Around and around and around we go. It has been more than four years since I posted. And more than seven years since I posted about the worst. But it all feels so familiar now.
Rilke could do for now. But he's far more hopeful than I feel. From Letters to A Young Poet:
Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the
pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this
shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy
about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you,
and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front
of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them
with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek
out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them,
which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again
and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own
and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the
aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but
believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance,
and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so
large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step
outside it.
I remember this quotation from a novel I am too embarrassed to name, but it involves the cutting of one's flesh in an ancient tradition - "the pain of the flesh is nothing." In my case, I would want it to be everything. What a relief that would be, manifesting something on the outside, to purge it from the inside.
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