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Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese"
Jul. 13th, 2004 07:18 amYou do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
This is the poem I was looking for. It's very beautiful, but right now it doesn't seem very true.
I wonder if resignation is in order here, or if I should fight to change things? I generally think I will always be alright with the final product, but maybe that isn't true in this case. Maybe I need to deliberately choose the place I want to be and then go there.
How do you choose these things? Just picturing situations in the future and thinking, that one's good, or, that one's bad doesn't work; you can't get a comprehensive picture from a situation just from the inside of your head if it hasn't happened yet. How do you decide where you want to be? And I guess, what does it matter anyhow, since you rarely get where you want to be by your own choosing.
The Mission Folk Fest is not this coming weekend but the next. I'm scared. I'm only half sure I'm going to go. What would it mean to close that chapter of my life so completely, or even just to put it aside for a little bit? Would it be a betrayal of myself out of fear of the pain Kynnin can cause me, or does it only make sense to retreat in that way as well?
Apparently he's always been unhappy going to the fest with me. This year he is willingly going with Mouse, and camping. He'll be everywhere there. I do not resent her in any way, but the idea of seeing them there together fills me with a sort of dread. It highlights the fact that every time he went with me in the past was a lie, that where I thought he was appreciating being with me and watching me in my own element he was really bored and resentful and wishing I didn't do the things I liked there.
I probably need to go. It will be okay in the end. I'm still very afraid.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
This is the poem I was looking for. It's very beautiful, but right now it doesn't seem very true.
I wonder if resignation is in order here, or if I should fight to change things? I generally think I will always be alright with the final product, but maybe that isn't true in this case. Maybe I need to deliberately choose the place I want to be and then go there.
How do you choose these things? Just picturing situations in the future and thinking, that one's good, or, that one's bad doesn't work; you can't get a comprehensive picture from a situation just from the inside of your head if it hasn't happened yet. How do you decide where you want to be? And I guess, what does it matter anyhow, since you rarely get where you want to be by your own choosing.
The Mission Folk Fest is not this coming weekend but the next. I'm scared. I'm only half sure I'm going to go. What would it mean to close that chapter of my life so completely, or even just to put it aside for a little bit? Would it be a betrayal of myself out of fear of the pain Kynnin can cause me, or does it only make sense to retreat in that way as well?
Apparently he's always been unhappy going to the fest with me. This year he is willingly going with Mouse, and camping. He'll be everywhere there. I do not resent her in any way, but the idea of seeing them there together fills me with a sort of dread. It highlights the fact that every time he went with me in the past was a lie, that where I thought he was appreciating being with me and watching me in my own element he was really bored and resentful and wishing I didn't do the things I liked there.
I probably need to go. It will be okay in the end. I'm still very afraid.
