“In a time when we have more access than ever before to the traumas of this world, how will you resist the tide of despair? Let beauty be your anchor. If you find the lake view too bright, bring your gaze closer, perhaps all the way to your own flesh and blood. Life is monstrous on the threshold of apocalypse. The practice of beholding, this fidelity to beauty in all things, I’ve come to believe, is no small form of salvation.”
From Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
– Rumi
Seeing is believing.
Drawn this way, head over heels,
What makes a woman in the city the gift,
Is the staying power of perpetual beat and
Planting for the future with love.
“Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.”
From Art & fear by D. Bayles and T. Orland
Art is all about starting again.
From Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland
“L’uomo non è libero nella misura in cui non dipende da nulla o da nessuno: è libero nell’esatta misura in cui dipende da ciò che ama, ed è prigioniero nell’esatta misura in cui dipende da ciò che non può amare.
Così il problema della libertà non si pone in termini di indipendenza, ma in termini di amore. La potenza del nostro attaccamento determina la nostra capacità di libertà. Per terribile che sia il suo destino, colui che può amare tutto è sempre perfettamente libero, ed è in questo senso che si è parlato della libertà dei santi. All’estremo opposto, coloro che non amano nulla, hanno un bello spezzare catene e fare rivoluzioni: rimangono sempre prigionieri. Tutt’al più arrivano a cambiare schiavitù, come un malato incurabile che si rigira nel suo letto.”
“Human beings are not free in the measure in which they depend on nothing or no one: they are free in the exact measure in which they depend on what they love, and they are captive in the exact measure in which they depend on what they cannot love.
Therefore, the problem of freedom cannot be tackled in terms of independence but in terms of love. The power of our attachment determines our ability to be free. As terrible as their destiny might be, those who can love everything are perfectly free and that’s how we can talk of the freedom of the saints. On the other hand, those who love nothing, have a good amount of chains to break free from and revolutions to make: they will always remain captive. All they can do is perhaps change their bondage, like a sick person, who can turn over again and again in their bed.”
(translated from the Italian by Small Circle Big Circle)
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
AS it fell upon a Day,
In the merry Month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade,
Which a grove of Myrtles made,
Beastes did leap, and Birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and Plants did spring:
Every thing did banish mone,
Save the Nightingale alone.
Shee (poor Bird) as all forlorne,
Leand her breast up-till a thorne,
And there sung the dolefulst Ditty,
That to heare it was great Pitty,
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry
Teru, teru, by and by:
That to hear her so complaine,
Scarce I could from teares refraine,
For her griefes so lively showne,
Made me thinke upon mine owne.
Ah (thought I) thou mournst in vaine,
None takes pitty on thy paine:
Senselesse Trees, they cannot heare thee,
Ruthlesse Bears, they will not cheer thee.
King Pandion, he is dead.
All thy friends are lapt in Lead.
All thy fellow Birds doe sing,
Carelesse of thy sorrowing.
Whilst as fickle fortune smild,
Thou and I, were both beguild.
Every one that flatters thee,
Is no friend in misery.
Words are easie, like the wind,
Faithful friends are hard to find;
Every Man will be thy friend,
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend:
But if store of Crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call:
And with such-like flattering,
Pity but he were a King.
If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will intice.
If to women he be bent,
They have at Commaundement.
But if Fortune once do frown,
Then farewel his great renowne.
They that fawn’d on him before,
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed,
He will helpe thee in thy need.
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep.
Thus of every grief in heart,
He with thee doeth beare a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flatt’ring foe.
(attr. W. Shakespeare; probably by R. Barnfield)
How surely gravity’s law
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing
– each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to Earth’s intelligence
we could rise up, rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God New York: Riverhead, 1996 (Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
“My deepest belief is that to live as if we’re dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small things.”
from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
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