Mrs. Mayes's Way With Words

I have never read A Year in the World, Under the Tuscan Sun or any of Frances's other books, but I do buy her calendars. At least, I have the past 2 years. I love the quotes they include with the photos of her beloved Italian landscape. Her writing touches me. I connect with her statements though I have never been under the Tuscan sun. I thought I would try to capture scenes from my own world that resonate with the same truth she observes in her world. The quotes below each photo are from my 2008 calendar:

~"As you get older, time, that delicious, slowly oozing, honeyed time you squandered, now has become a nasty roadrunner stopping for nothing."

~"What do I want on those magic blank days? I want the mental equivalent of a bottomless black pond surrounded by long grasses and a willow tree. ...to reclaim my childhood right to explore -all sorts of pleasures attending my interests..."

~"When you do what you know how to do too many times, it is useful to shake off the lethargy of custom. ...You may come back to what you have always done, but it will be with new insight."

"the further inside you a place moves the more your identity is intertwined with it."

"Every day a heaping basket of red, red, red tomatoes. I look on these brimming baskets with more pleasure than my first new car..."

"I am longing for the days of dolce far niente, sweet to do nothing..."

"We love living so close to the pulse of the seasons"

"A moment. Of such a moment, myths are made."

"The summer sun hits like a religious conviction."

"Behind the pleasure and fresh beauty of a sunrise, I detect an old and primitive response : The day has come again, no dark god swallowed it during the night"

"The miracle of no technology - how amazingly it restores human importance."

"...always take the turn down that intriguing little path..."

"What I never anticipated was the absolute sweet joy of everyday life - la dolce vita."

Hope you are looking forward to the new year and all the possibilities of promises held within it!