But Now I Know

Dragon

septagonstudios:

Ian Kim

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“Song: Now That She Is Here” by Hayden Carruth, an American poet who died in 2008. It caught my attention, both for its lyricism and its honesty about the learning that remains.

Song: Now That She is Here
for Joe-Anne

An old man now, who’s learned at last
What it means truly to be in love.
Ah, all those years of the past -
I used to think I knew but I didn’t know.

Like a neophyte in the school of lust,
Struggling with shame and doubt,
I fell and lay low,
Because I thought I knew when I didn’t know.

Old age is failure. Natural
Exhaustion, mind and body letting go,
Words misremembered, ideas frayed like old silk.
But I am in love now,
In it totally all the time.
I have nothing else, I have forgotten my name,
I live on taters, whiskey, and goat’s milk
In a little house by the wood
While a cold wind rises and the night fills with snow,
Who used to think I knew. But now I know.

Poem from Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, by Hayden Carruth

Thanks to “Ox Herding Practice and Daily Life”

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Tanka

She’s too far away
this biting cold New Year’s Eve.
Twenty tolls into
the temple bell’s midnight song,
I’ll no doubt be fast asleep.

—Michael Boiano

[via journalofanobody]

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“How can a heart be illumined when the forms of created things are imprinted in its mirror? How can it travel to God when it’s tied down by its vain desires? How can it be avid to enter the Divine Presence when it hasn’t purified itself from the impurity of its heedlessness? How can it hope to understand subtle secrets when it hasn’t repented from its errors?”

—	Ibn Ata’illah al-Sakandari (via theconsciousmuslim)

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“ “Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.” ”

—	Lynn Margulis, American biologist and University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1938-2011), What Is Life?, University of California Press, 2000. (via amiquote)

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“ “In this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures. Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.” ”

—	Alan Lightman, American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Einstein’s Dreams, London, Vintage, 2004. (via amiquote)