amandapalmer
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The Sky & The Sea, As If On Cue.
🕑 Added 2026-01-22 07:46:09 +0000 UTCGood late late evening my loves.
My favorite photo of the year so far.
I was walking by the sea with a close friend yesterday, and we saw this.
She’s always reminding us, isn’t she. The sea, the sky. The all.
All around me, America, heartache. I have friends and acquaintances who are navigating through incredible personal darknesses as the nation feels like it’s veering into the jagged rocks. The dying parents, the illnesses, the addictions, the helpless feelings, the estrangements, the grief.
The grief.
Look up.
And sometimes…a patch like this. Behold it and don’t stop marveling.
When this moment comes, stop, look.
Hold your friend’s hand.
Or if alone:
Hold your own hand.
Marvel! In Awe! Gape at the size of the sun and the ocean. Feel your tiny, soft-skeleton and breakable body, no bigger than a salmon, really. In relative terms. Think of the great whale.
Know that you’re just very small.
Take a deep breath.
The moment is finite.
The joy is finite.
And also; the grief is finite.
It may feel infinite, but nothing really is.
Don’t forget.
In the darkness, always, from somewhere, somehow, a light.
A light.
I love you all.
So much more soon. I’m catching up.
Tell us something good in the comments.
xx A
Comments
IRIDYSCENZIA
You're doing such a brilliant job! 💖🌈
Allen Lilley
My never-ending wonder is all the beauty Nature has to offer us ...truly a marvel, right? 🫶
Laura Damone
I am almost healed from my car accident. I bought a used white 2024 Subaru Forrester Sport great car on Wednesday. I think it’s great news also a buzz cut which I love. The accident happened December 1. Love you Amanda 🩷🌹Amanda the photos are beautiful and so are your written words!
Amanda Palmer
Yes. Love.
Anna J
That is definitely something good! Wow 🤤
Dea
Gorgeous!
Dea
It's a beautiful idea, Becky, except for making me worry more for all the mistakes I've made, that we by virtue of being human, make (that said errors of judgement or failures remain ever-present, as it were). I guess the thrust of the idea is to not sweat that smaller stuff, though, and think instead of the good we have done as also ever-present...
Dea
I don't know if this counts as "something good", but I just ate the most beautiful plum I have ever had. The juiciest, sweetest but still suitably tart, perfect little plum, grown on a tree of only a couple of years of age, in my Mum's backyard. Two things made this tiny perfect plum even sweeter: My Mum very nearly died last year (she is fine now. Recovered, as much as you can from 15-plus hospitalisations from a C Diff infection and subsequent, permanent complications). Also, not be macabre, or veer into magical thinking, but my Dad's ashes were deposited beneath this little plum tree (possibly illegally, but please, shush:). I like to think the sweetness of this gorgeous fruit is a fond farewell from this oft-problematic man 🍑👋
Becky Ellen-Johnson
I saw a video of Sir Roger Penrose, a Nobel Laureate, talking about how information cannot be destroyed. Life may come to an end, but death is just the completion of the pattern that is our spacetime structure. The past cannot be erased, everything that has happened stays happened... We are, then we were, but we can never not be once we have been (lol me trying to make sense of conformal cyclic cosmology. He talks about entanglement and how the act of being connects us with everything we ever come into contact with... Even something I look at, the photons hitting my eyes entangles my past and therefore my present with the thing I looked at. Everything we touch or see basically becomes a part of us. After watching the video I went for a walk. I felt connected on a fundamental level with the world. This beautiful idea has changed and enhanced how I interact with the world around me :) Lol this is the something good I'm sharing, sorry for the rant, this idea has captured me.
Anna J
Isn't that satisfying?? Congratulations and happy birthday 🎉
Aimsel Ponti
Hi from Maine, which tells you everything you need to know right now. Absolute nightmare. But self-care is critical and I’m doing the best I can. Also, I love that photo.♥️♥️
Stephen
The Bright Field – R.S. Thomas I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realise now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
Laura Wellner
Today is our son's 40th birthday! (Where did the time go?) My Fred and I, "we two kids," through the chaos of life and history, we raised a good man.
Michelle
Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of my mom's sudden death. I often feel angrier at the passing time, that there's just that much more time between us. But yesterday was okay. I didn't drink. I didn't stay in bed all day. I didn't totally disassociate. At night I made an incense offering to her and sat in dark candlelight with her. I curled up a bit. I rocked. There were tears. But I didn't drown in them. Maybe sometimes the light is just lighting a little candle in the deepest darkness.
Alfredo
Such a beautiful picture. We can be that light. "even if the darkness precedes and follows us, we have a chance, briefly, to shine." (Arthur Sze, "The Chance" - the whole poem is here: https://www.poemist.com/arthur-sze/the-chance)
