“What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious.”  --Lisel Mueller

 ROMANTICS

      Johannes Brahms and

            Clara Schumann

The modern biographers worry

“how far it went,” their tender friendship.

They wonder just what it means

when he writes he thinks of her constantly,

his guardian angel, beloved friend.

The modern biographers ask

the rude, irrelevant question

of our age, as if the event

of two bodies meshing together

establishes the degree of love,

forgetting how softly Eros walked

in the nineteenth-century, how a hand

held overlong or a gaze anchored

in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart,

and nuances of address not known

in our egalitarian language

could make the redolent air

tremble and shimmer with the heat

of possibility. Each time I hear

the Intermezzi, sad

and lavish in their tenderness,

I imagine the two of them

sitting in a garden

among late-blooming roses

and dark cascades of leaves,

letting the landscape speak for them,

leaving us nothing to overhear.

Lisel Mueller

"It’s more important to concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness."  --Allen Ginsberg’s advice for aspiring writers.

"If you have a choice of two things and can't decide, take both."  --Gregory Corso, a Beat poet who was embraced by the movement after meeting Allen Ginsberg in a bar in Greenwich Village in 1950.

"I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself. I wish to obliterate my consciousness and my knowledge of independent existence, my guilts, my secretiveness."  --Allen Ginsberg in a letter to Jack Kerouac. The two men wrote many letters to each other, in which they discussed their lives and their literary visions with passion and, at times, brutal honesty.

"There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve."  --William S. Burroughs in a letter to Jack Kerouac. Burroughs was a major figure of the Beat Generation, most famous for his 1959 novel, "Naked Lunch."

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."  --Audre Lorde

"Be like a headland: the waves beat against it continuously, but it stands fast and around it the boiling water dies down. “It’s my rotten luck that this has happened to me.” On the contrary, “It’s my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I still feel no distress, since I’m unbruised by the present and unconcerned about the future.” What happened could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have carried on without letting it distress him. So why regard the incident as a piece of bad luck rather than seeing your avoidance of distress as a piece of good luck?"  --Marcus Aurelius

Real Human Grief

"Real human grief means allowing the illusion of immortality to die in us. When those whom we love with an “endless love” die, something also has to die within us. If we do not allow this to happen, we will lose touch with reality, our lives will become increasingly artificial, and we will lose our human capacity for compassion."  --Henri Nouwen

"Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don’t believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To “retire” means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again."  --Pablo Casals

The Most Important Choice

"If I die with much anger and bitterness, I will leave my family and friends behind in confusion, guilt, shame, or weakness. When I felt my death approaching, I suddenly realized how much I could influence the hearts of those whom I would leave behind. If I could truly say that I was grateful for what I had lived, eager to forgive and be forgiven, full of hope that those who loved me would continue their lives of joy and peace, and confident that Jesus who calls me would guide all who somehow belonged to my life—if I could do that—I would, in the hour of my death, reveal more true spiritual freedom than I had been able to reveal during all the years of my life. I realize on a very deep level that dying is the most important act of living. It involves a choice to bind others with guilt or to set them free with gratitude."  --Henri Nouwen

“Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.”  --Viktor Frankl

NOT ANYONE WHO SAYS

Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be

  careful and smart in matters of love,”

who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,”

but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all

but were, as it were, chosen

by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable

and beautiful and possibly even

unsuitable —

only those know what I’m talking about

in this talking about love

--Mary Oliver

One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.

[…]

This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.

[…]

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

--James Baldwin

"Love cannot be reduced to the first encounter, because it is a construction. The enigma in thinking about love is the duration of time necessary for it to flourish. In fact, it isn’t the ecstasy of those beginnings that is remarkable. The latter are clearly ecstatic, but love is above all a construction that lasts. We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world."  --Alain Badiou

“Love is a tenacious adventure… Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.”  --Alain Badiou

[The Art of Love] wants to show that love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement."  --Erich Fromm

“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”  --Erich Fromm

Suddenly a Wall Becomes a Gate

"Death is part of a much greater and much deeper event, the fullness of which we cannot comprehend, but of which we know that it is a life-bringing event. . . . What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning; what seemed to be a cause for fear proved to be a cause for courage; what seemed to be defeat proved to be victory; and what seemed to be the basis for despair proved to be the basis for hope. Suddenly a wall becomes a gate, and although we are not able to say with much clarity or precision what lies beyond the gate, the tone of all that we do and say on our way to the gate changes drastically."  --Henri Nouwen

"I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."  --Albert Einstein 

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of music."  --Albert Einstein

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measles-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t wasn’t to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver

"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we’ve lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead."  --Nelson Mandela

Franz Marc's Blue Horses

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.

I am not even surprised that I can do this.

One of the horses walks toward me.

His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm

over his blue mane, not holding on, just

     commingling.

