Green Apples, by Paul Cézanne
If only people could perceive the mystery in all life, down to the smallest thing, and open themselves to it instead of taking it for granted. If only they could revere its abundance which is undividedly both material and spiritual. For the mind's creation springs from the physical, is of one nature with it and only a lighter, more enraptured and enduring recapturing of bodily delight.
Worpswede, July 16, 1903
Letters to a Young Poet
Yes, that's the essential thing for me, to revel in the mystery of life, to delight in its abundance, both physical and spiritual, which are one and the same.
ReplyDeleteRilke writes about the mind recreating and recapturing bodily delight - the kind of bee-like, creative interiorisation and transformation he constantly comes back to.
Going further, Rilke writes too elsewhere about the letting go of all this, about praise as being the 'ultimate letting go' (as Ruth once commented). Brings to mind Mary Oliver's wonderful and essential poem 'In Blackwater Woods' in which she writes about touching, embracing ... and relinquishing.
This is quite wonderful and very insightful! I love Rilke's refusal to draw a line of demarcation between the mind and the physical, for, indeed, as I have learned in my own experience, "the mind's creation springs from the physical, is one nature with it and only a lighter, more enraptured and enduring recapturing of bodily delight."
ReplyDeletei wish i'd read rilke when i was much younger. but then perhaps it wouldn't have settled inside me quite so easily and perhaps it wouldn't have unseated me quite so effectively by turn!!! steven
ReplyDeleteWhat I appreciate about this reading today is that I can relinquish shame about being too much in the mind and not rooted enough in the physical. If a person engages in only one, and not the other, there will be lack. But if what is of the mind springs out of the physical, and they are inseparable, then what is of the mind is good.
ReplyDeleteI think of erin's poem today, about a farmer ('the poet and the farmer'), so so beautifully balancing this idea. As she puts it, the poet may try to talk about things, but the farmer feels it, knows it, and maybe in his silent watching, he speaks. Well, she puts it more poetically and breathtakingly. It's here. (I hope she doesn't mind.)
Funny that today's quote is about revering. I'm reading John D'Donohue's Divine Beauty and one section on reverence links in well. 'When beauty touches our lives the moment becomes luminous ... we can choose a new rhythm of journeying which would be more conscious of beauty and more open to inviting her to disclose herself to us ... yet what you encounter, recognize and discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach ... When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in all things.'
ReplyDeleteAbundant mystery. I can be open to not having answers. I can not only revere mystery's abundance, but I can revel in it. So different from our upbringing (Ruth's and mine, as we are siblings), but so wonderful.
ReplyDeleteIf only people could perceive the mystery in all life, down to the smallest thing, and open themselves to it instead of taking it for granted. i just just JUST wrote this to a friend. i said, i wake up every day and want to live in the nexus of it. every day i wake up and want to live in the nexus! i feel like shouting it and yet i wonder if it is to myself that i shout it. every day. and i move my legs out of bed. and i settle my center into it. and i feel light. i feel the possibility of it. and yet there is so much that keeps me from it. i feel like a child with a parent fistfulling my shirt at the nape. but do i fistfull my own shirt?
ReplyDeletewhat is it that we're missing? and why? and how do we repair it? i think perhaps for me it is work related but i have to tell you, i almost fear that if i were to find a new job that fed the furnace, i might still not be where i am driven to be. it's a curious thing, but most definitely it is a marriage between the body and the mind, and the soul, too, if it is indeed a third part. and the answer i believe does live in the field. in the field, in the forest, in the mountain, the valley, the river. perhaps the farmer never reaches it either. perhaps that is why i listened and wept. it is there but we can't exactly arrive at it. we only watch it from a distance.
ruth, you (time and time again) honour me.
xo
erin
oh, and for all of our postering, i drove and off to my side i saw the leaves on the trees shimm/ver. that's what i saw. that's what i believed the farmer was watching. the leaves on the tree - being leaves. being leaves! my god, the complexity and yet the simplicity of it. being leaves!
ReplyDeleteya, how the hell do i manage to find my way into the nexus of being a leaf?
xo
erin
We just sat out in the perfect evening, in the perfect temperature, perfect for human skin, and we ate supper, and we sat in Adirondack chairs, and we watched the poplar leaves on the huge trees by the pond. The tallest trees, and the highest leaves, probably forty feet high, were shimmering-shivering. It was perfection.
ReplyDeletePerfection, in harmony with Ruth's comment, is the state of mind that allows you to live such fleeting moments to their fullest; and perhaps it is only to be found in that very state of mind, that embrace of the simple beauties around us, unworried by their transience, unburdened by the other myopic concerns that crowd in to fill too many of our days, undeterred by the darkness the sun's arc will bring us all too soon. The old saying goes that the devil is in the details, but I must think the details, the present details, are where the angels, too, must dwell.
ReplyDeleteruth and then lorenzo, beautifully put.
ReplyDeletexo
erin