washed stones: a new space to write

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I will not be reopening synch-ro-ni-zing. I am happy with this blog and would not change a thing. It has been rich here, interacting with friends. How I've loved the expanse of it all!

I still need to write, and in an open forum. But I've changed, and I want a quieter and more sequestered space. I picture a monastic retreat, with a narrow bed, a desk and a window. And all the outdoors beyond.

So I am emerging from hibernation into a spare, small room called "washed stones" inspired by a poem of Rilke's titled "Not Poor." (See my bold in the poem.)

NOT POOR

We are not poor. We are just without riches,

we who have no will, no world:

marked with the marks of the latest anxiety,

disfigured, stripped of leaves.

Around us swirls the dust of the cities,

the garbage clings to us.

We are shunned as if contaminated,

thrown away like broken pots, like bones,

like last year’s calendar.

And yet if our Earth needed to

she could weave us together like roses

and make of us a garland.

For each being is cleaner than washed stones

and endlessly yours, and like an animal

who knows already in its first blind moments

its need for one thing only—

to let ourselves be poor like that—as we truly are.

        ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

           The Book of Hours, III, 16

           Translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

I would love for you to join me, if you like. I warn you, I may be very quiet. You might not even hear me speak. But you'll hear me scribbling, because something in my poor (washed) being wants to be read. Like a stone.

More about the poem at my first post at washed stones.
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