I sit for at least two hours out in the sun, usually under a tree, the natural light warm on my skin, my hands darkening with time...
I usually have something to read but am constantly interrupted by colleagues who see me on the bench and immediately come to sit down next to me and chat. I don't mind that at all..I'm only drifting anyway, and it is interesting to listen to what's on people's minds. It's usually frivolous and so that helps put things into context for you. Your own trivial consternation, for example.
It is hard not to think of how everything is really floating, despite the apparent solidity. The sun, the trees, the ancient cycle that brings the late afternoon breeze back this way at this time of the year. And about how what preoccupies us is really very often of no account, of little relevance, that is, to what is most enduring in our being. Which 'I' do you talk about?
I can't remember much of what I've read. There are a few standout lines, though, that seem to mean more than I can incorporate into my own life (Gillian Rose, Paradiso, Rosenzweig). It is an effort but, truly, knowledge and books are not everything. I see it now as clear as a face before me.Whose? Yours or mine?
Is this a kind of fatalism, a letting go, an acceptance, at root, of your own frailty and limitations?
You continue to think, one of the most radical of positions, stances (not "gestures" as the post-moderns would have it) is tawakuul. A trust in the goodness of the world, in the continuing good. But it is, obviously, not just that: a kind of resting in mystery that only God can grant. Is this dependent on an awareness of one's own finitude (Ricoeur)?
You ask me why I smile
But I do not answer,
for my thoughts are carried downstream.
Far away from the world.
(from memory)
--Li Po.
I usually have something to read but am constantly interrupted by colleagues who see me on the bench and immediately come to sit down next to me and chat. I don't mind that at all..I'm only drifting anyway, and it is interesting to listen to what's on people's minds. It's usually frivolous and so that helps put things into context for you. Your own trivial consternation, for example.
It is hard not to think of how everything is really floating, despite the apparent solidity. The sun, the trees, the ancient cycle that brings the late afternoon breeze back this way at this time of the year. And about how what preoccupies us is really very often of no account, of little relevance, that is, to what is most enduring in our being. Which 'I' do you talk about?
I can't remember much of what I've read. There are a few standout lines, though, that seem to mean more than I can incorporate into my own life (Gillian Rose, Paradiso, Rosenzweig). It is an effort but, truly, knowledge and books are not everything. I see it now as clear as a face before me.Whose? Yours or mine?
Is this a kind of fatalism, a letting go, an acceptance, at root, of your own frailty and limitations?
You continue to think, one of the most radical of positions, stances (not "gestures" as the post-moderns would have it) is tawakuul. A trust in the goodness of the world, in the continuing good. But it is, obviously, not just that: a kind of resting in mystery that only God can grant. Is this dependent on an awareness of one's own finitude (Ricoeur)?
You ask me why I smile
But I do not answer,
for my thoughts are carried downstream.
Far away from the world.
(from memory)
--Li Po.
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