But then you lit the lamp and that was it.
It was no sudden and miraculous glow
But the warm comfort of one window lit

Against the greyness I had come to be,
And I stood weary and I saw it so,
And I called then and you answered me.

-- Peyton Houston, lines from '49' sonnet variations

the hardness and softness of things

The dialectic of hard and soft governs every image with which we picture to ourselves the inner nature of things . . . From hard and soft we learn of the multiple paths of progress, acquiring quite different measures of temporal efficiency. The hardness and softness of things engage us in an entirely other kind of dynamic life. The resistant world lifts us out of our static reality, beyond ourselves, initiating us into the mysteries of energy. Henceforth we are awakened beings. Hammer or trowel in hand, we no longer stand alone–we have an adversary, something to accomplish. However insignificant it may be, we have, as a result of this, a cosmic destiny.

-- Gaston Bachelard, from Earth and Reveries of Will
Tr. Kenneth Haltman

more

when it does

To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid or to be full of that love which comes from a sense of at-oneness with whatever . . . In other words there is no split between spirit and matter. And to realize this, we have only suddenly to awake to the fact. I have noticed it happens and when it does it partakes of the miraculous.

-- John Cage "Juilliard Lecture" in A Year from Monday (1952)

more

Promise

Remember, the time of year
when the future appears
like a blank sheet of paper
a clean calendar, a new chance.
On thick white snow

you vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind's hearty gust.
So fill your glass. Here's tae us. Promises
made to be broken, made to last.

-- Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay interviewed