"I would like to beg you, dear sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day in the far future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Ranier Maria Rilke
"the sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star.
i am a painter who began my career as a child coloring outside the lines of my coloring books. i am a writer who started out by composing adventure stories while riding my stick horse around the backyard. as a child, i got in trouble for asking too many questions...i question that.
"the emperor's new clothes" by hans christian andersen
this fairy tale has been a companion to me as i have traveled through my life.
briefly, it is about an emperor who was deceived by two tailors who said they were making a set of clothing out of a "dream" fabric. in reality, they used no fabric at all. to make their scam complete, they announced that only those who were wise enough would be able to see the beautiful clothing. and so, no one, not even the emperor, admitted to being unable to see it.
wearing his new "clothing", the emperor paraded through his kingdom. no one questioned his appearance; no one wished to appear less than wise.
until a small child asked, "why is the emperor not wearing any clothes?"
so it is that i ask, if i question rather than believe i am wise, what will i see?
3 comments:
"I would like to beg you, dear sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day in the far future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Ranier Maria Rilke
so, i am a question....
i do love rilke's work.
"the sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star.
rilke
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