In “Uncarryable Remainders: Poetry and Uncertainty” Jane Hirshfield writes,
“The making of good poetry entails control; it also requires surrender and a light hand. A genuine art lives somewhere between divination bones and the dice. That is, it lives along that exploration and geological fault line that has to do with which aspects of our lives we can know, which we cannot, and the spirit and tools with which we engage the question. We travel this line by taking aim with the whole body, the whole life, and then letting go, committing ourselves to the toss.” (133)
(Usually seems like the principles that are offered for making poetry/making art also apply to making life—hit two birds with one stone, for all my slingshots out there.)
What brings me to face the question (the mystery, the contradiction, the absurdity, etc), let alone engage with it? Lately:
Kindness-as-thrill: Bet you never thought of kindness as thrilling before. I hadn’t. Maybe it’s thrilling because it is surprising and precious, or because it takes strength (effort as exhilarating?), or because having received it, we feel relief, sustenance, which invigorates. “Close on the heels of kindness, originality is one of the most thrilling things in the world, also the most rare.”1
this reminder (re the value of life): “But to know one is part of a whole that is worth the trip”2
Belief as liquid (whipped up, stirred) I love how Miranda July wrote about her friend and an invitation to her newsletter subscribers:
“With the help of my friend Isabelle I whipped myself into a state of utter belief (it’s hard to do that alone.)”3
“Please report back here so we can all get stirred up and brave.”4
I’m here at the fault line, tools and spirit gleaned from snippets like these. I’m squared up, undone, bewildered and steady at once, traipsing along the jagged edge, renewed by what rushes through the veil it has rent.