Tag: let go

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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It’s all so sickeningly, dizzyingly, tightly circular, at the very edges of existence, I mean. And those universal edges—birth, death—they’re hard to take in completely, when they’re happening. It’s all going too fast, blood rushing to the head. Even the middling, middle bits—stable-enough marriage, healthy kids, good income—like the middle of a roundabout, you can think it’s all going quite manageably no matter how wildly the edges are quivering. I did; I thought I had it all under control… Three perfect children. Above all, even if I’d screwed up every other thing, I’d still have three perfect children. And now I see, that too had been an illusion.

— Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son (Grove Press, April 9, 2024)
 

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2024 (so far) by NY Times Book Review. Review by David Sheff: “A Mother’s Devastating Memoir of Losing Her Adult Son. In “Fi,” Alexandra Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old.”

Lightly Child. Lightly.

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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.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV” in “In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies

Notes:

  • Thank you Beth for poem at Alive on All Channels
  • DK Photo, Monday, October 16, 2023 @ 6:21am @ Cove Island Park. More pictures from that morning’s walk here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —

…But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided —
and that one wears an orange blight —
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away —
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

— Mary Oliver, from “The Ponds” in “House of Light” (Beacon Press, April 8, 1992)

Notes:

  • Photo: Orange Lily, DK, June 2020
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Here I am again. I’m full of faults.

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And I think that as I’ve aged, I realized everything is an ongoing process. And that it isn’t something that suddenly you’ve done this work and therefore you become enlightened, right? That you’re like, oh, you wake up one day and be like, oh, guess what, I don’t have an ego. I’m not bothered by anything. And instead, of course, it’s just the ongoing slog of being a human and returning to the practice. And OK, here we are again. That’s bothering me. Here I am again. I’m full of faults. […]

I usually sit for at least 15 minutes a day. Sometimes in the morning and sometimes at night. At night, it’s usually because I’ve forgotten to do it in the morning. Or I had something early, an early flight or something like that. But I try to start my day with it. I also try to do — set an intention every day that I just hold with me throughout the day. And sometimes it’s just like, oh, I’m feeling a little stressed out, and I’ll just say let’s just think about ease. And I’ll say, just keep saying the word ease and it comes up. And then my meditation practice — it differs. Sometimes it’s — I think the core is always love and kindness. That’s what I learned many, many years ago. And that’s my fallback.

— Ada Limón, from “Ezra Klein Interviews Ada Limón” (Ezra Klein Show, May 24, 2022)

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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When something doesn’t find its place… we have to move other things. We have to make room, I think.

—  Samanta Schweblin, Seven Empty Houses. Megan McDowell, Translator (Riverhead Books, October 18, 2022)

Notes: