#by rilke

[metamorphesque]

What do I do with my life

Can you please hand out any hope I can cling to?

I have notifications on for your posts and yet can't bear to open each one because I know it will hit me so hard I'll want to sink into earth

and I don't wanna die just yet

I want to live life vibrantly and with joy, grass, green, wonder, sunlight, all of the things that make it easy to breathe or at the very least, easier

pero I'm so lonely and achy and whiney and shaky I hate who I am and all that I stand for, I'm a fraud and a fake! I say I love love and then live in my hate I can't stand myself and my existence

I wish I could live inside poetry like a blog, like your blog, like a tiny post existing as it is, not real but real anyway, not real enough to touch but real enough to touch

What do I do with my life what do I do with my life why am I spending my days alienated and tested for things I'm no good for why am I doing this to my life who let me do this to my life what do I do with it now

hello, my friend! I guess we're on the same train now, plagued by the same guilt of being alive but not really living ... reading your message felt like a soliloquy, my own soliloquy for you so gently grazed your fingers on my bleeding wounds.

I myself am trying to make me live, if that makes sense. No one really tells you that you might have years when you have to actively convince yourself to stay alive, no one teaches you how to do that.

By clinging to the littlest of things is how I operate. a song, a poem, a photo, a minute, a memory, a tasty snack or a warm cup of coffee, an idea, a painting, a stupid joke I've heard somewhere — I gather all these things in my hands to keep them occupied, so that they wouldn't do something unrepairable, irreversible.

What I've understood so far is that we go through seasons of (1) living despite, (2) living for and (3) simply living.

You and I, it seems, are at the mercy of the first one. To live despite is what we should do — despite the alienation, despite the loneliness, despite these spiteful thoughts and horrors. Once this season is over, we'll move on to the second one: to live for. This one, I think, will be much easier to travel through because the days here are full of little droplets of hope that attach themselves to your skin and don't leave your side until you reach the final season: simply living. Living here is as easy as it is to breathe. This is our destination.

I know that I didn't answer your questions and that I'm not capable of doing so. I'm sorry. I myself have decided not to seek answers anymore. As Rilke said, Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that — but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself.

I'm accepting the happiest days of my life (that are yet to come) as my lighthouse and I'm sailing toward them. Hopefully you'll do the same.

Take care 🧡🌼

[apocryphics]

[mournfulroses]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose; "An Experience,"

[moonstoast]

@rbhvleo // roberto ferri // mothering by ainslie hogarth // rainer maria rilke // ? // planet of love by richard siken // a self portrait in letters by anne sexton // indian summer by ron hicks

[saintsebastiensbf]

Joanna Macy, from a preface to Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

[sicknessinmotion]

YOU BIT INTO ME AND I WASN'T AS SOFT AS YOU EXPECTED; ON PERVERTED LOVE.

i. b. vyache // unknown // isabel allende // dante émile (@orpheuslament) // rainer maria rilke // florence + the machine // unknown // clarice lispector // @ruhlare

[luthienne]

Most experiences are unsayable; they become real to us in a space no word has entered.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

[azfellandco]

It's about Crowley bearing witness to Aziraphale's desire, about the way that desire is animal and visceral and enormous and terrifying*. And about how Crowley sees that and wants it. Crowley offers the ox rib and watches Aziraphale eat because eating provides them no sustenance, it's purely for pleasure, sensual, selfish. And Crowley introduces Aziraphale to this, and thousands of years later still takes obvious pleasure in feeding Aziraphale, in watching him eat. In watching Aziraphale's pleasure.

And I think it's significant the things we see Crowley put into his body in s2, and why: six shots of espresso, as something bracing before seeing what it is that made Aziraphale call him in his "something's wrong" tone; whiskey, because he has to give Aziraphale some bad news; wine, because they "might as well get comfortable" during the storm coming down on Job, after Aziraphale learns that Crowley is actually pretty unhappy with Job's suffering; and poison, to dispose of it so Elspeth (or Wee Morag, I've fogotten which is which) doesn't die. Crowley doesn't take Aziraphale's "something that calms you down", only consumes things that not only don't bring him pleasure but are an attempt to prevent pain. Crowley, who introduced Aziraphale to this important physical, sensual, selfish pleasure, denies it to himself. He denies himself the eccles cakes, he denies himself partaking in food, and he denies himself Aziraphale.

And we see throughout the rest of the season other things he's denying himself: the comfort and safety of a home in the bookshop in favor of the mobility and ready-made escape of living in the Bentley, the surety of saying what he really means during the confession. He cannot bring himself to admit what he wants, that he wants. Gabriel and Beelzebub "going off together" is not what he wants. He wants Aziraphale, but he doesn't say that, because he's never, in the years and years and years we've seen this season, let himself want or be seen wanting. "Going off together" is as close as he can get to speaking it. "A group of the two of us" is as close as he can get. So he has to watch as Aziraphale leaves and takes his pleasure in the world with him.

[ihopeucomehomesoon]

LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS

[celtos]

rainer maria rilke, the book of hours

[metamorphesque]

"to endure!"

vincent van gogh ("trees and undergrowth") robert lowell [How will the heart endure?] vincent van gogh [I must endure bad times and the waters will rise, possibly as high as the lips and possibly even higher, how can I know beforehand? But I’ll fight my fight and sell my life dearly and try to win and pull through.] rainer maria rilke [To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.] joan didion [Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it.] elena ferrante [maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved.] elena ferrante [I will give what I can give, I will take what I can take, I will endure what has to be endured.] han kang [The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.] victor frankl [What is to give light must endure burning.]

[ragesingoddess]

on icarus.

(Attributed to Oscar Wilde//Sigmund Freud- Interpretation of Dreams//@meanwhilepoetry//Herbert James Draper- Lament for Icarus//Joseph Campbell//Hozier- Sunlight//Rainer Maria Rilke- The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge//Mary Oliver- The Sun//Vincent Van Gogh- The Sower//Matthew Ward- The Collected Stories//Florence and The Machine- Falling//Billy Collins- The Art of Drowning//Renè Milot- The Fall of Icarus//Hozier- I,Carrion (Icarrian)//Virginia Woolf- The Waves//J. Bengt- Icarus Flew//??)

[namedvesta]

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from Love Poems to God (𝟣𝟫𝟢𝟧)

[mournfulroses]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter featured in Letters to Merline, 1919-1922

[quotemadness]

Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Rainer Maria Rilke