Journal of a Nobody
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.
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Isaac Levitan, The Twilight Moon, 1899. Oil on canvas, The Russian Museum collection, St. Petersburg, Russia.
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An Autumn Evening
In the brightness of autumn evenings
there is a touching, mysterious charm:
an ominous glitter, motley trees,
a light, languorous rustle of scarlet leaves,
a hazy, quiet blueness
across the sadly orphaned world
and, presaging gathering storms,
at times a gusty snap of wind.
Loss. Exhaustion. And on it all
there is that gentle smile of fading
which, in a thinking creature, we should call
the divine shame of suffering.
—Fyodor Tyutchev, Translated by F. JudeCourtesy of Memory Green
