To be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night... to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in the Spring... these are some of the rewards of a simple life
I must have lived a thousand lives
already.
Sometimes I wonder
who was I before this one?
I like to think
we’re made of remnants,
leftover sparks and fingerprints
from everyone we’ve ever been.
The way old books call to me,
how the breeze through a dress
makes me feel like I’ve returned.
How I crave to make things from
scratch,
from soil I’ve worked,
from seeds that feel familiar.
I fall for antiques
like they’ve held my hands before.
And pipe tobacco makes me ache
for something I can’t quite name.
Whoever I’ve been,
whoever I am
I’m pretty fucking neat.
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
People do not realize just how much they are putting at risk when they don't accept what life presents them with, the questions and tasks that life sets them. When they resolve to spare themselves the pain and suffering, they owe to their nature. In so doing, they refuse to pay life's dues and for this very reason, life then often leads them astray. If we don't accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that life which we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis. If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat life, to avoid something. One cannot do more than live what one really is. And we are all made up of opposites and conflicting tendencies. After much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to live what one really is and accept the difficulties that arise as a result because avoidance is much worse.
"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."
— Collected Works Volume 11
People do not realize just how much they are putting at risk when they don't accept what life presents them with, the questions and tasks that life sets them. When they resolve to spare themselves the pain and suffering, they owe to their nature. In so doing, they refuse to pay life's dues and for this very reason, life then often leads them astray. If we don't accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that life which we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis. If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat life, to avoid something. One cannot do more than live what one really is. And we are all made up of opposites and conflicting tendencies. After much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to live what one really is and accept the difficulties that arise as a result because avoidance is much worse.
Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor,
for the eternal idleness of the imagined return,
for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom
of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin!
When I press summer dusks together, it is
a month of street accordions and sprinklers
laying the dust, small shadows running from me.
It is music opening and closing, Italia mia, on Bleecker,
ciao, Antonio, and the water-cries of children
tearing the rose-coloured sky in streams of paper;
it is dusk in the nostrils and the smell of water
down littered streets that lead you to no water,
and gathering islands and lemons in the mind.
There is the Hudson, like the sea aflame.
I would undress you in the summer heat,
and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.
She walks among the loveliness she made,
Between the apple blossom and the water
She walks among the patterned pied brocade,
Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter.
This is an island all her own, a place
Where bit by bit the garden grew and spread,
As if the very spirit of her grace
Had rained upon the dark and heavy bed.
She knows the path of every climbing rose,
The secret way the morning glory turns,
The deep, cool hollow where the lily grows,
And where the autumn fire of maple burns.
No stranger’s hand has touched this sacred soil,
No alien eye has seen the beauty start;
It is the fruit of years of quiet toil,
The living image of a woman’s heart.
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.
We rest. A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
It is the same! For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
Speak my name softly after I have gone.
I loved the quiet things, the flowers and the dew,
Field mice; birds homing; and the frost that shone
On nursery windows when my years were few;
And autumn mists subduing hill and plain
and blurring outlines of those older moods
that follow, after loss and grief and pain
And last and best, a gentle laugh with friends,
All bitterness foregone, and evening near.
If we be kind and faithful when day ends,
We shall not meet that ragged starveling ‘fear’
As one by one we take the unknown way
Speak my name softly there’s no more to say