Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats (2012) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Quotes edit see section history

• “When you're in a small boat, everything feels big except yourself.”

• “Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden.”

  attributed to Philo

• “Kayaking is like writing, requiring the same precision and restraint. ... Writing requires generosity toward every point of view. Kayaking insists on all points of view ... Writing is for important things, matters of substance. There is no point in going out in a kayak unless you feel the potential profundity of the act, the adventure that opens before you. You are alone and not alone. No one writes alone. Write, and you are in the company of all who have written before you. No one paddles alone.”

• “When one is completely immersed in the elements, experience is heightened as increased awareness is demanded and dulled senses are rejuvenated.”

• “Grief comes to you all at once, so you think it will be over all at once. But it is your guest for a lifetime.”

• “I sympathize with anyone burdened with my companionship. ... I sometimes feel that death is contagious, that I could pollute others with my sorrow. It is a lot to ask of people to add your despair to their own.”

• “When you love someone, every moment is shadowed by the fear of loss. Then loss occurs, and you feel more love than ever. The more you loved, the more you feel the loss. Depression, then, may be seen as the strongest expression of love. That's where logic gets you.”

• “Something about the water makes you feel alone, even when you have company. Isolation at sea.”

• “What is the difference between grief and mourning? Mourning has company.”

• “I opened the poem to Book Four, taking in the lines: "One in whom persuasion and belief/ Had ripened into faith, and faith become a passionate intuition." I may have been without religion, but I used to have faith. Now I was without faith and belief and persuasion, too, and thus without passion.”

• “The thing about literature is that you know when something's coming. Always there are signals. Anticipation trumps surprise. In life, however . . . I scare easily these days. If someone comes up behind me when I am lost in thought and cannot hear their approach, I jump. Have even screamed.”

• “The dead are just one song away from the living.”

  Sioux saying

• “... if no one had invented time, would everything happen all at once? ... ...we would not be aware of time's passing, which means that we would not be aware of death. There would be presence and there would be absence, and nothing in between. ... Is that how dogs feel when they show such ecstasy at our coming home after we have been away? Their excitement is often explained by their not knowing if we ever would come back. When we do, it is all tongues, tails, and ears. But maybe dogs simply live without time. that way they never know that something can be different later, or that it was different in the past. That way they never know that time is not on their side. I am powerless in everything that matters.”

• “Water in winter is different. The boats leave it alone--creek, bay, ocean, as ghostly as a deserted summer town.”

• “Words mixed with water lose their bite. They do not help. ... I had believed otherwise. If you could say it, or write it, if you could give shape and expression to it, clarity and precision to it, then something good would come. Now I skim. I flip my words. They spin me into silence, all my light and darkness wordless. ... Skipping similes like stones.”

• “I am beginning to give away my books. ... The goings-on that used to transpire on my bookshelves--sweaty lovers, madmen, murders, kings--have grown tranquil of late. My books have become mere decorations, and it is time to give them away.”

• “"The difficulty in being a child is that children have no power," I said. "That's not true," said Jessie. "We have the power of thought and the power of kindness."”

• “... Frank McCourt ... died a year or so after Amy, of a melanoma on his knee.”

• “Illness leads back to self-absorption.”

• “K-A-Y-A-K. And me, lucky kid, propped half cocked in the cockpit pocket of my palindrome.”

• “I am a fan of nouns. I tell my writing students that if they need three modifiers to describe something, they've probably chosen the wrong something. The noun carries its own weight, and the right one will not be made prettier or tastier or moer important by anything that decorates it. It has all it needs.”

• “The advantage of being an amateur in most things, including kayaking, is that all any enterprise requires is love. Love hides in the word amateur.”

• “Not in terror but in stillness will the world come to an end.”

• “... the same species capable of coming up with the most dazzling inventions made of wood and brass was just as capable of blowing off one another's limbs.”

• “Americans do not believe in death, which is why we are forever shocked by its intrusions. Democracy and socialism, both fantasies, are undergirded by the idea that death happens to other people.”

• “Kids like tight places, where everyone is squeezed together.”

• “My thoughts are slippery when wet.”

• “Are the dead an evolving species?”

• “The separation of birth and death is fairly recent. the current distance between the events may serve to exaggerate the emotions attached to each.”

• “When I was writing in the war zones, I saw travel as akin to death. Death did not frighten me. i thought of it in a neutral way. I was leaving what was familiar for what was strange. The countries were strange. The customs were unknown, the language, too. I might not ever return. I am hardly traveling such distances here on the creek, but some of the comparisons apply.”

• “... water is the earth's only self-renewing resource. It heals itself.”

• “When you've written and published a book, it goes out like a child sent out into the world. When you reread it, it seems as if it were written by someone else, which is true, since, like a creek, we move on naturally.”

• “The problem with writing is that you give people what they don't want, and by the time they realize they needed what you gave them, they have forgotten where your shop is located.”

• “There's only one point to writing. It allows you to do impossible things.”

• “... writing makes sorrow endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible.”

• “People in grief become more like themselves.”

• “For Graves' disease, i take 10mg of Tapazole twice a day, along with atenolol, a beta-blocker. The slowness of the cure tries my patience. I have been nearly three months with this disease, but I am stronger than I was several weeks ago. Otherwise, I could not be out here. The pills must be working.”

• “If you have the chance to help someone and you do not take it, you are wasting your time on earth.”

  Roberto Clemente

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Bethesda, Maryland: location of Amy's house
• Quogue: a summer village on the south shore of Long Island. where author kayaks.
• Stony Brook University: where Roger Rosenblatt (the author) teaches English and writing
• New York
• Atlantic
• Sudan
• Long Island
• Moscow

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Roger Rosenblatt (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3618.O8336 Z46 2012
• Dewey: 306

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Spirituality › Inspirational
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Death & Grief › Grief & Bereavement
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Psychology & Counseling

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history