from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet (1903-1908)

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. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; 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 love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life, is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, 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. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

Whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint of way yet been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule resting in agreement. But in the same measure in which we begin as individuals to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at closer range.

The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence - then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.

I don't get it

Why do some people enjoy being mean towards others? Maybe it's my uber-sensitive personality or my Southern upbringing, but I've never found it productive to speak in a negative manner for no reason. I suppose most of the time it's because these individuals believe they are being humorous in some way or other. Perhaps they are trying to fulfill a childhood need or overcome deep-rooted insecurities. I once read that sarcasm is one's attempt to get past our own powerlessness. Though it's usually harmless, I tend to agree.

Example #1: someone posted a flyer in our coffee room offering tutoring services (k-12). It is probably someone's son who is in college right now and off for the summer. As part of their experience & collegiate references, he listed he will be a Brown graduate in '13. Someone wrote: "Rather presumptuous!!!". Now, what was the point of that? Why do people bother to make such remarks instead of focusing on their own lives and letting others be?

Example #2: a random male sees my profile on a certain social media website. My profile photo is one of me holding an adorable pug. He decides this is the best thing he can say to me (I'm censoring the cuss words but he actually typed them out):
That is one f*ing ugly dog. Why don't you throw that son of a b*tch in the trash and come here so I can give you something worthwhile to do?

Seriously? What ever happened to not saying anything if you have nothing nice to say?
These are the types of people most likely to procreate too, and that is just about the scariest thought I've had all day.

A light exists in Spring

Emily Dickinson
A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay.

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

ash wed. - I

Ash Wednesday
T. S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Excerpt of a beautiful elegie

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle -- and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.

-from Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd":

just in case

i left the light on, over the porch
that it might lead you, up to my door
and as for your suitcase
well, I made some space
just in case, just in case

well, I left the door open
and I lifted the latch
and I cracked the window
and I let out a sash
and I combed through my hair
and I dressed up in lace
just in case, just in case

you've been gone a long time,
and I've got me a long line
of reasons that you may not return
but I'm just guessing
that those are lessons
that I haven't learned
i haven't learned, because...

i tidied the kitchen
and I put up the wreath
and I took our old record
from its old sleeve
and I fashioned the flowers
into a vase
just in case, just in case

and I moved your picture
to the front of the shelf
and I perfumed my pillow
for you to smell
i left a little lipstick
on my face
just in case, just in case

you've been gone a long time
i've got a long line
of reasons you may never ever ever ever return
but I'm just guessing
that those are the lessons
that I haven't learned,
i haven't learned because...

i left an amber behind the hearth
so that you'd remember
just where you are
and now I'm rolling over
to leave you a place
just in case, just in case
i'm rolling over to leave you a place
just in case just in case

Life is not a paragraph

Makes me ponder the anti-intellictualization of emotions... and that never-ending battle I'm probably never bound to win.

since feeling is first
e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis