I shall now try to look calmly at myself and begin to act inwardly, for only in this way will I be able as the child in its first consciously undertaken act refers to itself as ‘I,’ to call myself ‘I’ in a profounder sense.
Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals
On reading Shakespeare, “I actually shade my eyes.”
He has flown headfirst against the glass
and now lies stunned on the stone patio,
nothing moving but his quick beating heart.
So you go to him, pick up his delicate
body and hold him in the cupped palms
of your hands. You have always known
he was beautiful, but it’s only now, in his stillness,
in his vulnerability, that you see the miracle
of his being, how so much life fits in so small
a space. And so you wait, keeping him warm
against the unseasonable cold, trusting that
when the time is right, when he has recovered
both his strength and his sense of up and down,
he will gather himself, flutter once or twice,
and then rise, a streak of dazzling
color against a slowly lifting sky.
Our life is the truth that we seek. Only my life is the truth, the truth above all. We create the truth by living it. – C.G. Jung, from The Red Book
The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care for their young. how they go together to pasture, and how they draw one another to the spring. There is not one that conceals its overabundance of prey and lets its brother starve as a result. There is not one that tries to enforce its will on those of its own kind. Not a one mistakenly imagines that it is an elephant when it is a mosquito. The animal lives fittingly and true to the life of its species, neither exceeding nor falling short of it.
He who never lives his animal must treat his brother like an animal. Abase yourself and live your animal so that you will be able to treat your brother correctly. You will thus redeem all those roaming dead who strive to feed on the living. And do not turn anything you do into a law, since that is the hubris of power. – C.G. Jung, from The Red Book
My dear friends & anyone who occasionally dips their toe into the edge of the Atlantic, I wish you peace & joy in the new year.
I believe more poetry, dance, photography, painting, sculpture, theater has the ability to shine a light in the darkness so bright that the darkness will disappear. (oh, and add voting and supporting causes and people who promote joy around the world.)
You are wise enough to understand that being “a little lonely” is not a bad thing. A writer’s occupation is one of the loneliest in the world, even if the loneliness is only an inner solitude and isolation, for that he must have at times if he is to be truly creative. And so I believe only the person who knows and is not afraid of loneliness should aspire to be a writer. But there are also rewards that are rich and peculiarly satisfying. – Rachel Carson
One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. – Nietzsche
Edge of Atlantic 