{"id":638,"date":"2008-08-29T10:04:30","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T14:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=638"},"modified":"2009-08-28T15:45:30","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T19:45:30","slug":"hard-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/hard-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a title=\"whiskey river: 'The rest I have told you already,' by Louise Gl\u00fcck\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2008\/08\/rest-i-have-told-you-already-rest-i.html\" target=\"_blank\">whiskey river<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The rest I have told you already<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The rest I have told you already.<br \/>\nA few years of fluency, and then<br \/>\nthe long silence, like the silence in the valley<br \/>\nbefore the mountains send back<br \/>\nyour own voice changed to the voice of nature.<br \/>\nThis silence is my companion now.<br \/>\nI ask: of what did my soul die?<br \/>\nand the silence answers<\/p>\n<p>if your soul died, whose life<br \/>\nare you living and<br \/>\nwhen did you become that person?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(by Louise Gl\u00fcck)<\/p>\n<p>And (not from whiskey river):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(by Rainer Maria Rilke, <em>Letters to a Young Poet<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>And finally, just for a change, something of an answer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it&#8217;s on your plate &#8212; that&#8217;s my philosophy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(by Thornton Wilder, <em>The Skin of Our Teeth<\/em> &#8212; one of my all-time favorite plays to <em>read<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From whiskey river: The rest I have told you already The rest I have told you already. A few years of fluency, and then the long silence, like the silence in the valley before the mountains send back your own voice changed to the voice of nature. This silence is my companion now. I ask: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,251],"tags":[178,376],"class_list":{"0":"post-638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-poetry-writing_cat","9":"tag-whiskey-river","10":"tag-louise-gluck","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-ai","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5553,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/5553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}