I’ve learned to value failed
conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid,
what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.
•
The sun came out today. But I still
ache all over. It made me think of Waclaw Gralewski’s theory: every tumble,
bruise, broken leg or arm is the price for disrupting some hidden order.
Instant punishment.
•
No home anymore. Nowhere to return.
My house is a ruin, a cemetery. You may yearn for the grave, but just try
living there.
•
I have no talent. I’m not talking
about the literary marketplace: I mean how I see myself. I write poems for
myself, like these notebooks, to think things through, that’s all.
•
The soul has two distinct layers. One
is the “I”—capricious, fickle, uncertain, it hops from joy to despair. The
other, the “soul,” is steady, sure, unwavering, watchful, ready, aware.
•
I received the grace of shadows. The
grace of remaining in the dark.
•
Granddad says that only now, at the
age of eighty-six, has he lost his faith. Maybe that’s also grace, to cast off
all supports and learn to walk, to keep on even without the gift of faith, in
darkness. Since that’s how we have to enter death.
I felt like crying, but I denied
myself that pleasure, since Janek* was supposed to come over. But he
called to say he couldn’t come because he was washing the dachshund, who was
going to see Monika Zeromska’s dog tomorrow. A major event. So I cry,
corporeal, not spiritual tears. My voice is swollen on the phone.
“Child!” says Mrs. Z.
“Child!” says Mrs. Z.
•
How to write so that the poem is as
close as possible to silence? Zen—to play on the lute without strings.
Simplicity—of course. But how? What
kind?
•
In the human world everything is
mixed. No pure states. Even death is life in some sense.
Archaeology—eschatology?
•
I know a Marxist who wants to raise
his son on “metaphysics.” “It’s got more to offer,” he says.
•
The tomb is a gate. No one saw Christ
rise from the dead. With good reason. Everything on “faith.” God always hides
in a cloak of uncertainty.
No comments:
Post a Comment