... because truly being here is so much: because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.
And so we keep pressing on, trying to achieve it,
trying to hold it firmly in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded gaze, in our speechless heart.
Trying to become it.--Whom can we give it to? We would
hold on to it all, forever... Ah but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
Perhaps we are here in order to say: house
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window--
But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing.
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever ...
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller.... Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.
-Rilke, from "The Ninth Elegy" (Steven Mitchell trans.)
.
Point and shoot--North Carolina, March, 2013.
On this day, I felt a surreal sense of timelessness--everything seemed "lit" even though it was all wet and grey. I should have been gloomy. Maybe it was the wonderful food we got in the city the night before, or maybe the color and rhythm danced me awake. Sometimes the mind, in a state of semi-exhaustion, finds something of Spirit and runs on ahead, loose and unafraid across the fields of our gaze. It feels like inner flight...
You understand. I hope you are all well.
.
Note to self: Anne Carson NYT
Peace to all who enter here.
.
