Red Maple 2012 Quotes

Without our artists and storytellers, we have no history, and without history your future is unmoored -- we drift. It is art, never war, that carries culture forward. ~ Sharon E. McKay

Tell me again about the girl whose hands
have no color. Whose hands are completely
white. This time make them damned, or
untouched, or have her open a red umbrella
or point at some maple leaves and damned
near cry. Those hands. As freakish goes,
I wish I had a tail. Maybe then you'd know
how much I like you. It shakes me through,
damn through. It shakes me. When she carries
a peacock feather. When she touches her neck
or thighs. You're a person. It's not so bad.
You have hands. You are a person with hands
to hold things. Things you like. Tremendous
things. Tell me what you will hold today. I
know there is room for everything. There is no
need to be ceremonious. Tell what gets let go. ~ Rebecca Wadlinger

The Life of a Day

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. but there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don't want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn't one I've been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night's meandering skunk. ~ Tom Hennen

Raised herself on one round elbow and looked out on a tiny river like a gleaming blue snake winding itself around a purple hill. Right below the house was a field white as snow with daisies, and the shadow of the huge maple tree that bent over the little house fell lacily across it. Far beyond it were the white crests of Four Winds Harbour and a long range of sun-washed dunes and red cliffs. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Science uses the Red Shift to measure deep cosmic distances. But how to measure deep historic time? How about - the Saffron Shift.

If history itself had a color, it is . . . like wood or bark, or living forest floor.

Assigning hues to time periods, the sum total of history is saffron-brown - but the chromatic arc starts from blinding white (prehistory) to sun-yellow (Ancient Greece), then deepening to pale wood tones (Dark Ages) and finally exploding like an infinite chord into a full brown palette that includes mahoganies, siennas (Middle Ages), oak, sandalwood (the Renaissance), cherry, maple (Age of Reason), and near-black old woods (Industrial Revolution) for which there may not be names.

As time approaches our own, the wood-brown palette fades to a weird glassy colorlessness, goes black-and-white for a brief span as you think of photographs of your grandparents, and then again fades until we get a clear medium that is the color of the world.

And the present moment is perfectly transparent.

It's only as you start looking into the future, that the colors start returning. The glass is turning silvery with a murky haze, and there is blue somewhere in the distance . . . ~ Vera Nazarian

Imagination, then, must be the flip side of memory, not so much a calling up as a calling forth. Yet imagination also relies on knowledge: on knowing what is - and is not - possible in this world of fact. Imagination plants the seed or buries the bulb knowing the seasons will shift, seeing, in the mind's eye, April give way to August, the azalea to the rose, knowing that the red leaves of the maple will burnish in autumn, knowing that from this exact window, one can look down to the inlet where the moon's reflection will be just another shimmering white blossom. ~ Judith Kitchen

That is the normal succession of things in this part of the world; you can see the various stages all over Scratch Flat. There is, for example, a small red maple swamp above my house on the northwest side of the drumlin. The swamp was probably a pond sixty years ago, but now in summer, unless you know your trees, you cannot distinguish it from the surrounding woodlands. It is only in spring, when the groundwater levels are high, that the remnant of the ice sheet makes itself apparent. Then the waters rise around the trunks of the red maple trees and, after reaching a critical level, run down across the small meadow to the north of my house. ~ John Hanson Mitchell

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad monotonous song. "Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying." A little maple tree heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety. ~ E.B. White

Vespers

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines. ~ Louise Gluck

He could have spent the whole night watching her red lips form the words to the songs. Those lips-they were as bright as the red maple trees that glowed this time of year. Her blue eyes danced with each fast song, a wild swirl of crisp leaves in the autumn wind.

That was how she haunted his heart. Every season, every corner of Gott's good land, he saw Annie there. ~ Rosalind Lauer

After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth ... The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her ... In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible. ~ Elizabeth George Speare

To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit; Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through ... ~ Lucy Larcom

Red Curry Almond Sauce ½ cup almond butter ½ cup water ¼ cup fresh lime juice or rice vinegar 2 tablespoons miso 1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro 2 tablespoons agave nectar or maple syrup 2 teaspoons Thai red curry paste, or to taste 1 teaspoon onion powder ½ teaspoon garlic powder ½ teaspoon ground ginger ~ Scott Jurek

In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means, each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.
Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring. ~ Phyllis McGinley

Roses are red and violets are purple,
sugar is sweet and so is maple surple. ~ Roger Miller

Autumn in the country advances in a predictable path, taking its place among the unyielding rhythms of the passing seasons. It follows the summer harvest, ushering in cooler nights, and shorter days, enveloping all of Lanark County in a spectacular riot of colour. Brilliant hues of yellow, orange and red exclaim, in no uncertain terms, that these are the trees where maple syrup legends are born. ~ Arlene Stafford-Wilson

I watched water dripping off the ferns and the needles of the Western Red Cedar next door. I watched it running in runnels down the bark of the Cherry tree, and I looked at the small droplets of misty water that were accumulating on the broad leaves of the Bigleaf Maple.I touched one of the accumulated droplets, and instantly it was gone. ~ Ned Hayes

