You see me through you
In Tew's Day's mailbox...
Today is the 95th anniversary of the birth of poet Philip Levine. One of our poet laureates, he was born in Detroit in 1928.
Poet Charles Simic died yesterday. His death attributed to complications from dementia.
From Evening Walk — by Charles Simic
You give the appearance of listening
to my thoughts, o trees . . .
The sky above still blue.
The nightbirds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children singing to themselves.
I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery. – psychologist and artist Anne Truitt
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. – Adrianne Rich
As large as are our brains, as smart as is our collective knowledge, there is no possbility that we can comprehend the totality that is the Universe and the Great Mystery of Its continual unfolding. Yet we act as if we know. The resulting mass of contradictions and inconsistencies that constitute this jungle of miasmatic confusion we have created out of this misguidance is The Way. The guide is the “don't know” mind. Because the universe itself is being reconstituted faster than the speed of light in each moment-by-moment instant, we are factually possessed of a “beginner's mind,” which apprehends reality in its “suchness” – as it is.
Maybe, when talking about love, we could say, “Let our blind spots fall in love. Let the I that I’m becoming fall in love with the you I haven’t yet discovered and can’t even imagine.” – Vanessa Zuisei Goddard