When I rescue you from the waves of the sea, I love you the better for this, being now responsible for your life. Or if I have watched over you and healed you when you were sick; or if it so happens that you were a trusty old servitor, helpful as a lamp; or even the herdsman of my flocks. Then I shall go and drink your goatsmilk in your house. I shall receive from you, and you shall give; you shall receive from me, and I shall give. But I have no truck with him who fiercely declares himself my equal and will neither depend on me in respect of anything or have me depend on him. Him alone I love whose death would wring my heart.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
But, mark my words, the man who cannot see that receiving is very different from accepting is blind indeed. Receiving is, above all, a gift, the gift of oneself, and I could not call him a miser who refuses to ruin himself with presents; the miser is one who bestows not the light of his countenance in return for your largesse. And miserly is the soil which does not clothe itself in beauty when you have strewn your seed upon it.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb. But you, my sedate friend, propose to loll in your gondola and to become the gondolier’s song for all your days; wherein you dupe yourself. For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance. And when you halt on the way, you will have no joy of it; for the landscape will have nothing more to tell you. Then you will discard the woman; whereas you should have begun by discarding your old self.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
Do not desert an old friend;
a new one is not on par with him.
A new friend is like new wine:
until it has matured, you do not enjoy it.
[Ecclesiastes 9:10, with apologies to my new friends, with hopes that they will become old friends in time]
Listen to this traditional Slovak song. I’ll print the words below, with apologies to my Slovak friends until I can figure out how to add the diacritical marks to my blog. Also, I ask my Slovak friends to offer their translations of the text in the comments section.
Vychodí, vychodí ponad kostol hviezda,
coze sa ti, milý, moja krása nezdá,
coze sa ti, milý, moja krása nezdá.
Nezdá sa mi, nezdá, od jedného casu
kedy Tvoje oci premenili lásku…
kedy Tvoje pery premenili lásku…
kedy Tvoje bozky premenili lásku…
Do not keep your hand wide open to receive,
but closed when it is time to repay. [Ecclesiasticus 4:31]
I have wanted to read something by Cormac McCarthy for a long time – since my friend Geoff recommended All the Pretty Horses to me not long after it was published. I’m not sure why I delayed. But recently my friend Lynne wrote on my Facbook wall to tell me to read it. She said something about it’s being “devastating.” So I took the trouble to order the book and read it.
“Devastating” is a good word. In thise story the world is devastated – there has been some sort of disaster and almost everything has been burned up. Everything is gray, covered with ash. And many of the few people left live like animals. The main characters are a father and his young son who was born on the day the earth was devastated. They wander through the blackened world trying to survive by scrounging for old cans of food, drinkable water, scraps of anything that can be used to help them survive. (more…)
Not in this world of hope deferred,
This world of perishable stuff:—
Eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard
Nor heart conceived that full “enough”:
Here moans the separating sea,
Here harvests fail, here breaks the heart:
There God shall join and no man part,
I full of Christ and Christ of me.
—from Christina Rossetti (you can read the rest of the poem here)
I can’t wait till next Saturday. Paula and I and several of our friends will gather in our home, grind and brew some fresh-roasted Ethiopian coffee, sit in our extravagantly comfortable living room, and spend who knows how long talking about my all-time favorite book.
I just finished my umpteenth reading of C. S. Lewis’s incomparable Till We Have Faces – and I was yet again moved. More than moved: shaken. Orual’s story is simply terrifying. Her long life of self-delusion – her unbending conviction that she loves her sister Psyche well, when all the time she in fact (as Bardia’s widow tells her) doesn’t know the first thing about love – is so convincing and so thorough that it presses me to probe deep within my own heart with dozens of embarrassing questions. Really, why do I like this book? It’s exhausting to read, and every time I read it I know it will be. So again: why? (more…)
I have a confession: I am smitten.
And the object of my affection – my new beloved – may be of the most glorious and agonzing kind: that unattainable love, perhaps that forbidden love, that leads to despairing frustration that can only be ended by the most drastic and unthinkable measures.
My new True Love is not a woman, but the Slovak Language. Alas, she is very much like a woman: to love her is not to understand her.
Sigh.