monochrome photograph

life’s passages … 84

“The sight of the leaves ever reminds me strangely of my own sadness. I cannot go within, but lie on the veranda; mayhap my end is not far off. I feel a vague anger that others are in comfortable sleep and cannot sympathize with me. Just now I hear the faint cry of a wild goose.* Others will not be touched by it, but I cannot endure the sound.

How many nights, alas!-

Sleepless-

Only the calls of the wild geese-

~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

*Footnote within the Diary of Court Ladies of Old Japan notes that the “wild geese visit Japan in Autumn and fly away northwards in the early spring. They are never alone, and their cries calling to each other make the solitary woman feel loneliness more keenly.”

looking back

“Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. Otherwise you will too easily look with reproach (that is, morally) upon your past, which naturally has its share in all that you are now meeting.”*

“… every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This simple concept is fundamental. You can extend it to our lives, our actions and their consequences.

“So when we do something we should always expect a reaction even when we think no one has seen us?

“When we are part of a complex whole; if you move one thing, you affect everything else. And somewhere, without knowing it was you, someone is affect by your action and reacts, striking when you least expect it.”*

*cited in Trans. M D Herter Norton, Letters to a Young Poet. Rainer Maria Rilke

**unknown source