My time away

Stillness is our most intense mode of action.  It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action.  Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep.  We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer.  In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel.

-Leonard Bernstein

Quiet

I am heading for a time of quiet,
When my restlessness is past,
And I can lie down on my blanket
And release my fists at last.

I am heading for a time of solitude,
Of peace without illusions,
When the perfect circle marries all,
Beginnings and conclusions.

And when they say that you’re not good enough,
Well, the answer is, you’re not.
But who are they, or what is it
That eats at what you’ve got

With the hunger of ambition
For the change inside the purse?
They are handcuffs on the soul, my friends,
Handcuffs on the soul...and worse.

Now I'm heading for a place of quiet,
Where the sage and sweetgrass grow,
By a lake of sacred water
From the mountain’s melted snow.

-Paul Simon