This book reminds me of the time when I was a kid and my grandma would leave me for a bit at her friend’s apartment, and she would let me sit in the window with my legs dangling from in between the window’s bars, and from that view at a moderate height above the world, I would loudly proclaim I love that dog! I love the buildings! I love the puddle! I love the trees! I love the cars! I love it!

That’s what it felt like reading this, like discovering that little girl again. And it has been a while since I’ve felt that way. When I first started reading this book, I thought Well? Where are the notes on wonder? This guy is just telling me how much he loves falcons and pants and his children. My bad. I had forgotten what wonder even is. This book reminded it to me.

Maybe the greatest miracle is memory. Think about that this morning, quietly, as you watch the world filter and tremble and beam

This compilation of essays was truly a gift to read. Doyle’s prose is described in the foreword as one that ”made timid readers feel as though they’d been thrown into a kayak and sent careening down a literary equivalent of Idaho’s Payette River during spring runoff”, and it is absolutely correct. Doyle dives headfirst into his ideas, every word a memory, and, just like memories, changing shaping bulging contracting and falling off the face of the earth only to be resurrected once again in a new form. The words go tumbling out of his brain and out of his hands, flipping over and under, they go pitter-pattering and swirling into a long river that becomes a song which itself sings of endless days and warm blanket goodnights; each comma a falcon’s talon and each ampersand a curly lock of hair. The parentheses expand and inflate like a balloon full of words, while the audience looks on, shocked and in horror, betting on when it’s going to pop and what sound will it make when it does. It is all wonderfull, wonderfull, wonderfilled, wonderoverflowed, my cup runneth over.

I am absorbed by the way that we all speak one language bur use different tones and shades and volumes and timbres and pronunciations and emphases in order to bend the language in as many ways as there are speakers of the language. (I didn’t omit any commas in that sentence. He just didn’t write any.)

For the nature lovers, the bird lovers, the family lovers, the sunrise and sunset lovers, the holding hands lovers, the God and the god and the universe lovers, the memories coming back lovers, the pain in between a smile and a smile in between the pain lovers, the fish behind the stone and the mystery behind the world lovers. For the teary-eyed lovers of the world, and those who want to love it more, I recommend this book.

The moist soil, the laboring beetles, the unwritten poem Of the lost leaves, the duff, the thin spidery bones of old Twigs. Once in a while we all stopped sprinting and just Stared at what was there all around us, the wealth of dirt, The sudden green feather about to adorn its second wild Animal, the tender next minute waiting for us to emerge.

ross gay my favorite ambassador of joy and all there is forever amen

a fable, a philosophy, a long and winding road that isn’t a road at all and isn’t leading you anywhere except maybe back to yourself. who are we when we are alone, without even the world? and oh, what is there to do but keep walking?