from the church pine on the air. Then the sun's soft bite on my face is your mouth. Then a bee in a rose is your fingertip touching me here. Then the trees bending and meshing their leaves are what we would do. Then my steps to the river are text to a prayer printing the ground. Then the river searching its bank for your shape is desire. Then a fish nuzzling for the water's throat has a lover's ease. Then a shawl of sunlight dropped in the grass is a garment discarded. Then a sudden scatter of summer rain is your tongue. Then a butterfly paused on a trembling leaf is your breath. Then the gauzy mist relaxed on the ground is your pose. Then the fruit from the cherry tree falling on grass is your kiss, your kiss. Then the day's hours are theatres of air where I watch you entranced. Then the sun's light going down from the sky is the length of your back. Then the evening bells over the rooftops are lovers' vows. Then the river staring up, lovesick for the moon, is my long night. Then the stars between us are love urging its light.

When the dung beetle moves,” Hosteen Nashibitti had told him, “know that something has moved it. And know that its movement affects the flight of the sparrow, and that the raven deflects the eagle from the sky, and that the eagle’s stiff wing bends the will of the Wind People, and know that all of this affects you and me, and the flea on the prairie dog and the leaf on the cottonwood.” That had always been the point of the lesson. Interdependency of nature. Every cause has its effect. Every action its reaction. A reason for everything. In all things a pattern, and in this pattern, the beauty of harmony. Thus one learned to live with evil, by understanding it, by reading its cause. And thus one learned, gradually and methodically, if one was lucky, to always “go in beauty,” to always look for the pattern, and to find it.

In ten minutes Peg had returned with a bundle of stuff. She washed her mistress's rat-tails at the stand, and then tucked her back into freshly laundered sheets. Enticing pattern books and journals lay across the coverlet. To Peg's satisfaction, her mistress began to leaf through The Lady's Magazine. "Your hair has a natural wave." Peg snipped at the ends with the scissors from her chatelaine, curling them into charming spirals. "Would you care for this style?" She held up an illustration of the "Grecian Manner", and deftly wound a bandeau of blue ribbon around her mistress's crown and temple. When Mrs. Croxon lifted the mirror, her face softened. She turned her head from left to right, admiring her reflection. "Now see that ribbon. That is the color you must have for your new gowns. Forget-me-not, and that pistachio color, they are all fashion. Forget those paces and daffodils.

I’m not sure I see your point.” “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.” “Sorry but I’m not really appreciating your point here.” “You don’t need a point. The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own. Because—” up went the batwing eyebrow—“well, if you didn’t take picture from museum, and Sascha didn’t steal it back, and I didn’t think of claiming reward—well, wouldn’t all those dozens of other paintings remain missing too? Forever maybe? Wrapped in brown paper? Still shut in that apartment? No one to look at them? Lonely and lost to the world? Maybe the one had to be lost for the others to be found?” “I think this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’ ” “Yes—but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?

A long story had been carved down the street, filled with figures engaged in combat. Eight people, four men and four women, gathered around a glowing crystal that threw off rays of light. Another eight figures, the same figures, followed, but each one was holding a symbol: a skull, a coin, a sword, cloth, an orb, a wheel, a stream, a leaf, and a star. I stepped farther down the street and traced out more patterns: the eight figures fighting monsters with the heads of bulls or hands like talons, creatures with serpent tails instead of legs and tentacles instead of arms. Then another scene, where just one of the eight, the one with the star symbol, left the battle escorted by a ninth person. Another ring of eight people followed, each one carrying a crystal, this time with the star-symbol man at their center. The ninth man was there too, only he held a sword. The next image showed the ninth man plunging that sword through the man with the star symbol.

At all times and in all places, in season and out of season, time is now and England, place is now and England; past and present inter-penetrate. The best days an angler spends upon his river – the river which is Heraclitus’ river, which is never the same as the angler is never the same, yet is the same always – are those he recollects in tranquillity, as wintry weather lashes the land without, and he, snug and warm, ties new patterns of dry-fly, and remembers the leaf-dapple upon clear water and the play of light and the eternal dance of ranunculus in the chalk-stream. A cricket match between two riotously inexpert village Second XIs is no less an instance of timeless, of time caught in ritual within an emerald Arcadia, than is a Test at Lord’s, and we who love the greatest of games know that we do indeed catch a fleeting glimpse of a spectral twelfth man on every pitch, for in each re-enactment of the mystery there is the cumulation of all that has gone before and shall come after. Et ego in Arcadia.