He allows me my pleasure.

Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.

I would rather die than explain to the blue horses

     what war is.

They would either faint in horror, or simply

     find it impossible to believe.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful

     is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Now all four horses have come closer,

     are bending their faces toward me

           as if they have secrets to tell.

I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.

If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what

     could they possibly say?

--Mary Oliver

“I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people, they exist, and that they dance.”  --Mary Oliver, Blue Horses

"Today my forest is dark. The trees are sad and all the butterflies have broken wings."

"The person that tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest."

“When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.”  --Fiona Apple

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.”  --Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“The sun stopped shining for me is all. The whole story is: I am sad. I am sad all the time and the sadness is so heavy that I can’t get away from it. Not ever."  --Nina LaCour

“Whether an illness affects your heart, your arm, or your brain, it’s still an illness, and there shouldn’t be any distinction. We would never tell someone with a broken leg that they should stop wallowing and get it together. We don’t consider taking medication for an ear infection something to be ashamed of. We shouldn’t treat mental health conditions any differently. Instead, we should make it clear that getting help isn’t a sign of weakness — it’s a sign of strength  —  and we should ensure that people can get the treatment they need.”  --Michelle Obama

"I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim…”  --Frida Kahlo

“It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.”  --Matt Haig

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.”  --James Branch Cabell

“I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep."  --Ursula K. Le Guin

“Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”  --Philip K. Dick

“If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.”  --Elizabeth Wurtzel

“You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective — it just means you're human.”  --  David Mitchell

“I'm guilty of giving people more chances than they deserve but when I'm done, I'm done.”  --Turcois Ominek

"We may not know what each day has in store for us. We could be gone tomorrow. Any minute could be our goodbye. But we do have this moment. This time. Today. Right now. It takes way more effort to shell out hate than it does to allow love to flow freely in our lives. After all, it is what we were born to do."  --Grace Gealey

"There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough."  --Joanne Reed

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.”  --Robert Southey

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

“[T]he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and [the fact] that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”  --George Eliot, Middlemarch

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"  --George Eliot, Middlemarch

 Full souls are double mirrors, making still
 An endless vista of fair things before,
 Repeating things behind.

--George Eliot: Middlemarch, Book VIII. Sunset and Sunset. Chapter 72

The Ghost on the Stairs

Whether we admit it or not, how many times have we had conversations with our ghosts long after they are ‘dead’ and gone from our lives — old lovers, old teachers, bosses, family members, coaches, early enemies, schoolmates… Settling scores, setting things right, making essential points we failed to do with them in now-ancient conversations and situations.

The French have a nice phrase — “esprit déscalier” — which could be translated as the spirit of the staircase, or wit of the staircase. In other words, “the perfect comeback or witty remark that one frustratingly comes up with only when the moment for doing so has passed.” I believe we have whole conversations with our ghosts that extend the spirit of esprit d’escalier throughout our lives.

--Jonathan Carroll

Rude Lightning

A huge crack of thunder woke me at 5 this morning. A rude awakening but kind of a wonderful one as well. Later while watching manic lightning bolts and bruised purple clouds own the sky followed by more booms, the line came to me “Thunderstorms don’t care if you’re sleeping.” That made me smile. Then I thought it could be a good metaphor for the people and events that enter our lives totally unexpectedly and turn everything normal upside down for both good and bad reasons. The lover who appears out of the blue, the bad news from a doctor you never saw coming… Everything that was a moment ago isn’t anymore.

“Thunderstorms don’t care if you’re sleeping.”

--Jonathan Carroll

Thousands of days later

Not having seen each other in years, they met one day by chance and had a nice but superficial conversation on the street. Both knew there was so much more that could have been said, but it wasn’t because once those floodgates were opened, who knows what might have happened.

When they were saying good bye, he reached in his pocket and brought out a roller ball pen. Taking her hand, he turned it over and writing something on her palm, told her not to look until later. When he was finished he closed her fingers over what he’d written, kissed her on the cheek and walked away.

Of course, he must have known she would look immediately at her hand. There were seven numbers, seven very familiar numbers. Yet it took her a moment to realize why they were familiar: it was her old telephone number from back when they were together. These thousands of days later, he still remembered.

--Jonathan Carroll

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally."  --Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (1979)

"Be careful not to despise one of the least of these who are scorned and sick in this world. For this contempt and affront of yours doesn’t stop at those unfortunate fellows, but ascends through them to the presence of the Creator and Fashioner, whose image they bear. You will be greatly astonished in that day, if you see the Holy Spirit of God resting in them more than in your heart."  --St. Joseph the Hesychast, Monastic Wisdom, Seventh Letter

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."  --Mother Teresa

Your Inner Community

"Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you. . . . The wider the community of your heart, the wider the community around you."  --Henri Nouwen