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Nothing Strange Should Befall Us, But Only That Which Has Long Belonged To Us. We Will Gradually Learn To Realize That That Which We Call Destiny Goes Forth From Within People, Not From Without Into Them.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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Nothing Strange Should Befall

Rainer Maria Rilke

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Nothing Strange Should Befall Us, But Only That Which Has Long Belonged To Us. We Will Gradually Learn To Realize That That Which We Call Destiny Goes Forth From Within People, Not From Without Into Them.

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Works Of Art Always Spring From Those Who Have Faced The Danger, Gone To The Very End Of An Experience, To The Point Beyond Which No Human Being Can Go. The Further One Dares To Go, The More Decent, The More Personal, The More Unique A Life Becomes.

Just As The Creative Artist Is Not Allowed To Choose, Neither Is He Permitted To Turn His Back On Anything: A Single Refusal, And He Is Cast Out Of The State Of Grace And Becomes Sinful All The Way Through.

Spring Has Again Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Many Poems. Many, O So Many. For The Hardship Of Such Long Learning She Receives The Prize. Strict Was Her Teacher. The White In The Old Man's Beard Pleases Us. Now, What To Call Green, To Call Blue, We Dare To Ask: She Knows, She Knows!

Music: Breathing Of Statues. Perhaps: Silence Of Paintings. You Language Where All Language Ends. You Time Standing Vertically On The Motion Of Mortal Hearts.

Whoever You Are: In The Evening Step Out Of Your Room, Where You Know Everything; Yours Is The Last House Before The Far-off: Whoever You Are. With Your Eyes, Which In Their Weariness Barely Free Themselves From The Worn-out Threshold, You Lift Very Slowly One Black Tree And Place It Against The Sky: Slender, Alone. And You Have Made The World. And It Is Huge And Like A Word Which Grows Ripe In Silence. And As Your Will Seizes On Its Meaning, Tenderly Your Eyes Let It Go.

To All That Is Used-up, And To All The Muffled And Dumb Creatures In The World's Full Reserve, The Unsayable Sums, Joyfully Add Yourself, And Cancel The Count.

Whoever You Are, Go Out Into The Evening, Leaving Your Room, Of Which You Know Every Bit; Your House Is The Last Before The Infinite, Whoever You Are.

He Was A Worker Whose Only Desire Was To Penetrate With All His Forces Into The Humble And Difficult Significance Of His Tools. Therein Lay A Certain Renunciation Of Life, But In Just This Renunciation Lay His Triumph, For Life Entered Into His Work.

There Are Moments In Which A Rose Is More Important Than A Piece Of Bread

May You Find In Yourself Enough Patience To Endure And Enough Simplicity To Have Faith.

My Blood Is Alive With Many Voices Telling Me I Am Made Of Longing.

I Am Like A Child Who Awakes At The Light, So Safe And Securefree From Night's Fears When Dawn Breaks, In Thee I Am Ever Secure.

Swells, Marina? We Ocean, Depths, Marina? We Sky!

All Companionship Can Consist In Only The Strengthening Of Neighboring Solitudes, Giving Oneself Is By Nature Harmful To Companionship: For When A Person Abandons Himself, He Is No Longer Anything, And When Two People Both Give Themselves Up In Order To Become Closer To Each Other, There Is No Longer Any Ground Beneath Them And Their Being Together Is A Continual Falling – I Have Learned Over And Over Again, There Is Scarcely Anything More Difficult Than To Love One Another.

Fate Loves To Invent Patterns And Designs. Its Difficulty Lies In Complexity. But Life Itself Is Difficult Because Of Its Simplicity. It Has Only A Few Things Of A Grandeur Not Fit For Us.

She Who Reconciles The Ill-matched Threads Of Her Life, And Weaves Them Gratefully Into A Single Cloth – It’s She Who Drives The Loudmouths From The Hall And Clears It For A Different Celebration.

It Was Not In Me It Came And Went I Wanted To Hold It It Was Held By Wine (i No Longer Know What It Was)

It Is Good To Be Solitary, For Solitude Is Difficult; That Something Is Difficult Must Be A Reason The More For Us To Do It.

To Write Rhythmic Prose One Must Go Deep Into Oneself And Find The Anonymous And Multiple Rhythm Of The Blood. Prose Needs To Be Built Like A Cathedral. There, One Is Truly Without A Name, Without Ambition, Without Help; On Scaffoldings, Alone With One's Consciousness.

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

You Must Think That Something Is Happening Upon You, That Life Has Not Forgotten You, That It Holds You In Its Hand; It Will Not Let You Fall.

Be Patient With All That Is Uncertain In Your Heart...do Not Search For Answers, Which Will Not Be Given: You Will Not Be Able To Live Them, And Its Importat To Live Everything.