As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.” “Sorry but I’m not really appreciating your point here.” “You don’t need a point. The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own

Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.

— ’tis flatten and fold, isn’t it, and flatten again, among the thicknesses of Hide, till presently you’ve these very thin Sheets of Gold-Leaf.” “Lamination,” Mason observes. “Lo, Lamination abounding,” contributes Squire Haligast, momentarily visible, “its purposes how dark, yet have we ever sought to produce these thin Sheets innumerable, to spread a given Volume as close to pure Surface as possible, whilst on route discovering various new forms, the Leyden Pile, decks of Playing-Cards, Contrivances which, like the Lever or Pulley, quite multiply the apparent forces, often unto disproportionate results. . . .” “The printed Book,” suggests the Revd, “— thin layers of pattern’d Ink, alternating with other thin layers of compress’d Paper, stack’d often by the Hundreds.” “Or an unbound Heap of Broadsides,” adds Mr. Dimdown, “dispers’d one by one, and multiplying their effect as they go.” The Macaroni is of course not what he seems, as which of us is?— the truth comes out weeks later, when he is discover’d running a clandestine printing Press, in a Cellar in Elkton. He looks up from the fragrant Sheets, so new that one might yet smell the Apprentices’ Urine in which the Ink-Swabs were left to soften, bearing, to sensitiz’d Nasalia, sub-Messages of youth and Longing,— all about him the word repeated in large Type, LIBERTY. One Civilian leads in a small band of Soldiers. “Last time you’ll be seeing that word.” “Don’t bet your Wife’s Reputation on it,” the Quarrelsome Fop might have replied. Philip Dimdown, return’d to himself, keeps his Silence.

Death Vision I think it’s a multiplication of sight, Like after a low hovering autumn rain When the invisible web of funnel weaves And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen Where they always were, spread and looping The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf- Crest elucidated with water-light and frost, completing the fullest aspect of field. Or maybe the grace of death is split-second Transformation of knowledge, an intricate, Turning realization, as when a single Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms, In an instant, from stasis to replicating, Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches, Alters its plane of intentions, becomes A hoofing, thumping host of purpose. I can imagine not merely The falling away of blank walls And blinds in that moment, not merely A shutter flung open for the first time Above a valley of interlocking forests And constellations but a sweeping, Penetrating circumference of vision Encompassing both knotweed bud And its seed simultaneously, seeing Blood bone and its ash as one, The repeated light and fall and flight Of hawk-owl and tundra vole As a union of origin and finality. A mathematics of flesh and space might Take hold if we ask for it in that last Moment, might appear as if it had always Existed within the eyes, translucent, Jewel-like in stained glass patterns Of globes and measures, equations, Made evident by a revelation of galaxies In the knees, spine, fingers, all The ceasings, all the deaths within deaths That compose the body becoming at once Their own symbolic perception and praise Of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings, Strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills; This one expression breaking, this same Expression healing.

It is easy for the student to feel that with all his labour he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted. It seems vain to add to the litter. Who can design a new leaf? The patterns from bud to unfolding, and the colours from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago. But that is not true. The seed of the tree can be replanted in almost any soil, even in one so smoke-ridden (as Lang said) as that of England. Spring is, of course, not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events: like events, never from world's beginning to world's end the same event. Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some this very year may be the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognized, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men. We do not, or need not, despair of drawing because all lines must be either curved or straight, nor of painting because there are only three 'primary' colours. We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and 'pretty' colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the willfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses – and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void. Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin." Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget. Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love." Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands. The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love. The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva. The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.

