It needs forever to be in all its times and aspects and acts

 

 

Anna: There you are, Harlan.  I've called and called.  What are you doing?

Harlan: Looking.

Anna: At what?

Harlan: The river.

Anna: You've never seen enough, have you,  of that river you looked at all your life?

Harlan: It never does anything twice.   It needs forever to be in all its times and aspects and acts.  To know it in time is only to begin to know it.  To paint it, you must show it as less than it is.  That is why as a painter I never was at rest.  Now I look and do not paint.  This is the heaven of a painter - only to look, to see without limit.  It's as if a poet finally were free to say only the simplest things.

 

For a moment they are still again, both continuing to look, in  opposite directions, at the river.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

excerpt from "Sonata at Payne Hollow"

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