No One Can Advise Or Help You - No One. There Is Only One Thing You Should Do. Go Into Yourself. Search For The Reason That Bids You Write, Find Out Wether It Spreading Out Its Root In The Deepest Places Of Your Heart...delve Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

My Art Is Representational By Choice....if The Art Of Painting Is To Survive, It Must Describe And Express People, Their Lives And Times. It Must Communicate.

Someday You Will Name Me, Then Gently Place Those Burning Holy Roses In My Hair.

Society Has Been Able To Create Refuges Of Every Sort, For Since It Preferred To Take Love-life As An Amusement, It Also Had To Give It An Easy Form, Cheap, Safe, And Sure, As Public Amusements Are.

As The Arrow Endures The String, And In The Gathering Momentum Becomes More Than Itself. Because To Stay Is To Be Nowhere.

Children Are Still The Way You Were As A Child, Sad And Happy In Just The Same Way-and If You Think Of Your Childhood, You Once Again Live Among Them, Among The Solitary Children.

Do You Recall, From Your Childhood On, How Very Much This Life Of Yours Has Longed For Greatness? I See It Now, How From The Vantage Point Of Greatness It Longs For Even Greater Greatness. That Is Why It Does Not Let Up Being Difficult, But That Is Also Why It Will Not Cease To Grow.

And Now Let Us Believe In A Long Year That Is Given To Us, New, Untouched, Full Of Things That Have Never Been, Full Of Work That Has Never Been Done, Full Of Tasks, Claims, And Demands; And Let Us See That We Learn To Take It Without Letting Fall Too Much Of What It Has To Bestow Upon Those Who Demand Of It Necessary, Serious, And Great Things.

That Is Why Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Are Not Yet Capable Of Love: It Is Something They Must Learn. With Their Whole Being, With All Their Forces, Gathered Around Their Solitary, Anxious, Upward-beating Heart, They Must Learn To Love.

This Is The Miracle That Happens Every Time To Those Who Really Love: The More They Give, The More They Possess.

Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

If You Trust In Nature, In The Small Things That Hardly Anyone Sees And That Can So Suddenly Become Huge, Immeasurable; If You Have This Love For What Is Humble And Try Very Simply, As Someone Who Serves, To Win The Confidence Of What Seems Poor, Then Everything Will Become Easier For You.

More Unsayable Than All Other Things Are Works Of Art, Those Mysterious Existences, Whose Life Endures Beside Our Own Small, Transitory Life.

Go Into Yourself And See How Deep The Place Is From Which Your Life Flows.

Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.

As People Used To Be Wrong About The Motion Of The Sun, So They Are Still Wrong About The Motion Of The Future. The Future Stands Still, It Is We Who Move In Infinite Space.

Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper And Walks Outdoors, And Keeps On Walking, Because Of A Church That Stands Somewhere In The East. And His Children Say Blessings On Him As If He Were Dead. And Another Man, Who Remains Inside His Own House, Stays There, Inside The Dishes And In The Glasses, So That His Children Have To Go Far Out Into The World Toward That Same Church, Which He Forgot.

You Who Let Yourselves Feel: Enter The Breathing That Is More Than Your Own. Let It Brush Your Cheeks As It Divides And Rejoins Behind You. The Trees You Planted In Childhood Have Grown Too Heavy. You Cannot Bring Them Along. Give Yourselves To The Air, To What You Cannot Hold.

Be Ahead Of All Parting, As Though It Already Were Behind You.

[a]t Bottom, And Just In The Deepest And Most Important Things, We Are Unutterably Alone, And For One Person To Be Able To Advise Or Even Help Another, A Lot Must Happen, A Lot Must Go Well, A Whole Constellation Of Things Must Come Right In Order Once To Succeed.

Never Believe Fate Is More Than The Condensation Of Childhood.

Love Consists Of This: Two Solitudes That Meet, Protect And Great Each Other.

Falling In Love

Be Out Of Sync With Your Times For Just One Day, And You Will See How Much Eternity You Contain Within You.

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.

We Make Our Way Through Everything Like Thread Passing Through Fabric, Giving Shape To Images That We Ourselves Do Not Know.

Every Happiness Is The Child Of A Separation It Did Not Think It Could Survive.

He Does Not Always Remain Bent Over The Pages; He Often Leans Back And Closes His Eyes Over A Line He Has Been Reading Again, And Its Meaning Spreads Through His Blood.

Do Not, Do Not, Do Not Books For Ever Hammer At People Like Perpetual Bells? When, Between Two Books, Silent Sky Appears: Be Glad

Bound By Conventions, People Tend To Reach For What Is Easy. Here We Must Be Unafraid Of What Is Difficult. For All Living Beings In Nature Must Unfold In Their Particular Way And Become Themselves Despite All Opposition.

