One Page at a Time: Unexpected Places

Several times this week, I have encountered the theme of "space" and "place." My post from January 3, 2014 focused on the space and place set aside for writing. These quotations help me consider my writing and how it affects the world outside my personal space and place. The imagery evoked by them excites me rather than frightens me. I hold tight with all my might to my "corner" of this writing ride!

"...have you ever found yourself in an unexpected place but where, deep down, you knew you were supposed to be?" from A Year with Aslan

"The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?" from The Long-Legged House by Wendell Berry, as quoted in Poem a Day

"I see the terrifying spaces of the universe that enclose me, and I find myself attached to a corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am more in this place than in the other, nor why this little time that is given me to live is assigned me at this point more than another out of all the eternity that has preceded me and out of all that will follow me." from Thoughts on Religion by Blaise Pascal, as quoted in Poem a Day

"The essential question is, 'Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?' Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words your characters will speak, ideas--inspiration." Doris Lessing, as quoted in A Year of Writing Dangerously