My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note want to climb over –
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
and the song goes on, beautiful.
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and i never want to be blind, or be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
liek a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use everyday,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.
Everytime I read it, I am struck by the intensity of the words. A picture in my mind: by the the edge of a cliff, a solem vow to the raging waters below.
Invictus by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
I have this booklet, one that I purchased in my sophomore
year in college, that I have kept nearby to jot in various thoughts and ideas
that I get from practically everything and everyone. The range of sources is
almost comically varied: dialogues from Star Wars, lines from a really unworthy
romance novel, a thought from Voltaire, text messages from friends, a line from
City of Angels, passages from Walt Whitman, a line from a song… and one time
or another in the past six years, these lines have helped me through really
tough decisions.
It’s tiny, just three couple inches tall, and two wide. It
has around 20 pages, and it has taken me 6 years to fill it. Since my writing
on the last page of the book coincides with the end of so many things (and the
beginning of more) happening in my life, I’ve made a mental dog-ear, and marked
it as another circle. Incidentally, circles have always been my main
representation of life. I guess it is mainly due to a novel that I read many
years ago, which described the life of the protagonist as having come full
circle. Starting then, I kept setting goals by way of circles. For instance,
having once attended a seminar, I should, one day be giving one. Having
received a lot of guidance from people I respect, I am now looking forward to
paying it forward and earning the same respect. I guess it is another way of
looking at karma. A few years later, I came across the poem I Live My
Life, and I realized that living full circles isn’t enough; the ring should
not only fulfill my need to accomplish, it must also help me grow. And so my
life, should, at the end, be a set of concentric circles.
I Live My Life
I live my life in widening rings
Which spread over earth and
sky.
I may not ever complete the
last one
But that is what I will try.
I circle around God’s
primordial tower
And I circle a thousand years
long.
And I still don’t know if I’m a
falcon,
A storm, or an unfinished song.
- Rainier Maria Rilke
I just finished reading Letters to a Young Poet for the nth
time today, and as always, I am aghast at how strongly I can relate to what Mr.
Kappus must have been feeling a hundred years earlier. It is as though Mr.
Rilke has answered my questions 80 years before I was born, and, reading them
now, somehow helps me accept everything that is happening around me. He says
that I should let life happen to me; that life is in the right, always. A
passage goes thus:
"…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and
try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books
written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could
not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the
point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday
far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way
into the answer….”
"…what does it matter to the poor man whether he is devoured by a lion or a hundred rats?" - Voltaire
I’ve always found it easy to advise other people. Suddenly i find that advises i gave long ago seem to be applicable to my current dilemma - -and I am now finding out that they’re easier formulated than executed.
weekend - uneventful
mind - blank
tomorrow - bring it on!