A Billion Stars Go Spinning Through The Night, / Glittering Above Your Head, / But In You Is The Presence That Will Be / When All The Stars Are Dead.

I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken.

Somewhere There Is An Ancient Enmity Between Our Daily Life And The Great Work. Help Me In Saying It, To Understand It.

Love Is Something Difficult And It Is More Difficult Than Other Things Because In Other Conflicts Nature Herself Enjoins Men To Collect Themselves, To Take Themselves Firmly In The Hand With All Their Strength, While In The Heightening Of Love The Impulse Is To Give Oneself Wholly Away.

If Your Everyday Life Appears To Be Unworthy Subject Matter, Do Not Complain To Life. Complain To Yourself, Lament That You Are Not Poet Enough To Call Up Its Wealth.

True Singing Is A Different Breath, About Nothing.

Let Your Beauty Manifest Itself Without Talking And Calculation. You Are Silent. It Says For You: I Am. And Comes In Meaning Thousandfold, Comes At Long Last Over Everyone.

If We Surrendered To Earth’s Intelligence We Could Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees. Instead We Entangle Ourselves In Knots Of Our Own Making And Struggle, Lonely And Confused. So Like Children, We Begin Again... To Fall, Patiently To Trust Our Heaviness. Even A Bird Has To Do That Before He Can Fly. (from The Poem "how Sure Gravity's Law")

All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.

You, Darkness, Of Whom I Am Born- I Love You More Than The Flame That Limits The World To The Circle It Illumines And Excludes The Rest.

I Love You More

Our Being Is Continually Undergoing And Entering Upon Changes. ... We Must, Strictly Speaking, At Every Moment Give Each Other Up And Let Each Other Go And Not Hold Each Other Back.

Dying Is Strange And Hard If It Is Not Our Death, But A Death That Takes Us By Storm, When We've Ripened None Within Us.

It Is True That These Mysteries Are Dreadful, And People Have Always Drawn Away From Them. But Where Can We Find Anything Sweet And Glorious That Would Never Wear This Mask, The Mask Of The Dreadful? Whoever Does Not, Sometimes Or Other, Give His Full Consent, His Full And Joyous Consent To The Dreadfulness Of Life, Can Never Take Possession Of The Unutterable Abundance And Power Of Our Existence; Can Only Walk On Its Edge, And One Day, When The Judgment Is Given, Will Have Been Neither Alive Nor Dead.

Those Tasks That Have Been Entrusted To Us Are Difficult; Almost Everything Serious Is Difficult; And Everything Is Serious.

. . . Denn Da Ist Keine Stelle, Die Dich Nicht Sieht. Du Musst Dein Leben Andern. (... For There Is No Place That Does Not See You. You Must Change Your Life.)

So This Is Where People Come To Live; I Would Have Thought It Is A City To Die In.

Everything Is Gestation And Bringing Forth. To Let Each Impression And Each Germ Of Feeling Come To Completion Wholly In Itself, In The Dark, In The Inexpressible, The Unconscious, Beyond The Reach Of One's Own Intelligence, And Await With Deep Humility And Patience The Birth-hour Of A New Clarity: That Alone Is Living The Artist's Life.

...a Carefree Letting Go Of Oneself, Not A Caution, But A Wise Blindness.

Joy Is A Marvelous Increasing Of What Exists, A Pure Addition Out Of Nothingness.

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors, And One Has To Leave Them Alone Completely, So That They Can Settle The Matter Among Themselves. Their Intercourse: This Is The Whole Of Painting. Whoever Meddles, Arranges, Injects His Human Deliberation, His Wit, His Advocacy, His Intellectual Agility In Any Way, Is Already Disturbing And Clouding Their Activity.

People Have (with The Help Of Conventions) Oriented All Their Solutions Toward The Easy And Toward The Easiest Side Of The Easy; But It Is Clear That We Must Hold To What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Holds To It, Everything In Nature Grows And Defends Itself In Its Own Way And Is Characteristically And Spontaneously Itself, Seeks At All Costs To Be So And Against All Opposition.

Find Out The Reason That Commands You To Write; See Whether It Has Spread Its Roots Into The Very Depth Of Your Heart; Confess To Yourself You Would Have To Die If You Were Forbidden To Write.

It Is Always What I Have Already Said: Always The Wish That You May Find Patience Enough In Yourself To Endure, And Simplicity Enough To Believe; That You May Acquire More And More Confidence In That Which Is Difficult, And In Your Solitude Among Others. And For The Rest, Let Life Happen To You. Believe Me: Life Is Right, In Any Case.

