The Little Prince

How many of us *haven't* read The Little Prince? 

Those of you raising your hands, well, you're missing something and should visit the library to read a copy soon.  You'll be richer for it.  Promise.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of said book) was a writer and aviator. (He was one of the pioneering pilots of the international postal flights -cool, eh?)  He once crashed while flying over the Sahara and was stranded for four days -- he and his copilot were rescued by a Beduin on camel.  The dehydration-induced hallucinations he experienced helped shape The Little Prince. (It also explains why the book starts with a pilot alone in a desert - until today I'd had no idea that beginning stemmed from his own experience!)  His own story is a tale in and of itself and I could go on and on about it but will stop myself here to get back to my point.

On the Max ride home from work I was reading an article about the photographer Robert Frank and Frank had quoted a line from The Little Prince:

"It is only with the heart that one can see right; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

I love that book. 

I love that quote! 

So as soon as I got home I went digging around for my copy of The Little Prince and flipped through it a bit as I sat on my back deck, in a rare and kismit-ee moment of sunshine. (Words cannot describe just how much it has rained these last few weeks, but a few that come close are: downpour, drenching, buckets, endless).

Fuzzy bees bumbled lazily in the chamomile.  The sun shown on the peas.  Droplets of rain from a downpour just passed fell from fava blooms onto the pansies below. 

In that moment I came across another line that just washed over me, much like the sun on my shoulders: 

"It is the time you have spent with your rose that makes your rose so important."

Hm.

This garden is a rose. 

My rose!