Something to think about.

They say that 'What you see is what you get'.

Its not what you see, it's how you see.

How you see is what you get.

How you see is what determines your results.

Because it is how you see that determines your reality.

-Warren Macdonald

Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

I love P.Neruda. I spend the afternoon reading Merton today and I had picked out some excerpts that I would have liked to put it in this space. Or I could have wrote about my tiny little weekend adventure. But, since this is my blog and I can choose to write whatever I want: I am choosing to leave you with this.

Neruda always brings a fresh perspective into the things he writes about. He write about things from socks to wine. ! But the best bit about his poetry (to me) is that it is never about the subject. He always manages to personify his feelings so exactly and paint such a clear image that you would think that you can make a model of his emotions given enough plasticine. Or something.

Feast your eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.

Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883–1931)

Merton: Clarity

I want to tell you about rainbows and unicorns. I want to tell you about the dreams I whispered to that supermarket flower. I want to tell you my deep thoughts of that dark night outside. I want to tell you of my yearning for light.

So many things to say, and yet nothing to say at all…

____________________

A flash of sanity: the momentary realization that there is no need to come to certain conclusions about persons, events, conflicts, trends, even trends toward evil and disaster, as if from day to day, and even from moment to moment, I had to know and declare (at least to myself) that this is so and so, this is good, this is bad. We are heading for a “new era” or are we heading for destruction? What do such judgments mean? Little or nothing. Things are as they are in an immense whole of which I am a part and which I cannot pretend to grasp. To say I grasp it is immediately to put myself in a false position, as if I were “outside” it. Whereas to be “in” it is to seek truth in my own life and action, moving where movement is possible and keeping still when movement is unnecessary, realizing that things will continue to define themselves and that the judgment and mercies of God will clarify themselves and will be more clear to me if I am silent and attentive, obedient to His will, rather than constantly formulating statements in this age which is smothered in language, in meaningless and inconclusive debate in which, in the last analysis, nobody listens to anything except what agrees with his own prejudice.

From Thomas Merton in A Moment of Clarity

Neruda: 100 Love Sonnets

Somewhere in my 'favourites folder' lies big things that have been forgotten with the ebbing of time.

In my obsession with Dali and Merton, and in the seas of prophesying Gibran and Owens, I must have forgotten an old but still treasured friend, my dearest Neruda.

From 100 Love Sonnets; first written in Spanish

No. XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and
thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

The Invitation: If You Ever Asked

If you have ever asked why I am still with the same person after 8 long years, this may be the answer you are looking for.

Sometimes I may have shrugged and joked that 'soon' will be the time to part. Sometimes I may have said that I have been trapped in a joking manner. And at other times I may have mentioned that otherwise I may have to remain a spinster for life if not for Mr S.O.

Still I attribute Mr S.O to my blessed life. And still when I think of him, I think of what I had read as a 14 year old. These words has impacted me in ways beyond imagination... This has partially defined my teenage years and its echo still reverberate now and then, every once and again.

And as I move away from one chapter to another unwritten one, I thought it is fitting to pay homage to the ignitor of my young mind without which I may never be the person I am today. Without which, I may have never learnt to treasure what I now hold close to my heart.

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy,
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it's not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up,
after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not
shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls
away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Extract from The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer 1999

Till the Other Place

After a season of aching jaws and disturbed sleep, it is nice to fully enter sleep and stay there for 12 consecutive hours. I liken it to a Holy Retreat during Easter week in the Himalayas. As if I know what it feels like. All that I know of the Himalayas are courtesy of the Discovery Channel and here I am saying blatant things like that! Gosh, the audacity.

Although I am no longer dog-tired and on the brink of entering a second realm that comprises of the living deads, I still remember clearly those days when I come home, prostrated both in my mind and in my room. And all I seek is solace in the ancient words of Merton, hoping that through his knowledge, I may derive some potent understanding of the crisis I am in. Perhaps it was fated, but I found the exact words for what I need.

There is a certain kind of humility in hell which is one of the worst
things in hell, and which is infinitely far from the humility of the saints,
which is peace, The false humility of hell is an unending, burning shame at the
inescapable stigma of our sins. The sins of the damned are felt by them as
gestures of intolerable insults from which they cannot escape, Nessus shirts that
burn them up for ever and which they can never throw off.

The anguish of this self-knowledge is inescapable even on earth, as long as
there is any self-love left in us: because it is pride that feels the burning of
that shame. Only when all pride, all self-love has been consumed in our souls by
the love of God, are we delivered from the thing which is the subject of those
torments, It is only when we have lost all love of our selves for our own sakes
that our past sins cease to give us any cause for suffering or for the anguish
of shame.

For the saints, when they remember their sins, do not remember the sins but
the mercy of God, and therefore even past evil is turned by them into a present
cause of joy and serves to glorify God.

It is the proud that have to be burned and devoured by the horrible
humility of hell...But as long as we are in this life, even that burning anguish
can be turned into a grace, and should be a cause of joy.

Extract from Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, Pg 323

And after Merton, I am reminded of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and am partially relieved... For I realise that it is not only I who seeks this humbling silence that I crave. That it is not an uncorrectable intrinsic flaw that dictates the plague of confusion and undeniable sorrow that I feel. Where I am is just another place; a waiting room of sorts till I find the grace that settles my touchy heart.

My Favourite Picture

In looking through the pictures taken in our long courtship, this is still the one I like the best... An accurate portrayal of who we are and what we are like...

Housekeeping

Back when it was 1955, this was all true.

It makes me glad that I live in the now.

