Certainly absurd

Doubt is not an agreeable condition,
but certainty is an absurd one.

        Voltaire, in a 1767 letter to Frederick II of Prussia

Thou mayest

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—
‘Thou mayest’—
that gives a choice.
It might be the most important word in the world.
That says the way is open.
That throws it right back on a man.
For if ‘Thou mayest’—
it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”

            John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

 

 

 

Poem: Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one—
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table—
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

                            Billy Collins

 

 

 

 

 

All there is

Maybe the moment is all there is. Maybe I should just gather my clamshells and be quiet. The exquisite experience of joy—when I am completely consumed by a pleasurable activity such as conversation with good friends or good food or laughing with my children—is certainly one of the moment. But for some reason, I and many of my fellow travelers are not satisfied with the moment. The Now isn’t enough. We want to go beyond the moment. We want to build systems and patterns and memories that connect moment to moment to eternity. We long to be part of the Infinite.

Alan Lightman, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

Old friends, new worlds

Each friend represents a world in us,
a world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

            Anaïs Nin, March 1937, Diary entries

Wonder

Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period
at the end of a statement we've long taken for granted,
suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve
of a tall black hat on its head,
and realizing it was a question mark all along.

        David James Duncan, My Story as told by Water

 

 

 

 

 

Learn from the best

Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality,
for one can temporarily evade reality
by avoiding the distasteful situation;
but anxiety is a source of education always present
because one carries it within.

        Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety