[Image: “Athena’s Annex,” by John E. Simpson; #802 (December 8, 2019) in my #everydaybandw series. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Early Morning In Your Room

It’s morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasplike
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water—
It seems you’ve traveled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that’s over.

Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka’s Letter
to his Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That’s what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

(Robert Bly [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world and even guiding them a little as well, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all. That seemingly so many succeeded in this is no evidence to the contrary, for, first, there are not many who do, in fact, succeed, and secondly, these not-many usually don’t “do” it, it merely “happens” to them; although this is not that Utmost, yet it is still very great and very honorable (particularly since “doing” and “happening” cannot be kept clearly distinct), And finally, it is not a matter of this Utmost at all, anyway, but only of some distant but decent approximation; it is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.

(Franz Kafka, Letter to my Father [source])

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