Ramya Reddy

“I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

“Emotional exhaustion follows fast on the footsteps of physical and mental depletion. I feel my lifeblood draining away in an oily spigot of inner turmoil. Questions abound and personal survival hinges upon sorting through possible solutions and selecting the most fitting answers. Is my pain real or simply an illusion of a frustrated ego? What do I believe in? What is my purpose? I aspire to discover a means to live in congruence with the trinity of the mind, body, and spirit. Can I discover a noble path that frees me from the shallowness of decadent physical and emotional desires? Can I surrender any desire to seek fame and fortune? Can I terminate a craving to punish other persons for their perceived wrongs? Can I recognize that forgiving persons whom offended me is a self-initiated, transformative act? Can I conquer an irrational fear of the future? Can I accept the inevitable chaos that accompanies life? Can I find a means to achieve inner harmony by steadfastly resolving to live in the moment free of angst? Can I purge egotisms that mar an equitable perception of life by renunciation of the self and all worldly endeavors? Can I live a harmonious existence devoid the panache of vanities?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Mountains exceed our command.
They slip our grip.
And there is no glory for those who are left behind.
Mountains are so much
more than a challenge...
Or an adversary to be overcome.
For mountains humble the human instinct.
And reveal our insignificance.
They live in deep time. In a way that we do not.
Behind and beyond the
mountains stretch
eons too fast for
us to comprehend.
They were here long before we were even dreamed of.
They watched us arrive.
They will watch us leave.
Born of fire.
Born of force.
Mountains move.
Over epochs they rise and fall.
This is the symphony of the Earth.
A rhythm of uplift and
erosion that makes
not waves of water...
But waves of stone.
And from these waves of stone flows life.”
― Robert Macfarlane

“A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice