You do not have to be good
This is one of my favorite poems of all time (thx to Jill for the reminder). Given that it says everything I could (and better, with craft and elegance), I'll not say much. But everytime I read this poem, I find something new.

Today--from where I stand, now--it's bringing me back to the ordinary flesh and blood that we are. That we aren't some esoteric mind that somehow rises above our lowly animal selves. When we die, it's our bodies that are forever, not our riotous minds. Our bodies are literally immortal--changing and eventually getting absorbed into dirt, plants, sky, water, air--immutable but also always changing.

Of course, all that verbage (and the words below, for that matter) are just products of various thoughts, and therefore necessarily ephemeral, mortal, and may well be undone in the next moment...
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
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Labels: inspiration, poetry, words

:: ewee 1:49:00 PM [+] :: 1 comments ::
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:: Monday, August 17, 2009 ::

Beyond my imagination...
Good, productive weekend of bursty work patterns and getting things done. Think I've been overdoing it for a bit, because I'm worn out and honestly a bit sick today (tired, achy, slow). But that's also data, and so I'm resting and getting myself together for the next charge. In the meantime, I got to finish a book of substance (recommended by the general herself): Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.

It's a quick read, but far from easy. It's wrenchingly, quietly, painfully, beautifully difficult in places. And transcendent throughout. She's not my favorite writer (The Namesake gets a nod, but that's it), and at times I disliked her stories intensely. Perhaps the quiet ordinary despair was just too much for a midweek commute read. But she's a good writer, and excellent at her craft--she uses words so well and with such skill, that her prose is transparent, light-weight, and devastating.

If you only have 15 minutes, read the last story in the series. But I'd recommend just reading the entire book, and savoring the last story at the end.
"Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have know, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

-from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Labels: books, eyeshurt, inspiration, random, reading, words

:: ewee 5:15:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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