Once in a while, tired of the daily paper and the constant haranguing it brings, I must rely on better sources to fill me up (re-energize myself) and get me going again.
by Charlie Leck

I read this yesterday in my daily Rilke readings (taken from the Ninth Duino Elegy) and I liked it very much…

“A hunger drives us.
We want to contain it all in our naked hands,
our brimming senses, our speechless hearts.
We want to become it, or offer it – but to whom?
We could hold it forever – but, after all,
what can we keep? Not the beholding,
so slow to learn. Not anything that has happened here.
Nothing. There are hurts. And, always, the hardships.
And there’s the long knowing of love – all of it
unsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see:
these are better unsaid.”

It’s a nice break (no?) from the daily head-slaps that we get from the newspapers – especially on this day following the horrible storm in Oklahoma and the sorrow that the reports are bringing.

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From the Road

I'm traveling right now, while on a winter vacation. There isn't any time for serious writing, though I hope to post a major blog in the next few days. In the meantime, let me leave you with a piece I read last night that I think deserves your thought.
by Charlie Leck

Here a bit of Rainer Maria Rilke's thinking from early in the twentieth century. I've become quite enamoured with Rilke after beginning to read him at the first of the year. This piece comes from his Letters to a Young Poet (1904). Let's call it Being a Room.

"If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn't insecurity with all its dangers so much more human?

"We are not prisoners of that room."

 This particular letter was written from Borgeby gaard, in Sweden. It was recently translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows for their book, A Year with Rilke.

I'll return with something in two days.