The Book of Hours

(The Book of Hours) (1899-1903)

• Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you;
  plug up my ears, and I can still hear;
  even without feet I can walk toward you,
  and without mouth I can still implore.
  Break off my arms, and I will hold you
  with my heart as if it were a hand;
  strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;
  and should you set fire to my brain,
  I still can carry you with my blood.

Rainer Maria Rilke
I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough

• to make every hour holy.
  I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough
  just to stand before you like a thing,
  dark and shrewd.
  I want my will, and I want to be with my will
  as it moves towards deed;
  and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,
  when something is approaching,
  I want to be with those who are wise
  or else alone.

  In Celebration of Me (1909)

• I am so afraid of people's words.
  They describe so distinctly everything:
  And this they call dog and that they call house,
  here the start and there the end.

  I worry about their mockery with words,
  they know everything, what will be, what was;
  no mountain is still miraculous;
  and their house and yard lead right up to God.

  I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
  I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
  But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
  That's how you kill.

  • Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder
  • 
    
  Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

LXIV

you will know that I do and do not love you

just as life is of two minds,

a word is one wing of silence,

and fire is half made of ice.

I love you just so I can begin to love you,

to begin anew at the infinite

and to be able never to stop loving you;

For these reasons I do not love you yet.

I do and do not love you as if I held

in my hands the keys to every happiness

and an uncertain unhappy fate.

My love has two lifetimes to love you.

That's how I can love you when I don't,

and still love you when I do.

-- Rafael Campo

gift from my protector demon

piritual and Healing Properties of Rose Quartz:Rose quartz is an excellent heart-healing gemstone. It is a nature remedy that can be used for treating any issue that needs emotional healing. Rose quartz is a pink-colored crystal that carries a very gentle and soothing energy and gives comfort to anyone whose heart has been wounded.

Remedy Benefits of Rose Quartz:

• Encourages self love
• Heals emotional body
• Eases heartache
• Relieves loneliness
• Releases repressed hurts
• Promotes forgiveness
• Offers inner peace

ephemeral bubbles

	Just as fog is dispelled by the strength of the sun and is dispelled no other way, preconception is cleared by the strength of realization. There's no other way of clearing preconceptions. Experience them as baseless dreams. Experience them as ephemeral bubbles. Experience them as insubstantial rainbows. Experience them as indivisible space. - Milarepa, "Drinking the Mountain Stream"

salutation to the ever-new (gentle) dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth;
The glory of action;
The splendor of achievement;

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
-Kalidasa

keeeping quiet

KEEPING QUIET

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), "Keeping Quiet"
Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid)
Jonathan Cape, London, 1972, pp.27-29
(original Estravagario, Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1958)"

lessons from my child

Things I've learned at hippie camp:
- you can train your hair off shampoo
- everything you love will eventually rip and smell like mildew, but it is all still lovable
- people can sit in a room and stargaze while it's raining
- things are better when you act crazy
...- never eat a pickled hotdog of unknown origin that's been sitting in the hole in the ceiling upholstery of a hot van
- sometimes the people in charge have absolutely no idea what's going on
- 40 sixteen-year-olds can fit in a 15'x15' room