Chapter 1 Death on the Doorstep LIVY HINGE’S AUNT lay dying in the back yard, which Aunt Neala thought was darned inconvenient. “Nebula!” she called, hoping her weakened voice would reach the barn where that lazy cat was no doubt taking a nap. If Neala had the energy to get up and tap her foot she would. If only that wretched elf hadn’t attacked her, she’d have made her delivery by now. Instead she lay dying. She willed her heart to take its time spreading the poison. Her heart, being just as stubborn as its owner, ignored her and raced on. A cat with a swirling orange pattern on its back ran straight to Neala and nuzzled her face. “Nebula!” She was relieved the cat had overcome its tendency to do the exact opposite of whatever was most wanted of it. Reaching into her bag, Neala pulled out a delicate leaf made of silver. She fought to keep one eye cracked open to make sure the cat knew what to do. The cat took the leaf in its teeth and ran back toward the barn. It was important that Neala stay alive long enough for the cat to hide the leaf. The moment Neala gave up the ghost, the cat would vanish from this world and return to her master. Satisfied, Neala turned her aching head toward the farmhouse where her brother’s family was nestled securely inside. Smoke curled carelessly from the old chimney in blissful ignorance of the peril that lay just beyond the yard. The shimmershield Neala had created around the property was the only thing keeping her dear ones safe. A sheet hung limply from a branch of the tree that stood sentinel in the back of the house. It was Halloween and the sheet was meant to be a ghost, but without the wind it only managed to look like old laundry. Neala’s eyes followed the sturdy branch to Livy’s bedroom window. She knew what her failure to deliver the leaf meant. The elves would try again. This time, they would choose someone young enough to be at the peak of their day dreaming powers. A druid of the Hinge bloodline, about Livy’s age. Poor Livy, who had no idea what she was. Well, that would change soon enough. Neala could do nothing about that now. Her willful eyes finally closed. In the wake of her last breath a storm rose up, bringing with it frightful wind and lightning. The sheet tore free from the branch and flew away. The kitchen door banged open. Livy Hinge, who had been told to secure the barn against the storm, found her lifeless aunt at the edge of the yard. ☐☐☐ A year later, Livy still couldn’t think about Aunt Neala without feeling the memories bite at her, as though they only wanted to be left alone. Thankfully, Livy wasn’t concerned about her aunt at the moment. Right now, Rudus Brutemel was going to get what was coming to him. Hugh, Livy’s twin, sat next to her on the bus. His nose was buried in a spelling book. The bus lurched dangerously close to their stop. If they waited any longer, they’d miss their chance. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Rudus was watching. Opening her backpack, she made a show of removing a bologna sandwich with thick slices of soft homemade bread. Hugh studied the book like it was the last thing he might ever see. Livy nudged him. He tore his eyes from his book and delivered his lines as though he were reading them. “Hey, can I have some? I’m starving.” At least he could make his stomach growl on demand.

She saw how each leaf hanging from the tee was designed to catch the right portion of light and gain the most shelter from the wind. She saw the same pattern in her skin and the weathering wood, and knew it was repeated in the wax honeycomb laid down by bees. It was the pattern of life, and built to a purpose. And that purpose was itself life. She had only to live it.

A rainbow’s spectacle reveals that sunlight is composed of several colors. Of these, red and blue are captured by chlorophyll, whereas carotene and xanthophylls intercept only the blue-green part of the visible spectrum. At In autumn-colored leaves, chlorophyll molecules break down, unmasking the yellow carotene and xanthophylls. Some leaves, such as those of liquidambar (left), turn red when anthocyanin pigments add the final touch to the tree’s colorful spectacle. The inherited color patterns of leaf variegation result from the various pigments occurring separately or in combinations in mesophyll cells. Shown here are striped inch plant wavelengths represented by these colors, the energy of light is transferred, via the pigments, into the synthesis of foods. Artificial illumination is only effective if it provides the blue and red wavelengths absorbed by chloroplast pigments. Ideally, incandescent bulbs, which radiate abundant red, should be supplemented with selected fluorescent tubes radiating blue wavelengths. To achieve photosynthetic yields comparable to those in natural conditions, several lights are needed to provide high intensities, but care must be taken to control the build-up of heat.

As long as you are trying, the path of unlearning a bad pattern eases into a good one. You will find yourself able to move forward until you come face to face with the next battle.

