The last kiss

What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love. That's what matters. That's the only thing that counts.

the unbearable lightness of being

people have - with the help of conventions - oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in nature grows & defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. we know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

to love is good, too: love being difficult. for one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. for this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. with their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. but learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint of way yet been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule resting in agreement. but in the same measure in which we begin as individuals to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at closer range. the demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. but if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence - then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.

--rainer maria rilke

quote of the day

Seven times have I despised my soul: The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height. The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled. The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy. The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong. The fifth time when she forbore for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength. The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks. And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.

-- Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. --Hal Borland

I read each carefully; I understand them better.

realization and resignation

i think i'll go home and mull this over
before i cram it down my throat.
at long last it's crashed, this colossal mass
has broken up into bits in my moat.

lift the mattress off the floor
walk the cramps off
go meander in the cold
hail to your dark skin
hiding the fact you're dead again
underneath the powerlines seeking shade

far above our heads are the icy heights that contain all reason.

it's a luscious mix of words and tricks
that let us bet when you know we should fold
on rocks i dreamt of where we'd stepped
and all the whole mess of roads we're now on.

hold your glass up, hold it in
never betray the way you've always known it is.
one day i'll be wondering how
i got so old just wondering how
i never got cold wearing nothing in the snow.

this is way beyond my remote concern of being condescending.

oh these squawking birds won't quit.
building nothing, laying bricks.

hold your glass up, hold it in
never betray the way you've always known it is.
one day i'll be wondering how
i got so old just wondering how
i never got cold wearing nothing in the snow.

this is way beyond my remote concern of being condescending.

oh these squawking birds won't quit.
building nothing, laying bricks.

The third and final continent

By now I had enough money to go by plane. I flew first to Calcutta, to attend my wedding, and a week later I flew to Boston, to begin my new job. During the flight I read The Student Guide to North America, a paperback volume that I'd bought before leaving London, for seven shillings six pence on Tottenham Court Road, for although I was no longer a student I was on a budget all the same. I learned that Americans drove on the right side of the road, not the left, and that they called a lift an elevator and an engaged phone busy. "The pace of life in North America is different from Britain as you will soon discover," the guidebook informed me. "Everbody feels he must get to the top. Don't expect an English cup of tea." As the plane began its descent over Boston harbor, the pilot announced the weather and time, and that President Nixon had declared a national holiday: two American men had landed on the moon. Several passengers cheered. "God bless America!" one of them hollered. Across the aisle, I saw a woman praying.

don't make someone a priority if they only make you an option.

if you want to improve

if you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. is anything brought around to you? put out your hand and take your share with moderation. does it pass by you? don't stop it. is it not yet come? don't stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. such are thoughts to live by in life and love.

-epictetus

love is

love is anterior to life
posterior to death
initial of creation
the exponent of breath