Here on this island...

[...] Here there is time; time to be quiet; time to work without pressure; time to think; time to watch the heron, watching with frozen patience for his prey. Time to look at the stars or to study a shell; time to see friends, to gossip, to laugh, to talk. Time, even, not to talk. At home, when I meet my friends in those cubby-holed hours, time is so precious we feel we must cram every available instant with conversation. We cannot afford the luxury of silence. Here on the island I find I can sit with a friend without talking, sharing the day's last sliver of pale green light on the horizon, or the whorls in a small white shell, or the dark scar left in a dazzling night sky by a shooting star. Then communication becomes communion and one is nourished as one never is by words.

Anne Morrow Lindberg, Gift from the Sea, p115-116 (Vintage Books, March 1978)

'Antarctica has no government as such'

W. Herzog about filming Encounters at the End of the World

The film benefited greatly from the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961 and which I consider to be one of the finest documents of the civilised world. It banned military activity on the continent and established the area as a scientific preserve, committing an entire landmass to the principles of peace and knowledge. There is also an unequivocal ban on nuclear testing or dumping of radioactive waste. The treaty is one of the most potent manifestations of civilised behaviour among nations in modern history. I remember a time when at least a dozen countries claimed segments of the continent as their national territory, but Antarctica has no government as such; it belongs to no one, and while making the film I was witness to the extraordinary international co-operation you find there.
[...]
The vast landscape of the continent is unique, but Encounters at the End of the World is more about the inhabitants of Antarctica than  anything else. There is a significant science being done there, which attracts a certain kind of person, and behind every door at McMurdo is an extraordinary character. With no indigenous population, no one there has anything in common other than a shared attraction to this immense, unspoilt and untouched area of the earth. Someone told me that everybody who isn't tied down falls to the bottom of the globe.
Werner Herzog, A Guide for the Perplexed, Conversations with Paul Cronin, p385-386 (Faber & Faber 2014)

The tenderness of life...

"[...] 

The tenderness of life is preserved on islands of temporary calm. And today I find that a rather daring, albeit inexplicable, thought. [...] "

Excerpt from the war diary of
Yevgenia Belorusets, www.isolarii.com/kyiv: Islands of Temporary Calm, Tuesday, March 29, day 34

'Yevgenia Belorusets has been one of the great documentarians of Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014, winning the International Literature Prize for her work. Her diary provides the news from a different vantage.' 

German (Der Spiegel)

Große Wasser

An einem großen Wasser fühlt man sich freier als sonst, einfach nur, weil das große Wasser da ist. Das große Wasser verscheucht die ewigen kleinen Gedanken und das Drandenken an dies und das und sagt einem, dass man einmal still und ruhig werden soll. Man wird plötzlich ganz "spiegelglatt", ich meine im Innern. Und man atmet ganz ruhig und spürt die Luft vom Wasser her, wie sie das Gesicht kühlt und dafür sorgt, dass die Sonne sich einbrennen kann in das Gesicht. 

Ortheil, Die Berlinreise, p 109 (Luchterhand 2014)

The Great Statue of Buddha

[...] The other day I was visiting a town called Kamakura, where there's this huge statue of Buddha. And when I saw it, I was so deeply moved that I started welling up. It wasn't just Buddha's majesty and dignity, it was the sheer weight of history and generations of people's hopes, prayers and thoughts that broke over me, and I couldn't stop myself crying. It was as if Buddha himself was saying to me, 'All human beings have their hardships to bear, so never swerve away from the path you're on.'

Everybody has a heart that can be be touched by something. Crying isn't necessarily about sadness or meltdowns or being upset. I'd like you to bear that in mind, if you would.
Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism, p125/126 (Sceptre 2014), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida

Die Fremde meine Heimat

Immer von neuem sterben
und auferstehn

Die Fremde meine Heimat
Unbekannte meine Geschwister

Ich bin eine Tote
die lebt
und das Leben liebt

Rose Ausländer (1901 - 1988)

English:
Dying time after time
and rising again

Foreign parts my home
Strangers my brothers and sisters

I died
and am alive
in love with life

Part of Pollen of Words