The Grace to Be Found in the Space Between the Lines

[Image: “The There and the Not-There (Duke University Chapel),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Writing in the Dark

It’s not difficult.
Anyway, it’s necessary.

Wait till morning, and you’ll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light, and you’ll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen, ballpoints don’t always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There’s nothing
shameful in that much prudence: those are our tools.

Never mind about crossing your t’s, dotting your i’s—
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.

(Denise Levertov [source])

…and (except for the first sentence):

Why don’t we experience a stone as story? Why do we persistently forget to come alive to the world as it is in front of our faces? Why do we have to go to all the trouble of making art so that we can return to where we are and have been all along? I think it is because of the way thought works in us. To be present in the midst of our being what we are is a pure sensation that we can never exactly apprehend. It is fleeting and ungraspable. Thought is always coming a second afterward, telling us something, singing a song of the past. Thought includes the aroma of our being alive, but it also includes so much that is made, so much of doing and piling up, that it tempts us necessarily away from ourselves. To find within our thought and perception (for perception is already thought) a settled free and unmade place takes effort, and this is the effort of art.

(Norman Fischer [source])

…and:

When It Comes

Any time. Now. The next minute.
Years from today. You lean forward
and wait. You relax, but you don’t forget.

Someone plans an elaborate party
with a banquet, dancing, even fireworks
when feasting is over. You look at them:

All those years when you searched the world
like a ferret, these never happened—your marriage,
your family, prayers, curses. Only dreams.

A vacuum has opened everywhere. Cities,
armies, those chairs ranked in the great
hall for the audience—there isn’t anyone.

Like a shutter the sky opens and closes
and the show is over. The next act
will deny that anything ever happened.

Your hand falls open. It is empty. It never
held a knife, a flower, gold,
or love, or now. Lean closer—

Listen to me: there isn’t any hand.

(William Stafford [source])

Not from whiskey river’s commonplace book:

To Age

It is time to tell you
what you may have guessed
along the way without
letting it deter you
do you remember how
once you liked to kneel looking
out of the back window
while your father was driving
and the thread then of pleasure
as you watched the world appear
on both sides and from under
you coming together
into place out of nowhere
growing steadily longer
and you would hum to it
not from contentment but
to keep time with no time
floating out along it
seeing the world grow
smaller as it went from you
farther becoming longer
and longer but still there
well it was not like that
but once it was out of sight
it was not anywhere
with the dreams of that night
whether remembered or not
and wherever it was
arriving from on its way
through you must have been growing
shorter even as you
watched it appear and go
you still cannot say how
but you cannot even tell
whether the subway coming
in time out of the tunnel
is emerging from
the past or the future

(W. S. Merwin [source])

…and:

Ovid wrote millennia ago: “In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.” This becomes especially true in our moments of deepest play—which is not always free of anxiety, but nonetheless great fun. Visionary, absorbing, ecstatic, extraordinary, deep play rapidly can become rewarding and healing, or dangerously addictive. Human nature being what it is, that will never change. Our daily routines tend to be haphazard and filled with work, chores, and requirements. How often do we shed all obligations and feel fully alive, freed from the identity we nonetheless cherish, as we use all our senses and become completely open to experience?…

There’s a tradition of wishing on a falling star, but what does one wish on a comet? For those future residents of Earth: may their world still be packed with mysteries. May they still grow giddy on the eve of a great adventure. May they become more responsible to one another and to the planet. May they keep their taste for the renegade. May they never lose their sense of innocence and wonder. May they live to chase brash and astonishing dreams. May they return to tell me, if such a thing is possible, so that I can know the answers to a thousand scrupulous puzzles, hear of whole civilizations that bloomed and vanished, learn what travel to other solar systems has revealed, and behold the marvels that arose while I was gone. If that’s not possible, then I will have to make do with the playgrounds of mortality, and hope that at the end of my life I can say simply, wholeheartedly, that it was grace enough to be born and live.

(Diane Ackerman [source])