When I’m hungry for the South of my childhood, I read Eudora Welty. She has, in her sinuous sentences, something of the heat and the landscape, and I slow myself down and remember. I can hear the Miss This and the Miss That. The lilt of accent and laughter. The women in their summer dresses laying bountiful tables for a Sunday supper. Ice cream socials on the green edge of the church. Late into the night, the smack of dominoes.
Boys in jeans and long-sleeved shirts despite the temperature. The way they leaned against trucks when they talked to you. Hats tipped back.
It was the wildest place I ever lived. Snakes of every variety, locusts and fireflies. We hucked rocks and ran barefoot through the clay. We caught frogs and spent our afternoons in the highest trees, our hands sapped and rough.
Eudora Welty says, “All serious daring starts from within.”
Yes!
Yes! Do you hear! “ALL SERIOUS DARING STARTS FROM WITHIN.”
From the moment you question. From the moment you think your way into things and through them. What kind of person will I be on this earth? What kind of work will I do? How you have to see beauty — recognize it — how you have to notice.
“All serious daring starts from within.”
It starts there and it stays there. All serious daring comes from within. What will you make of this world? What will you make?
