both ,today from the Writer's Almanac, one on the treasures we hide in our souls,
the other of course again on "hope"
It's the birthday of the writer,Edith Wharton. who said, "Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."
In her short story "The Fullness of Life" she famously wrote:
"You have hit upon the exact word; I was fond of him, yes, just as I was fond of my grandmother, and the house that I was born in, and my old nurse. Oh, I was fond of him, and we were counted a very happy couple. But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."
"And your husband," asked the Spirit, after a pause, "never got beyond the family sitting-room?"
"Never," she returned, impatiently; "and the worst of it was that he was quite content to remain there. He thought it perfectly beautiful, and sometimes, when he was admiring its commonplace furniture, insignificant as the chairs and tables of a hotel parlor, I felt like crying out to him: 'Fool, will you never guess that close at hand are rooms full of treasures and wonders, such as the eye of man hath not seen, rooms that no step has crossed, but that might be yours to live in, could you but find the handle of the door?'"
And Edith Wharton said, "There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it."
So often, I feel that the people I know,including me, look at each other so superficially from the outside, it is that we do not dare to show what sparkles deep within or have many of us forgotten to take with us that well designed set of binoculars that sit upon our face, that set of penetrating eyes with soft deep vision,or is it our hearts that we have left behind because our brains have become so big,so massive,so cumbersome,so bossy, that we are weary and can not carry yet another thing, so we leave our hearts at home to collect dust on our shelves.
and now on..hope
Somewhere in the World
by Linda Pastan
Somewhere in the world
something is happening
which will make its slow way here.
A cold front will come to destroy
the camellias, or perhaps it will be
a heat wave to scorch them.
A virus will move without passport
or papers to find me as I shake
a hand or kiss a cheek.
Somewhere a small quarrel
has begun, a few overheated words
ignite a conflagration,
and the smell of smoke
is on its way;
the smell of war.
Wherever I go I knock on wood—
on tabletops or tree trunks.
I rinse my hands over and over again;
I scan the newspapers
and invent alarm codes which are not
my husband's birthdate or my own.
But somewhere something is happening
against which there is no planning, only
those two aging conspirators, Hope and Luck.
"Somewhere in the World" by Linda Pastan, from Traveling Light. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. Reprinted with permission
Days are more hopeful,when with intention we see deeply with our eyes and let our hearts speak to us as much as possible...
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