Word of the Week - 138

From "Letters to a Young Poet," by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Joan M. Burnham. New World Library: 2000.

Word of the Week:  FERVENT



Yes, "completely baked" as spoken by Benjamin in THE GRADUATE would qualify as fervent.  Definitely feverish.

Fervent is never half-baked, never tepid, never neither-this-nor-that.  It is passionate, fiery hot,  may appear obsessive.  Heartfelt.

What is the point of showing up with indifference?  Let them talk.  "She seemed, well, awfully intense.  I'm not sure that is considered good manners."  Probably not.  This is life we're talking about.  As Mary Oliver says, "your one wild and precious life."  Be a shame to get over-excited about that and all the wonders it contains.  Perhaps I need to sit back down with a cool cloth to my forehead.

As I write this, we are having oddly balmy winds, none of the chance of showers forecast as late as this morning, and the neighborhood Amazon parrots are shrieking through the skies as though warning us of something.  They do a lot of jabbering so we don't take them seriously.  The point is that I sit at my table on the second floor, amid the trees where I can see no cars nor dwellings.  An hour ago a crow with a wingspan of several feet found delicacies in the palm tree just beyond my window.  His departure sounded like an old window shade that had been yanked down, then let go to flap and shudder.

Rilke knew that our ordinary moments are filled with texture, brilliance, joy, sorrow, sights and events to make our hearts leap or thud.  Best to take nothing for granted, to see it all as miraculous for the everyday is our most intimate universe, the room in which we spend the most time, the place it all happens.  Even peak events are cushioned by the everyday.  It is that with which we most surely need to fall in love, if we have not.  I had a stamp made that says, "Fall in love with everything," then I realized there are some situations in which that is difficult, many in fact, but as a goal, an aspiration, it seems a not bad fit.  I use the word love more and more, realizing that I do love so much.  I do, in loud and giddy and probably unladylike ways.  The list is longer every day.

I occasionally visit the Jet Pens website, perhaps to look at bottled inks.  Some of the colors, with names like Apache Sunset, Heart of Darkness or Dragon Catfish Pink, make me think of fervent correspondence.  Is there really any other kind?

Word of the Week - 136

With thanks to Plaisanter's Flickriver site.

Word of the Week:  MUCILAGE

These are days, it seems, to think about what exactly IS the glue that holds us together, either to maintain a congruity with self or a plural binding of one to another.  There is something, beyond gravity, centripetal force, magnets, chewing gum or baling wire, that stops us from dissolving into fragments.  Its forms are as numerous as are we who rely on its existence.

At its most exalted it is sticky and honey-sweet, with names like optimism, kindness, beauty and love.  It is scent, known to transport us in memory to other realms and times, or words, as used by poets to translate, impossibly, the ineffable into language.  It is color or form that jars the heart.  It is magic, mostly unintentional, the product of man or nature simply bringing forth what must be brought.

It is experiences shared, even if known in solitude.  It is recognition of me in you.  It is music, sounds raised in thanksgiving or lament.  Perhaps beyond all else it is music.

If I understand anything of the universe, it is this:  we are not meant to be divided nor to seek or invent ways that make us unalike.  We survive with each other, it is how we will thrive.  Our hands reach out to comfort.  With vocabulary we soothe and support.  In the rock-hard moments we remind one another that there are softer times.

We are the glue, aided by the wonders amid which we sometimes flounder, wonders which lift our spirits, replenish our hope.  There is no wonder too small or obscure to be considered medicinally adhesive.  It only requires - demands - the ability to illuminate what has been dimmed.  Circumstances have been known to abandon us in dark caves and haunted houses of the mind.  For me, the image of a rose, bodies of water from a puddle to a fountain, canal, river or ocean, the thought and, one hopes, the taste of dark chocolate, works of art, a hummingbird outside the window, the voice of a loved one or even sight of their name reconnect me to frightened and lost parts of myself.  They secure me to a greater circle where light prevails.

This is a gummy business and we serve as human fly paper to one another.  As we abide, fastened, we joke, we sing, we listen, we doze.  Our thoughts may wander but we, it is hoped, do not.  We are tethered for the long ride.  That is what's real.  Anything else is the illusion.

ABOUT TIME is about kindness and love and impossible things. What could be better?