The grass below the willow Of my daughter’s wash is curled With earthworms, and the world Is measured into row on row Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real. The drugged Long Island summer sun drains Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life. The yellow daylight lines the oak leaf And the wire vines melt with the unchanged changes Of the baby. My children have their husbands’ hands. My husband’s framed, propped bald as a baby on their pianos, My tremendous man. I close my eyes. And all the clothes I have thrown out come back to me, the hollows Of my daughters’ slips…they drift; I see the sheer Summer cottons drift, equivalent to air.

show that not only does food change generational patterns, but so does thinking.

that the more you apply a pattern of deep, intellectual thought in your brain, the more you will improve the physical structure of your brain.

[T]he world as a Whole has no inclination or leaning … The falling of a leaf from a tree, the flow of a stream, the sound of movement and wind – all these are natural, effortless, wondrous – deeply alive. … Unwilled action over time will produce a pattern on the grass. Willed action will not.

And now above and beyond the birds' song, Andy hears a more distant singing, whether of voices or instruments, sounds or words, he cannot tell. It is at first faint, and then stronger, filling the sky and touching the ground, and the birds answer it. He understands presently that he is hearing the light; he is hearing the sun, which now has risen, though from the valley it is not yet visible. The light's music resounds and shines in the air and over the countryside, drawing everything into the infinite, sensed but mysterious pattern of its harmony. From every tree and leaf, grass blade, stone, bird, and beast, it is answered and again answers. The creatures sing back their names. But more than their names. They sing their being. The world sings. The sky sings back. It is one song, the song of the many members of one love, the whole song sung and to be sung, resounding, in each of its moments. And it is light.

(W)hen humans copy nature, they get the pattern wrong. Real leaves don't look like this. Every leaf on a tree is different, but these are all the same...I think humans want nature's pattern to be the same...So they can understand it.

Which god ruled your nameyear?” “Sewing.” She squinted, then laughed. He smiled a little, yet said, “You shouldn’t laugh.” She laughed harder. “Actually, I sew quite well.” “Perhaps. But you don’t exactly seem like the god of sewing’s chosen one. The baby’s mother knew what she asked for.” The wind stirred the tree. Shadows moved in patterns around them. Kestrel’s heart was in her throat even before she knew what she’d say. “Would you do what your mother did? Would you delay the naming of your child for the favor of one god or another?” There was a startled silence. “My child.” Arin tried the words, exploring them. She heard in his voice what she’d seen on his face in the village as he’d held the baby. She looked at the tree. It was a tree. A leaf, a leaf. Some things just are. They don’t signal other meanings. They aren’t like a god, casting its meaning over an entire year, or like a conversation, which is itself and also all the things that aren’t said. Her swift heart scurried along. “It wouldn’t be up to me,” he said finally. “It would be my wife’s choice.” She met his eyes. He touched her hot cheek. A tree was not a tree. A leaf, not a leaf. She understood what he didn’t say. She stood. “Come, the stream is amazing. Aren’t you thirsty? Your horse has better sense than you.” A smile. Teasing…a little shy, too, yet discovering a newfound safety in showing shyness. She held out her hand. He took it.

The leaf-shaped boats bore unbelievable wares beneath his eyes--extravagant fruits and vegetables/, flowers of excessive colors, a thousand kind of fish, sometimes gold trinkets made by the northern mountain tribes, baroque pearls from the southern sea tribes, cloth of incredible patterns, and of course, the men and women, brown as aged wood, skin varnished by the sun, dark eyes that smoldered, he and all for not seeing potential locked in their environment of no winter; no drought; he cursed them for being existential, so immersed in the pleasure of living in this moment and this moment alone, this drift of boats down the current of a canal whose clear waters spoke of mountain rains, while he, Hans, old soul from Europe, had to think of the suture and sweat out all the possibilities of disaster before it even struck.

This milkshake-multitasking, which is the truth behind multitasking, creates patterns of flightiness and lack of concentration that are unfortunately often erroneously labeled ADD and ADHD and that are too often unnecessarily medicated, adding fuel to the fire.

In fact, most of what we see is also a chunked pattern. We rarely look at the real world; we instead recognize something we have chunked and leave it at that. The world could easily be composed of cardboard stand-ins for real objects as far as our brains are concerned. One might argue that the essence of much of art is forcing us to see things as they are rather than as we assume them to be. Poems about trees force us to look at the majesty of bark and the subtlety of leaf, the strength of trunk and the amazing abstractness of the negative space between boughs; they are getting us to ignore the image in our head of “wood, big greenish, whatever” that we take for granted.

But today, again, I want to learn the character of the trees, even though I know that the names- at least, the names given to them by humans- are not names the trees themselves use. They speak with bark and branch and leaf, with alterations in shade and sunlight, with the patterns of growth rings and with the activity of birds and animals, with movement inside stillness. Even if these aren’t their true names, it is good to speak the designations, even just in my mind, as I watch them and honor them: these apple and cherry orchards of farm and pasture, these maples at the edge of the road and in the woods, the white pines and fir and spruce in the forest, willows by the pond, these birches and beeches, these oaks.

A cast-iron stove overflowing with decoration costs less than a plain one; amidst the surging leaf patterns flaws in the casting cannot be seen.

Sun and soil and leaf and root, animal and stone, bone, human strength, human weakness, all moved together, worked together, dictating one great pattern of dependence. Each creature and plant, every person, fitted into its place. The perfection of the weave sped his pulse; his ears roared with awe.

With Neighbors One Afternoon Someone said, stirring their tea, "I would come home any time just for this, to look out the clear backyard air and then into the cup." You could see the tiniest pattern of bark on the trees and every slight angle of color change in the sunshine—millions of miles of gold light lavished on people like us. You could put out your hand and feel the rush of years rounding your life into these days of ours. From somewhere a leaf came gliding slowly down and rested on the lawn. Remember that scene?—inside it you folded the last of your jealousy and hate and all those deeds so hard to forget. Absolution: swish!—you took, the past into your mouth, And swallowed it, warm, thin, bitter and good.

Storytelling is one means to entertain, share knowledge, and transmit cultural ideology. Through the universal lens of storytelling, do we become familiar with the life altering dilemmas and moral challenges that fuselage provides the linkage to mode the character patterns essential to leading a principled life? By shuffling through scores of loose leafed stories, can we glean the clarity of thought and the lucidity of perception needed successfully to tackle our own life with gusto? Is reading stories of struggle and redemption one way that we become acquainted with the chemistry of pain and suffering that permeates the arteries of all thinking human beings? Does appreciation for other people’s hardbound stories assist us place the vertebrae of our own experiences into a telling template? Can we draw upon the accumulated experiences of other people’s lives as well as our own hands-on experiences when we see our lives folded into a comprehensible scabbard depicting what it means to be human and, therefore, fallible?

My mother had told me that seeds carry in their “memory” the whole complex pattern of stem and leaf and flower and fruit, and she had shown me how the stamens and pistils begin the seed-making process all over again.

I looked down. “What the . . .” There was a strange reddish fern-leaf-like pattern on my arms. “Holy moly,” Ostin said. “Those are Lichtenberg figures.” “They’re what?” Taylor asked. I tried to wipe the marks off with my towel, but they appeared to be permanent. Like tattoos. “What is it?” “They’re called Lichtenberg figures or lightning trees. They appear with extremely high voltages. I’ve seen pictures of scars like that on lightning strike victims.

Longganisa was curled up on her bed beneath my desk but stood up to greet me. Today, she was outfitted in a leaf-patterned hoodie that bore the Brew-ha Cafe logo. Cute, simple, and practical since Longganisa hated the cold. I clipped on her leash and led her around the cafe. Her usual admirers surrounded us, and we spent some time on pets and belly rubs. When we got to the front of the shop, Leslie was helping Adeena bag her order. "Longganisa, show your Tita Adeena some love." Adeena was more of a cat person, but she loved my little wiener dog almost as much as I did. Longganisa adored her as well, and Adeena was the only person other than me and Jae who was allowed to pick her up. Even Tita Rosie didn't get that privilege. Adeena snuggled Longganisa close to her chest, and Longganisa rewarded her with a few licks. "Oh, my bestest girl. Your kisses will sustain me through all my family lecturing.

The pattern for keeping this place we must take from the woods, if the land is to thrive in our using ... ---The woods is a great life of many lives living upon its many deaths. It flourishes in the dark crypts of its decay. ... ---To the teachable it is a teaching, not a syllabus of processes and nomenclature reduced to human understanding, but the presence of the world being made, a fabric of interdependent wonders, moment by moment completed in beauty, leaf shadows on light leaves moving.