To the Hand

W.S. Merwin

What the eye sees is a dream of sight

what it wakes to

is a dream of sight

and in the dream

for every real lock

there is only one real key

and it’s in some other dream

now invisible

it’s the key to the one real door

it opens the water and the sky both at once

it’s already in the downward river

with my hand on it

my real hand

and I am saying to the hand

turn

open the river

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

--James Baldwin

 

The Sacrifice

In the beginning was the Word Papa why was that?

I studied philosophy, history of religion, aesthetics. And ended up putting myself in chains. Of my own free will.

--Andrei Tarkovsky

 

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

 

--T.S. Eliot