"We're all traveling through time together every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride."  Tim, from ABOUT TIME

Actors Domhnall Gleeson and Bil Nighy in time-travel mode.

It's not that I was in ill humor when we sat down to watch ABOUT TIME last night.  The cooler days had stalked off, leaving us with temperatures heading up the thermometer (the old, analog kind) and I could feel my energy waning.  Then the mango slices had to be rescued from the floor, washed and eyeballed (yes, it IS that kind of a home) while the cranky voices in my head found fault with things that don't even exist.  All that evaporated with this story, for which I now have great affection, introducing us to kind, loving people who live quirky lives in quiet ways and have tea on the beach next to their Cornwall home every day no matter what the weather.  You may more easily find yourself swallowed by this Richard Curtis work if you remember the phrase, "the willing suspension of disbelief."  It is fiction, possibly fairy tale, taken as such, taken as antidote to millennial  cynicism, narcissism, rejection of magic as one of the impossible things that happens.

By the movie's end I was refreshed, restored and reminded that the high and happy road is never a wrong choice.  Happiness IS a choice.  Uninvited, it will not likely come and sit by your side for ever and ever.  Make room for it, expect it and set out the trail of cake (not bread) crumbs to lure it closer.  Life is about what we do in spite of everything.  It may be a test, we can't be sure.  Pretend that it is.  ABOUT TIME offers us a map, one that may take us where we want to go.  It charmed me, lifted me out of the doldrums, if that is what they were, by my ears.  Perhaps I could watch clips of this every night instead of the news.

Word of the Week - 49

My sister and I remain fans of the pun Valentines from our childhoods.

Word of the Week:  VALENTINE

With or without a traditional sweetheart, I am a fool for Valentine's Day and its message, "Send Love."

The trappings, of course, speak directly to my child and grown-up soul:  paper, red, ribbons, doilies, stickers, handmade cards and envelopes and hearts, miles and miles of hearts.

LOVE stamp by Robert Indiana, 1973.

I have come through the softening effects of time to know that love is the infrastructure of existence.  It is, in the ideal, who we are meant to be, what we are here to do.  While there are so many variations of its expression, I consider sharing to be the top choice.  It is the jolliest potluck we will ever attend, the one at which whatever we have and bring is enough.

Art by Corita Kent.

..

We get to be the chocolate covered marshmallow candy, squishable, thin of shell.  We have the option to reach much more than halfway, to reach ALL the way to connect with anyone, everyone. It is not about what we get but what we give.  Let us listen to what intuition confides and act upon it.  There is infinite space within our human hearts. 

We are asked to be patient with what we see as our shortcomings, asked to love ourselves out of the belief that we are lacking.  We are the raw materials through which change comes into the world, one kind or encouraging or inspiring word at a time.  We are a source of magic, of beauty, of wonder, part of nature, blessed with the gift of language and the power to heal.  We are, oh the impossible luck, the Valentines.

Cut paper heart by Elsa Mora.

"...they are leaning out for love..."

Because I reach a state of overwhelm so quickly, I avoided news coverage of the Boston bombings, seeing if I could find my way to grief and be led by that.  I did not look much at Facebook, unless there was an image of beauty, for loveliness is balm to my tattered spirit.

I did stop by the blog, Premium T, for I had not visited there in too long.  It was an experience of being recalled to one's senses, one's better angels.  Please go and read what Therese found her way to in an uncertain week on an uncertain planet.  If we are even half-way present, the answer is always love.  The question is irrelevant.

Election day but no politics

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

I will not pretend that this election day has me light of heart and quiet of mind.  I wish to take nothing for granted.  Which may be why my words refuse to dance smoothly with each other, they seem to be glaring and rolling their eyes as the time comes for them to step out on the floor together and touch.  Why did my mother sign me up for this stupid Cotillion, each wonders.  Why would I ever need to know the waltz or how to be gracious when approached (or not approached) as the music begins?

With that knowledge, I am happy to yield to Rilke, mentioned by other bloggers recently - it may be his season.  It is surely the season of needing answers or perspective I may not always have, and not necessarily related to the election.  These are questioning times.  If asked, I would say that I wish to be understood, yet know that is not within my power.  I gesticulate, sputter, sigh and move on, hoping I left something other than confusion in my wake.

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

 

Thought for the day

 Be in love with beauty.

Whatever speaks to you expands the heart.