It's a tree . .

In the mailbox this Sunday, January 22, 2023 .

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” – Mary Oliver

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness . . . Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. – Rainer Maria Rilke

. . .how can you ever be sure / that what you write is really / any good at all and he said you can’t /. . .you can never be sure / you die without knowing / whether anything you wrote was any good / if you have to be sure don’t write. – W.S. Merwin (on poet John Berryman)

. . .poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking. . .whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — [is] the hardest battle which any human being can fight . . . – e.e. cummings

So, you want to be a writer. Think on this, by Charles Bukowski.

“O, great master,” the scholar asked, “what is the secret?” The master paused for a good while, finally replied “... It's a tree.” The scholar, affronted, shouted “after all this effort to finally find and reach you, after crossing the mighty and fearful ocean, crossing the deadly desert, and climbing this god-forsaken mountain, you have the audacity to tell me that the secret is “a tree” ?!! The master paused again, this time briefly, and with sincerity asked “...it's not a tree?”

Today's blog was instigated by Maria Popova.