We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand
There is a certain amount of kindness, just as there is a certain amount of light … We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine
E.M. Forster, A Room With A View, Pg 152
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDVUZZyA0M
From Ulrich Baer’s collection of Rilke’s letters loc 673:
There is only a single, urgent task: to attach oneself someplace to nature, to that which is strong, striving and bright with unreserved readiness, and then to move forward in one’s efforts without any calculation or guile, even when engaged in the most trivial and mundane activities. Each time we thus reach out with joy, each time we cast our view toward distances that have not yet been touched, we transform not only the present moment and the one following but also alter the past within us, weave it into the pattern of our existence, and dissolve the foreign body of pain whose exact composition we ultimately do not know.
From James Baldwin’s final essay in Nothing Personal:
One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf_zVzvYWuw
I am transforming
I am vibrating
Look at me now
#commitment #EMForster #JamesBaldwin #Lacan #life #presence #psychoanalysis #Rilke #void