Thursday, June 12, 2008

• Short and sweet

  I am so proud of myself. Today is the first time I managed to keep a coffee break with a friend to 30 minutes . I had told her beforehand that I would be out of there in half an hour, that I would love to meet up (because I do), but that I could only manage a short chat. Now I feel good. Well, in fact I feel lousy, but despite feeling lousy I feel good.

  On another note - I have started on Sjeng's extensive poetry collection. Poetry is easier to read than novels I find - you just let the words play, no story no plot - more like an impression or a taste. My mum mentioned she has dug up my own poetry books so I'll be complete next week. It's wondrous how art can soothe and be consoling. So, the volume I'm reading now is 'Four Quartets' by TS Eliot - full of mysticism and religious symbolism which speaks to me now.

  "I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
  Which shall be the darkness of God. As in a theatre,
  The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed"

  ...

  "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
  For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
  For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
  But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
  Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
  So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing"

  ...

  "To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
  You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstacy.
  In order to arrive at what you do not know
  You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance
  In order to possess what you do not possess
  You must go by the way of dispossession
  In order to arrive at what you are not
  You must go through the way in which you are not
  And what you do not know is the only thing you know
  And what you own is what you do not own
  And where you are is where you are not."

  It's beautiful. In fact the last bit Eliot copied from a Spanish mystic - the bit about the way with no ecstacy. Sometimes paradoxes are used so cheaply, too easily. But they can have a deep wisdom to them.

  I still like superficial poems too - I remember a London one: Celia Celia by Adrian Mitchell

  When I am sad and weary
  When I think all hope has gone
  When I walk along High Holborn
  I think of you with nothing on

  It makes me smile because High Holborn must be one of the busiest saddest London Streets full of people hurrying to get from A to B, exhausted and hollowed by their fastpaced lives. A place where no one really belongs, an in between. I used to go to a gym there full of businesspeople trying to de-stress after work. Honestly, the only way to get a smile on your face in that environment is by thinking about your naked lover. Isn't that what lovers and close friendships are for: to create a space in which you can just be, and smile at the craziness of it all? I don't think city living is a bad thing -at all- I like watching it, and I like being a part of it. But we need those sacred places to come home to to survive.

  Currently Reading Four Quartets By T. S. Eliot see related

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