The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.
-Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

The stories being lived out all around me, the stories lived out in days long gone, they matter.  My life isn’t lived in a vacuum. On the contrary, every cell in my body is recycled matter.

I’m taking some time this week to feel my insignificance, my teeny tiny thread in the giant tapestry that is all of us and all of history.

With that in mind, here are some real people who are doing real things.  Their stories put little tendrils into my brain in the last couple of weeks, and I’m wondering if they’ll do the same for you.

• Someone whose world view is divergent from my own, but whose mother heart is feeling its way through the darkness in the same way as mine.
• Lola Akinmade Akerstrom: Her whole story is fascinating, but I can’t stop thinking about her words on adapting the pursuit of your dreams once you have a family. So balanced and wise.
• Not everything you do has to change the world.  Sometimes a little chalk can be enough.
• Over the Rhine never ceases to inspire me, and Linford’s take on the continuity of our stories is stunningly beautiful.
• Most wonderful of all, our stories are still in progress, and every day is a chance to make our life a really good tale.
• A Meditation on Pain.  This story haunts me.
• And before you get too depressed, read this.  You’ll be thinking about your own beauty for the rest of the day. (Seriously. Just read it.  You’ll see what I mean.)

Okay, enough internet.  I’m off to to get all my work done so I can start reading Look Homeward, Angel again because Thomas Wolfe’s lush, gorgeous language is all stuck in my head now.  The man was a depressing lunatic, but he could do things with words that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  And yes, that’s a recommendation.

P.S. That photo up there is my grandmother, on a horse with three children, because WHY NOT.  Remind me to tell you bits of her story sometime.  In my heart, that woman belongs on this list. (Which is a high honor, but only click that link if you’re feeling brave and don’t mind a whole lot of foul language with your hilarious feminist sarcasm.)