June 29, 2011

Slowness

Painting of Auguste Rodin in the Musée Rodin, Paris
artist unknown, shared here

As for me, my internal pace is slow. Mine is the intrinsic slowness of the tree that embraces its growth and its blooming. Yes, I have a bit of its admirable patience. I had to train myself in it from the moment I understood the secret slowness that engenders and distills any work of art. But if I know its temporal measure, I know nothing of its immobility. Oh, the joys of travel!

Letter to a friend
February 3, 1923

4 comments:

  1. The joys of travel, indeed. Thanks Lorenzo. I now feel more strongly I should slow down.

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  2. i think there are features of our presence that are measured by time and so they have qualities of speed about them. i also think that the effects of those features of our presence are outside of time and so they have no speed about them at all. i think of a moment's choice that affects generations. i think of a work of art that affects the millenia and beyond. what a painting!!! steven

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  3. oh how i have had to learn to be slow. you can not imagine! i am a fast and popping person! i shriek at the trees, the clouds, the birds! they fly away for god's sakes. and then i shriek at the empty trees, the sky full of birds growing smaller. how the heck have i learned to be slower? oh, but i'm grateful for it. my pop might just as well have extinguished me.

    i rather think time is an illusion. it is up to us to try to step aside from the illusion. i think we might each live a ball of yarn. but no sense in spending time looking for its beginning or end, but rather pay more attention the overlap, the dimensions. the only way to pay attention is to be slow.

    wonderful piece. hurts my brain just that little.

    xo
    erin

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  4. Slow, but able to travel, to move from this to that. I think I could have gotten math, if I had had long enough from one concept to the next. Math 101 for a lifetime is about right. Imagine if we studied each thing for a lifetime. Each and every thing we wish, and sometimes what we don't wish.

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!