Although the pressure to be size 000 was not present in the past.... I think I still... prefer the now.

Of Servants and Gifts

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift
And the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honours the servant
And has forgotten the gift

— Albert Einstein

Are you more intuitive or are you more rational?

Food for thought from our great Einstein... What has our education done to us?

Merton: Selfless Love

Reading Thomas Merton’s book, No Man Is an Island brings a certain peace. And a certain epiphany.

We struggle everyday to define our lives in the ways that we can, and here it is, the simple truth written in black and white in the pages of his book.

For most of us, we feel that selfless love is the highest order of love. That if you loved someone selflessly enough, you will attain happiness because you loved. And because the lover is loved completely and wholeheartedly. Apparently flawed.

Merton has managed to put it so eloquently in his book, that the process of selfless loving is depended on the one being loved. And that loving selflessly is only the first step.

I can try to tell you more, but I cannot do it better than Merton.

Love can be kept only by being given away

A happiness that is
sought for ourselves alone can never be found for a happiness that is diminished
by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

There is a
false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to
sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in
unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is
no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such
love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life. He has
made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving
others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity, we best fulfill
our own capacities to act and to be.

Yet there can never be
happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be
shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love
that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not
because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in
the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the
lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved
happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love.

Hence
the paradox that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is
perfectly reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in
selfless love. Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the
beloved. In so doing, it perfects itself.

The gift of love is the
gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with
full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given
away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.

Notebook: Sense of Sorrowful Joy

I was bored of studying today so I went surfing.

I went online to read the works of the the current favourite poet, yes it is Kahlil Gibran again!

I read one of his (I think posthumous) publications. The Madman. It is a collection of parables and poems. It speaks of large and big things that matter like friendship, ambition, wisdom and God. And then it whispers of the smaller things that people think never matter. Like the ants on a persons nose or of the things that the blade of grass on the lawn might say to a falling autumn leaf.

The part on sorrow and joy... is so true. It is like the unveiling of something that you know exist but have never been able to put into words.

It is true that when you are sorrowful, more attention is given. And that you are almost porcelain fragile for as long as sorrow was with you. As if you have gained a reason to be the unreasonable one. And that when you are filled with joy, people are almost resentful of your existence... because you remind them even more of their sorrow. And no one is eager to celebrate your hearts' music.

It is not only the onlookers flaw though. we are all too eager to nurture and grow our sorrow... and when we have joy, we let it fade and die into nothingness... and into a memory.

Some things should really ought to change...

____________________________________________

When My Sorrow Was Born

When my Sorrow was born I nursed it with
care, and watched over it with loving tenderness.

And my Sorrow grew
like all living things, strong and beautiful and full of wondrous delights.

And we loved one another, my Sorrow and I, and we loved the world about
us; for Sorrow had a kindly heart and mine was kindly with Sorrow.

And
when we conversed, my Sorrow and I, our days were winged and our nights were
girdled with dreams; for Sorrow had an eloquent tongue, and mine was eloquent
with Sorrow.

And when we sang together, my Sorrow and I, our neighbors
sat at their windows and listened; for our songs were deep as the sea and our
melodies were full of strange memories.

And when we walked together, my
Sorrow and I, people gazed at us with gentle eyes and whispered in words of
exceeding sweetness.

And there were those who looked with envy upon us,
for Sorrow was a noble thing and I was proud with Sorrow.

But my Sorrow
died, like all living things, and alone I am left to muse and ponder.

And now when I speak my words fall heavily upon my ears.

And
when I sing my songs my neighbours come not to listen.

And when I walk
the streets no one looks at me.

Only in my sleep I hear voices saying in
pity, "See, there liesthe man whose Sorrow is dead."

And When My Joy Was Born

And when my Joy was born, I held it in my arms
and stood on the house-top shouting, "Come ye, my neighbours, come and see, for
Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold this gladsome thing that laugheth in the sun."

But none of my neighbours came to look upon my Joy, and great was my
astonishment.

And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the
house-top--and yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and
unvisited.

Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but
mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips.

Then my Joy
died of isolation.

And now I only remember my dead Joy in remembering my
dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and
then is heard no more.

-Kahlil Gibran, Excerpts from The Madman: His Parables and Poems-

Movie: Walk the Line | Notebook: Chapter of Friendship

This is now officially the longest title I have to date. But it is important because both converged on the same cosmic line today.

Remember that a few posts back I posted a chapter from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Since then I have been reading his works and visiting his bits and pieces daily, finding a certain freedom and joy in what he has immortalized.

Selfish me me thoughts aside, I thought it was interesting that his name kept popping up!

While watching Walk the Line (the movie) today, the book ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran was the book that June Carter handed over to Johnny Cash as a gift. My heart skipped when the screen was flashed.

Oh my, is it a sign that it is a book that I am destined to own. Hah! Childish of me to assume that coincidences revolve around my private wimps and desire.

All that said; here is another one of my favorite chapter from the same book. I absolutely love the first two lines. But the same question remains, which hold more prestige, the satisfaction of a person wants or needs? Food for thought people!

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

- From the Chapter of Friendship in ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran -

Notebook: Chapter of Marriage

Reading these lines now as oppose to when I have first heard of them stirs up something new in me. I now see a certain truth that I have failed to notice earlier, but at the same time I am still certain that there is still immense worth in his words that I am still lacking to see. But for now, the newness of this discovery and dawning is enough to last me till the next addictive dose.

Mind me not that I share, the words of wisdom that brought me to my weepy state again this morning.

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cups but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

- From the Chapter of Marriage in ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran -