Gaining wait

If you could see my $1 used copy of The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet by Rubem Alves you would see it filled with little post-its marking pages, post-its that I am now replacing with pencil marks since about half way through I remembered that it's not a library copy and I can scribble on it. Lately I'm telling anyone who will listen (and some who won't) about it. Even the contents page is interesting.

In the last post I quoted from chapter one, 'unlearning'. I'm now up to chapter five. It's very clever and magical how he uses a whole book of words to talk about not-words, about silence and the way things are barely seen and how they slip through your fingers.

Silence is the space where words come to life and begin to move. Once they existed because we uttered them. They depended on our will to think, to speak, to write: tame birds in our cages. But in silence a metamorphosis occurs. They become wild, free. They take the initiative.

Truth is hidden. It is absent. It is not shown, it is not said. It is not evoked...In the dark, silent space, strange creatures begin to move: absences only visible with the eyes of desire and love.

Beauty is the name of what we have lost.

image by (and of) me