May 9, 2006

• I’m here, working and learning.

  Today I’m doing more reading than writing.  I also intend, later,
  to go through another batch of my memoirs, making “sensitive” ones
  protected as I did yesterday, and bringing more links back out of
  hiding.

  This is for you, from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran:

  
  Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter
  them in forest and meadow.
  Would that the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys,
  that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the
  fragrance of the earth in your garments.
  But these things are not yet to be.
  In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that
  fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls
  separate your hearths from your fields.
  

  And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what
  is it you guard with fastened doors?
  Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
  Have you rememberances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the
  mind?
  Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and
  stone to the holy mountain?
  Tell me, have you these in your houses?
  Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that
  enters the house a guest, then becomes a host, and then a master?
  

  Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your
  larger desires.
  Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
  It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of
  the flesh.
  It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like
  fragile vessels.
  Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks
  grinning in the funeral.
  

  But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped
  nor tamed.
  Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast.
  It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that
  guards the eye.
  

  You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your
  heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls
  should crack and fall down.
  You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
  And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your
  secret nor shelter your longing.
  For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose
  door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences
  of night.

  
  

  • 2:08 pm
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