He Who Understands One Thing Understands Everything, For The Same Laws Are In All.

The Only Journey Is The One Within.

Do Not Assume That He Who Seeks To Comfort You Now, Lives Untroubled Among The Simple And Quiet Words That Sometimes Do You Good. His Life May Also Have Much Sadness And Difficulty, That Remains Far Beyond Yours. Were It Otherwise, He Would Never Have Been Able To Find These Words.

We Discover That We Do Not Know Our Role; We Look For A Mirror; We Want To Remove Our Make-up And Take Off What Is False And Real. But Somewhere A Piece Of Disguise That We Forgot Still Sticks To Us. A Trace Of Exaggeration Remains In Our Eyebrows; We Do Not Notice That The Corners Of Our Mouth Are Bent. And So We Walk Around, A Mockery And A Mere Half: Neither Having Achieved Being Nor Actors.

Only Those Sadnesses Are Dangerous And Bad Which One Carries About Among People In Order To Drown Them Out.

And When Suddenly The God Stopped Her And, With Anguish In His Cry, Uttered The Words: ‘he Has Turned Round’ – She Comprehended Nothing And Said Softly: ‘who?

It Almost Seems As If Autumn Were The True Creator, More Creative Than The Spring, Which Is Too Even-toned, More Creative When It Comes With Its Will-to-change And Shatters The Much Too Ready-made, Self-satisfied And Really Almost Bourgeois-complacent Image Of Summer.

All Emotions Are Pure Which Gather You And Lift You Up; That Emotion Is Impure Which Seizes Only One Side Of Your Being And So Distorts You.

Whoever Now Makes Himself Bigger, Freer And More Human In His Own Existence, Is Doing His Part Toward Peace, — As Yet It Must Be Worked At In An Inward Direction, Not Until A Few Have It All Big And Ready Within Them Can It Let Itself Be Brought Into The World.

Everything In The World Of Things And Animals Is Still Filled With Happening, Which You Can Take Part In.

I Implore Those Who Love Me To Love My Solitude.

Have Patience With Everything That Remains Unsolved In Your Heart. Do Not Despair If The Answers Don't Come Immediately. Some Answers Are Only Revealed With The Passage Of Time.

What Is Needed Is, In The End, Simply This: Solitude, Great Inner Solitude.

We Are The Bees Of The Invisible. We Madly Gather The Honey Of The Visible To Store It In The Great Golden Hive Of The Invisible.

You Must Change Your Life.

Changing Your Life

You Have Had Many Sadnesses, Large Ones, Which Passed. ... But Please, Ask Yourself Whether These Large Sadnesses Haven't Rather Gone Right Through You [that Is, Passed Through You]. Perhaps Many Things Inside You Have Been Transformed; Perhaps Somewhere, Someplace Deep Inside Your Being, You Have Undergone Important Changes While You Were Sad.

Of All My Books, I Find Only A Few Indispensible.

May You Gain More And More Confidence In What Is Difficult And In Your Solitude Among Other People.

Often A Star Was Waiting For You To Notice It. A Wave Rolled Toward You Out Of The Distant Path, Or As You Walked Under An Open Window, A Violin Yielded Itself To Your Hearing. All This Was Mission.

The Knowledge Of Impermanence That Haunts Our Days Is Their Very Fragrance.

If Your Daily Life Seems Poor, Do Not Blame It; Blame Yourself That You Are Not Poet Enough To Call Forth Its Riches; For The Creator, There Is No Poverty.

If There Is Anything Unhealthy In Your Reactions, Just Bear In Mind That Sickness Is The Means By Which An Organism Frees Itself From What Is Alien; So One Must Simply Help It To Be Sick, To Have Its Whole Sickness And To Break Out With It, Since That Is The Way It Gets Better.

You Darkness, That I Come From, I Love You More Than All The Fires That Fence In The World.

I Love You More

I Could Give You No Advice But This: To Go Into Yourself And To Explore The Depths Where Your Life Wells Forth.

Look, We Don't Love Like Flowers With Only One Season Behind Us; When We Love, A Sap Older Than Memory Rises In Our Arms.

Weren't You Always Distracted By Expectation, As If Every Event Announced A Beloved? (where Can You Find A Place To Keep Her, With All The Huge Strange Thoughts Inside You Going And Coming And Often Staying All Night.).

It Wasn't His, It Wasn't My Fault, We Both Had Nothing Except Patience, But Death Has None. I Saw Him Come (how Meanly!) And I Watched Him As He Took And Took: None Of It I Could Claim As Mine.

The Creator Must Be A World For Himself And Must Find Everything In Himself And In Nature, To Whom His Whole Life Is Devoted.

Fame, That Public Destruction Of One In Process Of Becoming, Into Whose Building-ground The Mob Breaks, Displacing His Stones.

It Is Possible I Am Pushing Through Solid Rock, Like The Vein Of Ore Encased, Alone. I Am Such A Long Way In I Can See No Way Through And No Space. Everything Is Close To My Face And Everything Close To My Face Is Stone. I Don't Have Much Knowledge Yet In Grief, So This Darkness Makes Me Feel Small. You, Be The Master; Make Yourself Fierce; Break In. And Then Your Great Transforming Will Happen To Me And My Great Grief Cry Will Happen To You.

Beauty Is Only The Start Of Bearable Terror.

The Sky Puts On The Darkening Blue Coat Held For It By A Row Of Ancient Trees; You Watch: And The Lands Grow Distant In Your Sight, One Journeying To Heaven, One That Falls; And Leave You, Not At Home In Either One, Not Quite So Still And Dark As The Darkened Houses, Not Calling To Eternity With The Passion Of What Becomes A Star Each Night, And Rises; And Leave You (inexpressibly To Unravel) Your Life, With Its Immensity And Fear, So That, Now Bounded, Now Immeasurable It Is Alternately Stone In You And Star.

For Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror Which We Are Barely Able To Endure, And It Amazes Us So, Because It Serenely Disdains To Destroy Us. Every Angel Is Terrible.

Describe Your Sorrows And Desires, Passing Thoughts And The Belief In Some Sort Of Beauty-describe All These With Loving, Quiet, Humble Sincerity, And Use, To Express Yourself, The Things In Your Environment, The Images From Your Dreams, And The Objects Of Your Memory.

Perhaps The Great Renewal Of The World Will Consist Of This, That Man And Woman, Freed Of All Confused Feelings And Desires, Shall No Longer Seek Each Other As Opposites, But Simply As Members Of A Family And Neighbors, And Will Unite As Human Beings, In Order To Simply, Earnestly, Patiently, And Jointly Bear The Heavy Responsibility Of Sexuality That Has Been Entrusted To Them.

The Longer I Live, The More Necessary It Seems To Me To Endure, To Copy The Whole Dictation Of Existence To The End, For It Might Be That Only The Last Sentence Contains That Small, Perhaps Inconspicuous Word Through Which All Laboriously Learned And Not Understood Orients Itself Toward Glorious Sense.

Once The Realization Is Accepted That Even Between The Closest Human Beings Infinite Distances Continue, A Wonderful Living Side By Side Can Grow, If They Succeed In Loving The Distance Between Them Which Makes It Possible For Each To See The Other Whole Against The Sky.

Nearly Everything That Matters Is A Challenge, And Everything Matters.

But Because Truly Being Here Is So Much; Because Everything Here Apparently Needs Us, This Fleeting World, Which In Some Strange Way Keeps Calling To Us. Us, The Most Fleeting Of All.

There Is Time Only To Work Slowly There Is No Time Not To Love

It Is A Tremendous Act Of Violence To Begin Anything. I Am Not Able To Begin. I Simply Skip What Should Be The Beginning.

May What I Do Flow From Me Like A River, No Forcing And No Holding Back, The Way It Is With Children.

Perhaps All The Dragons In Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Act, Just Once, With Beauty And Courage. Perhaps Everything That Frightens Us Is, In Its Deepest Essence, Something Helpless That Wants Our Love.

But Suppose The Endlessly Dead Were To Wake In Us Some Emblem: They Might Point To The Catkins Hanging From The Empty Hazel Trees, Or Direct Us To The Rain Descending On Black Earth In Early Spring. --- And We, Who Always Think Of Happiness Rising, Would Feel The Emotion That Almost Baffles Us When A Happy Thing Falls.

A Person Isn't Who They Are During The Last Conversation You Had With Them - They're Who They've Been Throughout Your Whole Relationship.

There Is Only One Journey. Going Inside Yourself.

Where Something Becomes Extremely Difficult And Unbearable, There We Also Stand Always Already Quite Near Its Transformation.

I Live My Life In Widening Circles That Reach Out Across The World.

That Is The Principal Thing-not To Remain With The Dream, With The Intention, With The Being-in-the-mood, But Always Forcibly To Convert It All Into Things.

As Bees Gather Honey, So We Collect What Is Sweetest Out Of All Things And Build.

Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism.

In This There Is No Measuring With Time, A Year Doesn’t Matter, And Ten Years Are Nothing. Being An Artist Means: Not Numbering And Counting, But Ripening Like A Tree, Which Doesn’t Force Its Sap, And Stands Confidently In The Storms Of Spring, Not Afraid That Afterward Summer May Not Come. It Does Come. But It Comes Only To Those Who Are Patient, Who Are There As If Eternity Lay Before Them, So Unconcernedly Silent And Vast. I Learn It Every Day Of My Life, Learn It With Pain I Am Grateful For: Patience Is Everything!

Truly It Is Glorious, Our Being Here.

A Merging Of Two People Is An Impossibility, And Where It Seems To Exist, It Is A Hemming-in, A Mutual Consent That Robs One Party Or Both Parties Of Their Fullest Freedom And Development.

You Are Not Too Old And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out It's Own Secret

It Is Part Of The Nature Of Every Definitive Love That Sooner Or Later It Can Reach The Beloved Only In Infinity.

Sooner Or Later

With Poems One Accomplishes So Little When One Writes Them Early. One Should Hold Off And Gather Sense And Sweetness A Whole Life Long, A Long Life If Possible, And Then, Right At The End, One Could Perhaps Write Ten Lines That Are Good.

If We Surrendered To Earth's Intelligence We Could Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees.

There Are Quite A Number Of People In The Reading-room; But One Is Not Aware Of Them. They Are Inside The Books. They Move, Sometimes, Within The Pages Like Sleepers Turning Over Between Two Dreams. Ah, How Good It Is To Be Among People Who Are Reading.

Is Not Impermanence The Very Fragrance Of Our Days?

At The Bottom No One In Life Can Help Anyone Else In Life; This One Experiences Over And Over In Every Conflict And Every Perplexity: That One Is Alone. That Isn't As Bad As It May First Appear; And Again It Is The Best Thing In Life That Each Should Have Everything In Himself; His Fate, His Future, His Whole Expanse And World.

For Bel.i.eve Me, The More One Is, The Richer Is All One Experiences. And Whoever Wants To Have Deep Love In His Life Must Collect And Save For It And Gather Honey.

Ah, How Good It Is To Be Among People Who Are Reading!

We Must Assume Our Existence As Broadly As We In Any Way Can; Everything, Even The Unheard - Of, Must Be Possible In It. This Is At Bottom The Only Courage That Is Demanded Of Us: To Have Courage For The Most Strange, The Most Inexplicable.

I Love The Dark Hours Of My Being. My Mind Deepens Into Them. There I Can Find, As In Old Letters, The Days Of My Life, Already Lived, And Held Like A Legend, And Understood.

For Our Part, When We Feel, We Evaporate; Ah, We Breathe Ourselves Out And Away; With Each New Heartfire We Give Off A Fainter Scent. True, Someone May Tell Us: You're In My Blood, This Room, Spring Itself Is Filled With You . . . To What End? He Can't Hold Us, We Vanish Within Him And Around Him.

Perhaps Creating Something Is Nothing But An Act Of Profound Remembrance.

Make Your Ego Porous. Will Is Of Little Importance, Complaining Is Nothing, Fame Is Nothing. Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

Death Is The Side Of Life Which Is Turned Away From Us.

Ideally A Painter (and, Generally, An Artist) Should Not Become Conscious Of His Insights: Without Taking The Detour Through His Reflective Processes, And Incomprehensibly To Himself, All His Progress Should Enter So Swiftly Into The Work That He Is Unable To Recognize Them In The Moment Of Transition. Alas, The Artist Who Waits In Ambush There, Watching, Detaining Them, Will Find Them Transformed Like The Beautiful Gold In The Fairy Tale Which Cannot Remain Gold Because Some Small Detail Was Not Taken Care Of.

To Love Is Good, Too: Love Being Difficult. For One Human Being To Love Another: That Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Of All Our Tasks, The Ultimate, The Last Test And Proof, The Work For Which All Other Work Is But Preparation. Love Is A High Inducement To The Individual To Ripen, To Become Something In Himself, To Become World For Himself For Another's Sake, It Is A Great Exacting Claim Upon Him, Something That Chooses Him Out And Calls Him To Vast Things.

I Live Not In Dreams But In Contemplation Of A Reality That Is Perhaps The Future.

Every Angel Is Terrifying.

Animals See The Unobstructed World With Their Whole Eyes. But Our Eyes, Turned Back Upon Themselves, Encircle And Seek To Snare The World, Setting Traps For Freedom.

Surely All Art Is The Result Of One's Having Been In Danger, Of Having Gone Through An Experience All The Way To The End, Where No One Can Go Any Further.

One Moment Your Life Is A Stone In You, And The Next Moment A Star!

This Is The Miracle That Happens Every Time To Those Who Really Love; The More They Give, The More They Possess Of That Precious Nourishing Love From Which Flowers And Children Have Their Strength And Which Could Help All Human Beings If They Would Take It Without Doubting.

Perhaps Then, Some Day Far In The Future, You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Live Your Way Into The Answer.

Earth, My Dearest, Oh Believe Me, You No Longer Need Your Springtimes To Win Me Over...unspeakably, I Have Belonged To You, From The Flush.

It Is Clear That We Must Trust What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Trusts In It, Everything In Nature Grows And Defends Itself Any Way It Can And Is Spontaneously Itself, Tries To Be Itself At All Costs And Against All Opposition. We Know Little, But That We Must Trust In What Is Difficult Is A Certainty That Will Never Abandon Us; It Is Good To Be Solitary, For Solitude Is Difficult; That Something Is Difficult Must Be One More Reason For Us To Do It.

I Never Read Anything Concerning My Work. I Feel That Criticism Is A Letter To The Public Which The Author, Since It Is Not Directed To Him, Does Not Have To Open And Read.

I Hold This To Be The Highest Task For A Bond Between Two People: That Each Protects The Solitude Of The Other.

Oh Longing For Places That Were Not Cherished Enough In That Fleeting Hour How I Long To Make Good From Afar The Forgotten Gesture, The Additional Act.

But Your Solitude Will Be A Support And A Home For You, Even In The Midst Of Very Unfamiliar Circumstances, And From It You Will Find All Your Paths.

All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood.

Thus We Live, Forever Taking Leave.

I Have Patience For Centuries In Me And Will Live As Though My Time Were Very Big.

Having Patience

Now For Some Heartwork.

Your Life Will Still Find Its Own Paths From There, And That They May Be Good, Rich, And Wide Is What I Wish For You, More Than I Can Say.

And Yet, For Some Time Now I Have Believed That It Is Our Own Force, All Our Own Force That Is Still Too Great For Us. It Is True We Do Not Know It; But Is It Not Just That Which Is Most Our Own Of Which We Know The Least?

Again And Again In History Some People Wake Up. They Have No Ground In The Crowd And Move To Broader Deeper Laws. They Carry Strange Customs With Them And Demand Room For Bold And Audacious Action. The Future Speaks Ruthlessly Through Them. They Change The World.

I Want To Unfold. I Don't Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie, And I Want My Grasp Of Things To Be True. I Want To Describe Myself Like A Painting That I Looked At Closely For A Long Time, Like A Saying That I Finally Understood, Like The Pitcher I Use Every Day, Like The Face Of My Mother, Like A Ship That Carried Me Through The Wildest Storm Of All.

If There Is Nothing You Can Share With Other People, Try To Be Close To Things, They Will Not Abandon You; And The Nights Are Still Here And The Winds That Move Through The Trees And Across Many Lands; Everything In The World Of Things And Animals Is Still Filled With Happening, Which You Can Take Part In.

Only Someone Who Is Ready For Everything, Who Doesn't Exclude Any Experience, Even The Most Incomprehensible, Will Live The Relationship With Another Person As Something Alive And Will Himself Sound The Depths Of His Own Being.

I Am Too Alone In The World And Not Alone Enough To Make Every Moment Holy.

Those Doves Below, The Ones Utterly Cared For, Never Endangered Ones, Cannot Know Tenderness.

The Deep Parts Of My Life Pour Onward, As If The River Shores Were Opening Out. I Feel Closer To What Language Can't Reach. With My Senses, As With Birds, I Climb Into The Windy Heaven... In The Ponds Broken Off From The Sky. . .

Be Patient With All That Is Unsolved In Your Life. Learn To Love The Questions Themselves, Until Some Distant Day, Without Your Knowing, You Will Have Lived Into The Answers.

... Be Indulgent Toward Those Who ... Are Afraid Of The Aloneness That You Trust.

Nothing Touches A Work Of Art So Little As Criticism.

I Prayed To Rediscover My Childhood, And It Has Come Back, And I Feel That It Is Just As Difficult As It Used To Be, And That Growing Older Has Served No Purpose At All.

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

Losing Too Is Still Ours; And Even Forgetting Still Has A Shape In The Kingdom Of Transformation. When Something's Let Go Of, It Circles; And Though We Are Rarely The Center Of The Circle, It Draws Around Us Its Unbroken, Marvelous Curve.

Fig Tree, How Long It's Been Full Meaning For Me, The Way You Almost Entirely Omit To Flower And Into The Seasonably-resolute Fruit Uncelebratedly Thrust Your Purest Secret. Like The Tube Of A Fountain, Your Bent Bough Drives The Sap Downwards And Up: And It Leaps From Its Sleep, Scarce Waking, Into The Joy Of Its Sweetest Achievement.

Earth, Is Not This What You Will: In Us To Rise Up Invisible? Is It, O Earth, Not Your Dream Once To Be Wholly Invisible? Earth! Invisible! What, If Not Change, Is Your Desperate Mission?

He Who Does Not At Some Time, With Definite Determination Consent To The Terribleness Of Life, Or Even Exalt In It, Never Takes Possession Of The Inexpressible Fullness Of The Power Of Our Existence.

Draw Near To Nature. Then Try Like Some First Human Being To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.

The Moments When Something New Has Entered Us, Something Unknown; Our Feelings Grow Mute In Shy Embarrassment, Everything In Us Withdraws, A Silence Arises, And The New Experience, Which No One Knows, Stands In The Midst Of It All And Says Nothing.

New Experiences

Perhaps Everything Terrifying Is Deep Down A Helpless Thing That Needs Our Help.

Ask Yourself In The Most Silent Hour Of Your Night: Must I Write [create]? Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer.

Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.

The Artist's Task Consists Of Making One Thing Of Many, And A World From The Smallest Part Of A Thing.

Resolve To Be Always Beginning-to Be A Beginner!

Everything Is Gestation And Then Birthing.

Extinguish My Eyes, I'll Go On Seeing You. Seal My Ears, I'll Go On Hearing You. And Without Feet I Can Make My Way To You, Without A Mouth I Can Swear Your Name. Break Off My Arms, I'll Take Hold Of You With My Heart As With A Hand. Stop My Heart, And My Brain Will Start To Beat. And If You Consume My Brain With Fire, I'll Feel You Burn In Every Drop Of My Blood.

And Still It Is Not Enough To Have Memories. One Must Be Able To Forget Them When They Are Many, And One Must Have The Great Patience To Wait Until They Come Again. For It Is Not Yet The Memories Themselves. Not Until They Have Turned To Blood Within Us, To Glance, To Gesture, Nameless And No Longer To Be Distinguished From Ourselves - Not Until Then Can It Happen That In A Most Rare Hour The First Word Of A Verse Arises In Their Midst And Goes Forth From Them.

Look, I Am Living. On What? Neither Childhood Nor Future Lessens . . . . Superabundant Existence Wells In My Heart.

Comfort Me From Wherever You Are–alone, We Are Quickly Worn Out; If I Place My Head On The Road, Let It Seem Softened By You. Could It Be That Even From Afar We Offer Each Other A Gentle Breath?

You, God, Who Live Next Door - If At Times, Through The Long Night, I Trouble You With My Urgent Knocking - This Is Why: I Hear You Breathe So Seldom. I Know You're All Alone In That Room. If You Should Be Thirsty, There's No One To Get You A Glass Of Water. I Wait Listening, Always. Just Give Me A Sign! I'm Right Here... Sen Komşu Tanrı, Uzun Geceler Bazen, Kapına Vura Vura Uyandırıyorsam Seni Solumanı Seyrek Duyduğumdandır... Bilirim, Yalnızsın Odanda. Sana Birşey Gerekse Kimse Yok, Bir Yudum Su Versin Aradığında. Hep Dinlerim, Yeter Ki Bir Ses Edin, Öyle Yakınım Sana.

Ah, Not To Be Cut Off, Not Through The Slightest Partition Shut Out From The Law Of The Stars. The Inner -- What Is It? If Not The Intensified Sky, Hurled Through With Birds And Deep With The Winds Of Homecoming.

Do You Remember How Life Yearned Out Of Childhood Toward The "great Thing?" I See That It Is Now Yearning Forth Beyond The Great Thing Toward The Greater One.

His Vision, From The Constantly Passing Bars, Has Grown So Weary That It Cannot Hold Anything Else. It Seems To Him There Are A Thousand Bars, And Behind The Bars, No World. As He Paces In Cramped Circles, Over And Over, The Movement Of His Powerful Soft Strides Is Like A Ritual Dance Around A Center In Which A Mighty Will Stands Paralyzed. Only At Times, The Curtain Of The Pupils Lifts, Quietly. An Image Enters In, Rushes Down Through The Tense, Arrested Muscles, Plunges Into The Heart And Is Gone.

It Is Clear That We Must Embrace Struggle. Every Living Thing Conforms To It. Everything In Nature Grows And Struggles In Its Own Way, Establishing Its Own Identity, Insisting On It At All Cost, Against All Resistance.

I Know Of No Other Advice Than This: Go Within And Scale The Depths Of Your Being From Which Your Very Life Springs Forth.

We Must Accept Our Reality As Vastly As We Possibly Can; Everything, Even The Unprecedented, Must Be Possible Within It.

This Is What The Things Can Teach Us: To Fall, Patiently To Trust Our Heaviness. Even A Bird Has To Do That Before He Can Fly.

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Enrico Colantoni

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