from stillness

A couple of weeks ago I wrote the following lines:

first, around stillness;

then,

with stillness;

finally:

from stillness

-

Now, reading The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse (which is GREAT), this passage from page 257, the poem returns to me:

" 'You are tiring yourself, Joseph,' he said softly, his voice full of that touching friendliness and solicitude you know so well. That was all. ‘You are tiring yourself, Joseph.’ As if he had long been watching me engaged in a too-strenous task and wanted to admonish me to stop. He spoke the words with some effort, as though he had not used his lips for speaking for a long time. And at that moment he laid his hand on my arm - it was light as a butterfly - looked penetratingly into my eyes, and smiled. At that moment I was conquered. Something of his cheerful silence, away from words and toward music, away from ideas and toward unity. I understood what I was privileged to see here, and now for the first time grasped the meaning of this smile, this radiance. A saint, one who had attained perfection, had permitted me to dwell in his radiance for an hour; and blunderer that I am, I had tried to entertain him, to question him, to seduce him into a conversation. Thank God the light had not dawned on me too late. He might have sent me away and thus rejected me forever. And I would have been deprived of the most remarkable and wonderful experience I have ever had.”

A cheerful silence, away from words and toward music, away from ideas and toward unity.

Isn't that beautiful.

perplexing tips from vintage schumacher

In my journeys of trying to get less perplexed, more perplexity is perplexing itself in pixels, pixies and predominantly pee-coloured pony’s. It’s all a bit strange; one might even be swayed to say: perplexing. Thankfully, there is a guide for that particular emotion. Quite the book. A Great book! Here are some guiding tips from that book, by the writer E.F. Schumacher himself:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/2d2012_7d564ff1407641279785c013f3b74788/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

“The pairs of opposites, of which freedom and order and growth and decay are the most basic, put tension into the world, a tension that sharpens man’s sensitivity and increases his self-awareness. No real understanding is possible without awareness of these pairs of opposites, which, as it were, permeate everything man does.”

“Societies need stability and change;

Tradition and innovation;

Public interest and private interest;

Planning and laissez-faire;

Order and freedom;

Growth and decay;

Everywhere society’s health depends on the simultaneous pursuit of mutually opposed activities or aims. The adoption of a final solution means a kind of death sentence for man’s humanity and spells either cruelty or dissolution, or generally both.”

The light of...

June 8 2023, 19:46u

19:47u