Thursday, January 20, 2011

I listen

I sit beside the fire and think
By JRR Tolkien

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

From here: http://www.munnaontherun.com/2011/01/returning-feet.html

4 comments:

kabir said...

The ordinary man, however hard his life may be, at least has the pleasure of not thinking about it. to take life as it comes, living it externally like a cat or a dog - that is how people in general live, and that is how life should be lived, if we would have the contentment of the cat or dog.

To think is to destroy. Thought itself is destroyed in the process of thinking, because to think is to decompose. If men knew how to meditate on the mystery of life, if the knew how to feel the thousand complexities that spy on the soul in every single detail of action, then they would never act - they wouldn't even live. They would kill themselves from fright, like those who commit suicide to avoid being guillotined the next day.

Fernando Pessoa- The Book of Disquiet

Asha said...

Wow. "The unexamined life is not worth living" perhaps, but the price we pay for it is indeed HUGE. I love watching, talking to, reading about people who live life more "externally", whose "life of the mind" does not overshadow the life of the body and its rich and varied contact with the world.

Therefore I love simple stories that lack complexity in their subject and their telling ('Mari' for example), while I do also wade through heavy tomes rich with deep thought, rather effortlessly :) :)

I have Pessoa's book, not yet read it. Thanks.

kabir said...

An MRA?? Hope all is well...Here's a strong rope of Rilke's prose to hold fast to amidst the turbulence

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4

Asha said...

Thank you so much. I should be getting better, the diagnosis at least seems to be correct this time - nothing fatal at all :)

Yes, I have read that one of Rilke. Yes, I have given up searching. And with the way my memory is fast dissipating, there is no way I will remember any of the questions :) :) :)

Though I do worry about losing all the good memories in the bargain (http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2010/11/carpe-diem.html), this is definitely better than remembering everything.

Thanks, once again.

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