a little over 3 years ago, i started this blog. at the time, i was a wide-eyed 20-year-old, about to leave the only country and culture i'd ever known. since then, i have lived in 3 other countries, traveled through many others, seen incredible things, and experienced the luminous souls of innumerable people. and now, as a wide-eyed 23-year-old about to turn 24, i'm reading and listening to some interesting things that are leading me to reflect a bit on how/how much i've lived in these past few years. (i originally wrote 'changed' instead of 'lived' in the previous sentence, but isn't that life? changing?)
currently, i'm listening intensely to sufjan stevens' new album, the age of adz. specifically, i'm re-playing the final song, a 22-minute masterpiece (in my opinion) called 'impossible soul.' some of my favorite lyrics from the song:
It's a long life, only one last chance
Couldn't get much better, do you wanna dance?
It's a good life, better pinch yourself
Is it impossible? Is it impossible?
Boy, we can do much more together.
also, i've been reading some more rilke again, and this poem really overwhelmed me:
fire’s reflection
Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.
And if in his later life, one day
wounds him like so many others,
it's because he mistook some risk
or other for a promise.
Let's not forget the music, either,
that soon had hauled him
toward absence complicated
by an overflowing heart....
if i could try to sum up SOME of the last 3 years in a pretty, well-packaged lesson, it might be to not mistake some risk or other for a promise. we do it so often, don't we? all the while, forgetting the music. and our overflowing hearts.
also, this is an excerpt from a short piece of rilke's called 'fear of the inexplicable':
"But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode."
in this, my 25th year, i will choose to exclude nothing, and be ready for everything. i will not learn only my corner, or my strip of the floor, but will seek everything, even the most enigmatical. and by doing this, i will try to live all relations to others as something ALIVE, and draw exhaustively from my own existence.
and finally, this last poem also spoke to me deeply (and i don't think it's only because of my love of little red dresses.)
child in red
Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.
She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.
Then she dances
a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.
It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.
It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.
may we all live in a way that lets all we carry in ourselves frolic and ferment.
and everyday, let's dance a few steps, that we invent and forget.
we can do so much more together.
do you want to dance?
