Look at the Flowers
If all else fails, return to Rilke.
“Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly,
to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate.
And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,
perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.
All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire,
caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.”
—Rilke from Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell
"Look, we don’t love like flowers, with only a single
season behind us; immemorial sap
mounts in our arms when we love."
– from “The Third Elegy,” Duino Elegies
And then from Letters on Life:
“I confess that I consider life to be a thing of the most untouchable deliciousness, and that even the confluence of so many disasters and deprivations, the exposure of countless fates, everything that insurmountably increased for us over the past few years to become a still rising terror cannot distract me from the fullness and goodness of existence that is inclined toward us. There would be little sense in approaching you with good wishes if each wish were not preceded by this conviction that the goods of life arise pure, undamaged, and, at their very bottom, desirable out of upheavals and ruin.”
and from the same book:
“And yet life is transformation: all that is good is transformation and all that is bad as well.”
“It seems to me that the only way one can be helpful is to extend one’s hand to someone else involuntarily, and without ever knowing how useful this will be.”
I know that these are not easy times and that the disasters are piling up. There is the feeling of a culmination of grief, which then rolls into another seeming culmination. I’ve been listening obsessively again to Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker. It plays in my head and I wake up and it’s there. So it seems strange to not just put it on. “Steer your heart,” my man sings, “past the truth that you believed in yesterday / such as fundamental goodness and the wisdom of the way.”
Some days I think I no longer believe in fundamental goodness. We’ve seen so much otherwise. So. Freaking. Much.
But. On numerous occasions lately I’ve also found myself extending my hand involuntarily. Maybe the trick is not to go looking for goodness elsewhere until we’ve re-located it in ourselves. Let us get back to flying; let’s steer our way at least in small patches and pockets and patches of time away from heaviness. It’s okay to take a flying break.
And on that note…just to say that this weekend I sent back the very final proofs of Everything Affects Everyone back to my publisher and it goes to the printer this week. If you’d like to help me out, and lord knows it’s a pretty tricky business promoting a book in this pandemic world….please consider pre-ordering a book. Details on my website, or go straight to my publisher. In the book you'll find angels, conversations, an elusive photographer, art theft, movie stars, thoughts on belief and the power of the question. Pre-orders help a lot and can really encourage bookstores to order more copies early on. A bit of a snowball effect, if you will.
Thanks for reading and being here.
— Shawna
