I drove through the wide and fertile plain of the Rhone valley parts of which is filled with orchards in bloom framed by lines of poplars and vineyards yet asleep.
Tender green grass makes room for tiny sweet creepers in every ditch and hollow where small blossoms shake their heads to the rhythm of the wind and the sun.
All around life is bubbling up visibly as spring fights off the winter grip.
I went looking for life and sunshine. I found both and more. I also stumbled across the following:
“Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either,
for solitude will also break you with its yearning.
You have to love.
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.
And when it happens that you are broken,
or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near,
let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich
Live unbuttoned and undone and spot the orchards on your way.
Orchards in Bloom by Gretchen Kelly
unbuttoned or undone 
Tes mots touchent encore les sentiments.
Et la citation est tres belle et emouvante.
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Merci AnElephant. En fait, je n’arrive pas a trouver les mots qu’il faut pour decrire la beaute et la joie que j’ai ressentie en voyant ses arbres en fleurs: un bonheur si complet que cela faisait presque mal.
La citation est tellement proche de mes idees que je l’aurais ecrite si j’avais trouve des mots aussi beaux.
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Bravo!
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Thanks John.
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This was a wonderful tour of your springtime countryside, Em. The Erdrich piece was so very full of truth…, a really great perspective toward love.
Paul
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Thank you Paul. Glad you enjoyed it. And yes, Erdrich wrote the words I wish I had found.
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That is a gem you found!
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I thought so Noel. It rang true in every way.
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Loved it….
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Glad you did. I am so happy you stopped and checked this out I can’t tell you! Big hug and my love to Andrew.
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Erdrich’s lines remind me of Whitman:
“Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
The whole universe indicates that it is good
The past and the present indicate that it is good.
How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my soul!
How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!
What is called good is perfect, and what is called sin is just as perfect;
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect…and the imponderable fluids are perfect.
Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and surely they will yet pass on.
O my soul! if I realize you I have satisfaction,
Animals and vegetables! if I realize you I have satisfaction,
Laws of the earth and air! if I realize you I have satisfaction.
I cannot define my satisfaction…yet it is so,
I cannot define my life…yet it is so.
I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground…the weeds of the sea have…the animals.
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and
the cohering is for it,
And all preparation is for it…and identity is for it…and life and death are for it.”
I love Whitman, but he and I are so unalike. Where I must marshal and sift through the proofs and empirical evidence for immortality, he merely shouts, “I know I am deathless.” I envy that celebration of self. I, on the other hand, argue for the ultimate question; Whitman just proclaims it.
Regards
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Thank you for sharing this Whitman exuberant affirmation of life as he saw it.
I wish I shared his certainty! Although one could argue he was right inasmuch as his words, thoughts, passions are still here in this present, therefore he is deathless… I have no such expectations. Here and now, with meaning, with gusto, without regrets, with gratitude is the best life I can live. Erdrich’s lines tells me I am not alone on that vulnerable road.
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‘Live unbuttoned and undone and spot the orchards on your way’
Indeed
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Just come across your blog..yeh live unbuttoned..definitely worth it!
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Smiling. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
I will stop by and return the favor.
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