3296. "You must save what you can of your life;
by Jeff Nunokawa on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 4:36am ·
you mustn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part (Henry James, Portrait of a Lady).
A good man, strong as oak and clear as day; lucid and passionate with all of his might for the half destroyed and quite entrapped woman he loves: He would give his whole life to help protect what part could be saved of hers: She had wanted help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. What keeps her from accepting the rescue he offers? I've spent a long time thinking about it, and I've never really been able to figure it out. For the life of me, I can't see why. Running beneath the surface of the renunciation of all comfort and joy, there must be secret sources among which research will discover nothing irrelevant(Hugh Kenner on "Ash Wednesday").
Maybe, amongst these, (hope so) there are secret sources of salvation, as well as doom; underground springs whose waters--like a resurrection or a warming season--might help revive a parched and perished life. Who knows? Could be. Meanwhile--what was that? Did you hear that?
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Note: At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea (T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding", Four Quartets).
reposted sans permission and all copyright held by the good professor, JN.
I particularly liked the Eliot quote, "not known, not looked for / But heard, half-heard in the stillness / between two waves..." There are those sparks of life, love, content, spiritual and intellectual purpose in between the two waves of quotidien concerns of making it through the day. And the night. One's own intense dance between the crushing rock of what is and how might I make it better.
And so I will to the dance for the day, having caffeinated, fed, and fooled around some. And it's only 10:10.
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
ReplyDeleteIf the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.