It was evening and would be when I woke. No matter. From the maple tree the Red-tail spoke. ~ Cameron Conaway

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow! ~ John Stark

Nearby,one of the overexcited frat boys started wildly windmilling his arms. He had overbalanced and now tipped himself right over the wall.In a second, the diver with us had grabbed his ankle and hauled him back.The sharks, instead of being attracted by the flailing, like they are in every single scary underwater movie, took one sideways look and promptly turned tail,heading for the other side of the tank. They stayed there and didn't come back.
The culprit's buddies pounded him when we climbed out of the water. "Smooth move, Ex-Lax," one muttered. "Way to be a buzzkill."
"hey" was the red-faced retort, "at least I can say I scared off a shark. ~ Melissa Jensen

Better to fight back than get sliced up like a cake yourself. ~ Keirstin Gier

How we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it. ~ Richard Siken

At thirty, she was a straight-backed, strong, short woman with rough red cheeks, a mountaineer's long stride, and a mountaineer's deep lungs. ~ Anonymous

How? How did you get Torin to Hex Hall?"
Dad blinked rapidly, and at first, I thought he was surprised by my question. Then I realized that, no, he was fighting tears. Seeing my father, who practically had a PhD in Stiff Upper Lip, on the verge of crying because he was so happy to see me made my own eyes sting. Then he cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, and said, "It was exceedingly difficult."
I laughed through my tears. "I bet."
"It was Torin's idea," someone said behind me, and I turned to see Izzy standing there. Like my parents and her sister, she was dressed in jeans and a black jacket, although she also had a black cap pulled over her bright hair. "We had tons of old spell books, and after you and Cal disappeared, he started looking through them. Found a spell that would let him travel to a different mirror."
"Of course, the problem was finding your mirror," Aislinn said, coming out of the darkness.
"Aren't you afraid that he'll permanently peace out from his mirror and start hanging out in girls' locker rooms or something?"
Aislinn's eyes slid to Izzy. "Torin has his reasons for wanting to stay with us," she said, and even in the dim light, I saw red creepy up Izzy's cheeks. Maybe one day, I'd get to the bottom of whatever was going on there. Preferably once I was done getting to the bottom of the thousand other things on my agenda. ~ Rachel Hawkins

[...] Black is the absence of colour and light. White is purity, it is undivided light - light not broken down into colours. Red is the epitome of colour, its zenith and its point of greatest intensity. This ordering of things becomes even more evident if, between white and red, a whole series of intermediate colours, such as lemon-yellow, yellow-ochre, and bright red, is inserted, or again, if one speaks of a 'peacock's tail' of gradually unfolding colours. In this case royal purple is always the seal of each series. ~ Titus Burckhardt

Come on! Come on!" Leo urged. He made the mistake of glancing back. Only a stone's throw away, the first Maenad appeared out of the woods. Her eyes were pure red. She grinned with a mouth full of fangs, then slashed her talon fingernails at the nearest tree and sliced it in half. Little tornadoes of leaves swirled around her as if even the air were going crazy. "Come, demigod!" she called. "Join me in the revels!" Leo knew it was insane, but her words buzzed in his ears. Part of him wanted to run toward her. Whoa, boy, he told himself. Golden Rule for Demigods: Thou shalt not Hokey Pokey with psychos. Still, he took a step toward the Maenad. ~ Rick Riordan

Captain Hook's mother, who said to Little Hook, For God sakes, don't scratch it! Never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons

When we think of love,
we always think of red,
but when I think of love,
I think of you instead. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

What I'm saying, Mr. Kristofic, is that I learned that it's not about being black, white, yellow, or red. It's not about race. It's about the human race. And too many of the human race act like a bunch of freakin' morons who will always find some other group of people with a different skin color to blame for their so-called problems. ~ Jim Kristofic

Americanism in all its forms seemed to be trashy and wasteful and crude, even brutal. There was a metaphor ready to hand in my native Hampshire. Until some time after the war, the squirrels of England had been red. I can still vaguely remember these sweet Beatrix Potter–type creatures, smaller and prettier and more agile and lacking the rat-like features that disclose themselves when you get close to a gray squirrel. These latter riffraff, once imported from America by some kind of regrettable accident, had escaped from captivity and gradually massacred and driven out the more demure and refined English breed. It was said that the gray squirrels didn't fight fair and would with a raking motion of their back paws castrate the luckless red ones. Whatever the truth of that, the sighting of a native English squirrel was soon to be a rarity, confined to the north of Scotland and the Isle of Wight, and this seemed to be emblematic, for the anxious lower middle class, of a more general massification and de-gentrification and, well, Americanization of everything. ~ Christopher Hitchens

We all get one life to live here. It's 2012, and for gay and lesbian couples who are in love, not to be able to be married is so absurd. ~ Howard Stern

He leaned forward and bit her bottom lip. It was just the right size. He hated women with thin, judgmental lips. Smeared with dark red lipstick. Stingy and manipulative. Bev's mouth looked ripe and vulnerable. He sucked on that soft lower lip for a few seconds. ~ Penny Watson