StandingAtTheFence

Poetry suspends time. Poetry is time. Poetry gives us time. A story or a poem is like a living body; we need only tell the few, precise pulse points to feel the heart of it leaping in its skin. Those details are the flare in the desert, a signal from a boat mid-ocean, the cry of the abandoned, the ones caught in a trap who must be freed. To rescue, to name what must not be forgotten. Sunday evening, winter morning, November dusk. We belong where love finds us.

My job is not just to interpret or describe realities but to create them through language and action, symbols and images... Our task is to write against the edict that ­ women should fear their own darkness, that we not broach it in our writings.

“We think with the entire body, or rather, we have to acknowledge the embodiment of the brain, and the embrainment of the body.”

An ancient heavenly [...] hypnotic trance.

"But this is my own maze, she told herself, this is the maze I grew up in; I could not be a prisoner here; I know the way so perfectly, and she turned and was further lost."

[A]ny pain caused by unhappy experiences, whatever their nature, has something in common with mourning. It reactivates the infantile depressive position; the encountering and overcoming of adversity of any kind entails mental work similar to mourning.

“Modesty does not mean thinking of yourself as tiny or small. Modesty here means feeling true and genuine. Therefore the warrior feels self-contained, with no need for external reference points to confirm him. Part of modesty is an underlying brilliance, being self-contained but shining out. The warrior’s awareness shines out with tremendous inquisitiveness, a keen interest in everything around him. You begin to see things as natural messages, rather than as reference points for your existence. The difference between ordinary inquisitiveness and that of the warrior’s path of meek is that the warrior’s awareness is always joined with discipline. Therefore you don’t miss anything; you see every detail. Such disciplined awareness is clearing the ground in such a way that the universe begins to become part of your vision.”

“Am I free? There is some thing still holding me. Or am I holding it?”