Tag: life

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – Rainer Maria Rilke

Smile, it’s Writer’s Quote Wednesday :). Don’t be shy, Join us:

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This week, I quote Rainer Maria Rilke:

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There are two books I always carry with me: 1). The Bible and 2). Letters to a Young Poet. Don’t laugh, but I thought Rainer Maria Rilke was a woman before I saw his picture! It was Sister Act 2 when I first heard his name, so I looked into it to see if Sister Mary Clarence really knew what she was talking about. Here’s my diagnostic of this quote.

Primarily, Letters to a Young Poet has some of the most inspiring quotes concerning life and love. There is such profound truth here. We tend to go through life expecting to be given the answers to every question in the momentary whim to which we seek them. It never occurs to us that we are not in a position to handle the answer to that question. But if we focus on living, and we live, we will stumble upon the answer at a time when we are wiser and more mature. We will understand it then, though we may not understand it now. 

This book itself began as letters Rainer wrote to a young man who was interested in the art of poetry. These letters have been combined into what can be easily mistaken as a book of poetry itself, as it reads.

About the Author: (from Wikipedia)

MTE5NTU2MzE2MzU4MDg0MTA3“René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke) — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke’s work as inherently “mystical”. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.”

Sorry

young woman with her head in her hands

Have you ever been tired of saying that you’re sorry? Can’t courage your way out of this weakness; can’t forklift this stain out of your chest; can’t shatter these words into dust, drive them to the deepest ocean and wave them goodbye. After all, demons are easy to kill, for they coward under the strength of your words, melt under the banner of your truth. But I am no superwoman, not yet anyway. The law of my tongue half written, a scorching painting left unfinished. But I’m sorry sounds like broken English too distorted to be deciphered, so the flesh of my skin crawls away from the filth of this apology. My knees are stitched against the backbone of my breast, my arms stapled around these, my head tucked tightly inside of me. I am twisted. What kind of forgiveness got me in this fetal position? At some point a change has got to come. I have not the time to keep traveling on repeat; the same old album forgetting to change it’s tune; a dangling sacrifice. The birth and death of me are these apologies; both the resurrection and artwork of my eulogy. I have just had enough of these wretched…. I’m sorry’s.

Tainted Love

I-heart-you-hanging-Happy-Valentines-Day-2015-WallpaperIt is the language of all of mankind. I can walk the streets of any Germanic town, and while I am not very familiar with the language, I can still recognize love. If a man was struggling to release himself from a burning car, I and those who see this will not hesitate to assist him. I do not need to know that hilf mir is German for help me to understand that this man needs help. It is his body language and the human side of him that speaks this to me and I am able to understand this language. I can hear the yelp of a puppy and see the movement of his body to understand that he needs help without verbally communicating with this animal. Already we are able to see that Love is an action word.

 

african-american-children-painting1Its power transcends verbal communication. It can be seen on the street corner, in the corporate office, and in the eyes of a child. Children possess the purity of love. When they hug you there is no knife following it. There is no wicked smile behind their pupils, there is no criss cross of their fingers, and there is no deception in their hearts. I love working with children because every smile is genuine. Every “I Love You” is real. We have all experienced this kind of love at some point in our lives. But then we get older. We become grown-ups and we lose this valued possession. As a result, tainted Love is what we often see in a world as cold as this one.

 

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People throw this word around like it is part of some volleyball game. Whoever can use their members to bounce it in another direction must surely qualify as possessing it. “I Love You” doesn’t have the same ring to it as it used to. We have taken something as pure and as genuine as love and polluted it. It is the stench of a rotting corpse; the bend of a broken bow. I dodge tainted love as if running from a plague because it is not love at all; it is hatred glossed over with the words of flattery. Tainted Love is easy to spot. Whenever it is occupied by over-zealousness it sends up a red flag. I can tell that your actions will not mimic the beauty of your words, which are quite over the top. I can see the stain of insincerity and loathing on your teeth; I can smell the dishonesty seeping from your breath. It is not patient. It is not kind. It is not enduring. It is not real. A corrupt “I Love You” stings the skin and rots the mind. It teaches men how to hate and to disguise that hatred so that it looks like love. The greatest struggle then that mankind have to look forward to in this life, is to learn how to love again.