quiet even on this shore

In my best moments I think "Life has passed me by" and I am content.

Walking seems to cover time and space but in reality we are always just where we started. I walk but in reality I am hand in hand with contentment on my own doorstep.

The ocean is deathless
The islands rise and die
Quietly come, quietly go
A silent swaying breath

I wish the idea of time would drain out of my cells and leave me quiet even on this shore.

Agnes Martin

.

fragile

 

 

The sense of my own irreplaceable life, then, is inseparable from my sense that it will end. When I return to the same landscape every summer, part of what makes it so poignant is that I may never see it again. Moreover, I care for the preservation of the landscape because I am aware that even the duration of the natural environment is not guaranteed. Likewise, my devotion to the ones I love is inseparable from the sense that they cannot be taken for granted. My time with family and friends is precious because we have to make the most of it. Our time together is illuminated by the sense that it will not last forever and we need to take care of one another because our lives are fragile.

 

The sense of finitude—the sense of the ultimate fragility of everything we care about—is at the heart of what I call secular faith. To have secular faith is to be devoted to a life that will end, to be dedicated to projects that can fail or break down.

Martin Hägglund - This Life

.

snow

found and lost in an instant

It happened one day, at a crossroads, in the middle of a crowd, people coming and going.

I stopped, blinked: suddenly I understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything: I did not understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd. I laughed.

What I found strange at the time was that I had never realized before; that up until then I had accepted everything: traffic lights, cars, posters, uniforms, monuments, things completely detached from any sense of the world, accepted them as if there were some necessity, some chain of cause and effect that bound them together.

Then my laugh died. I blushed, ashamed. I waved to get people’s attention. “Stop a moment!” I shouted, “there is something wrong! Everything is wrong! We are doing the absurdest things. This cannot be the right way. Where can it end?”

People stopped around me, sized me up, curious. I stood there in the middle of them, waving my arms, desperate to explain myself, to have them share the flash of insight that had suddenly enlightened me: and I said nothing. I said nothing because the moment I had raised my arms and opened my mouth, my great revelation had been as it were swallowed up again and the words had come out any old how, on impulse.

“So?” people asked, “what do you mean? Everything is in its place. All is as it should be. Everything is a result of something else. Everything fits in with everything else. We cannot see anything wrong or absurd.” I stood there, lost, because as I saw it now everything had fallen into place again and everything seemed normal, traffic lights, monuments, uniforms, tower blocks, tramlines, beggars, processions; yet this did not calm me, it tormented me.

“I am sorry,” I said. “Perhaps it was I who was wrong. It seemed that way then. But everything is fine now. I am sorry.” And I made off amid their angry glares.

Yet, even now, every time (and it is often) that I find I do not understand something, then, instinctively, I am filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp the other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.

(The Flash - Italo Calvino)

come healing

Behold the gates of mercy

In arbitrary space

And none of us deserving

The cruelty or the grace

O solitude of longing

Where love has been confined

Come healing of the body

Come healing of the mind

O see the darkness yielding

That tore the light apart

Come healing of the reason

Come healing of the heart

(Leonard Cohen)

..

sitting in quietude

Winter has a message of its own

When the cold is like a flower-

Flowers have their fragrance, winter has its handful of memories.

The shadow of withered branch, like lean blue smoke,

Paints a stroke across the afternoon window.

In the cold the sunlight grows pale and slanted.

It is just like this.

I sip the tea quietly

As if waiting for a guest to speak.

Li Jinfa

easy

Easy is what we must be — 

holding and taking, holding and letting go.

Hofmannsthal