The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. ~Italo Calvino
Commonplace book of a teacher, poet, and counselor.
It is your beginning, this is my end-
You and I together make this current.
Your lamp burns, you’ve a companion at home
For me it is night, for me it is the star.
Yours is the shore, mine the water-
You remain sitting, I go on wandering.
Your hand can hold, mine knows decay-
Your mind knows fear, mine is above it.