Gretel Ehrlich
Gretel Ehrlich
Gretel Ehrlich is an American travel writer, poet, and essayist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEssayist
Date of Birth21 January 1946
CitySanta Barbara, CA
CountryUnited States of America
history stories records
History is an illogical record. It hinges on nothing. It is a story that changes, and has accidents, and recovers with scars.
rivers water soul
To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.
distance ocean sharks
Between highway sounds I heard waves and thought how the curve of the coastline here had sheltered and nurtured live-born sharks, humans, and migrating whales. Here, at the edge of the continent, time and distance stopped; in the lull between sets of waves I could get a fresh start.
running father night
Thirty years ago, my sister, Gale (so named because a gale hit Boston Harbor the night she was born), some friends and I stole a boat in the middle of the night and sailed it out of the Santa Barbara harbor. Suddenly we were becalmed and the current began pushing us toward the breakwall. With no running lights and no power, we were dead in the water. Out of that darkness a steel hull appeared: it was the local Coast Guard cutter. My father, stern-faced and displeased, stood in the bow.
song nature orchids
To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.
hands wings arms
Turbulence, like many forms of trouble, cannot always be seen. We bounce so hard my arms sail helplessly above my head. In evolution, wing bones became arms and hands; perhaps I'm de-evolving.
heart fasting exposed
To know something, then, we must be scrubbed raw, the fasting heart exposed.
garden cells sea
A tree is an aerial garden, a botanical migration from the sea, from those earliest plants, the seaweeds; it is a purchase on crumbled rock, on ground. The human, standing, is only a different upsweep and articulation of cells. How treelike we are, how human the tree.
nature taken mortality
There is nothing in nature that can't be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration.
dream writing thinking
History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mélange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves.
islands departure reminders
Islands are reminders of arrivals and departures.
despair sin humans
Perhaps despair is the only human sin.
sadness voyages feels
What Flaubert refers to as the “mélancholies du voyage” is like the sadness I feel as one season departs and another arrives.
memories passion long
To long for love, to have experienced passion's deep pleasure, even once, is to understand the mercilessness of having a human body whose memory rides desire's back unanchored from season to season.