Alexandersmap

    Tag: e e cummings

    • Life and Love and Wings

      i thank You God for most this amazing
      day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
      and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
      which is natural which is infinite which is yes

      (i who have died am alive again today,
      and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
      day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
      great happening illimitably earth)

      how should tasting touching hearing seeing
      breathing any—lifted from the no
      of all nothing—human merely being
      doubt unimaginable You?

      (now the ears of my ears awake and
      now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

      — E. E. Cummings, i thank You God for this amazing

      We dwell so often on our limitations; Limited time, limited capacity for learning new things or for being patient with the things in our life that overstay their welcome. We are bound by commitments, with reasons, with a lack of imagination for breaking free from all of that and living an expansive life. We are locked into routine and measure our days incrementally. How are we to grow when we are forever held captive by a lack of audace créatrice (creative audacity)?

      To be unbounded and unlimited is of course a fantasy. We all will die one day (memento mori). Infinite growth is not for mere mortals. And yet we may live a far more expansive life than we mortals usually attempt. We are no more and no less than what we do with our time.

      Why worry about all that today when we can simply do what must be done and defer hopes and dreams indefinitely? Because now is all we have. Growing into our possibility begins now. It always has and always will be so. But thinking in terms like “always” is its own trap. Because it lets us off the hook of immediacy. We must steer clear of such traps and simply think of now. For this is the birth day of life and of love and wings. So do begin.

    • Be Yourself

      To be nobody but
      yourself in a world
      which is doing its best day and night to make you like
      everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
      which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
      ― e e cummings

      “Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”
      ― e e cummings

      Delighting in a blizzard, I forgo the endless news telling you what’s right in front of you and instead read poetry and sip espresso. Were the snow deeper I might slip on the snowshoes and fly. Give it time, I think, and it will catch up to where my dreams are. Who doesn’t become a child again when hunkered down in a snowstorm?

      There’s a spirit in a blizzard that calls me outside. Swirling snow globe bliss, shaken again and again until it spins madly about. The landscape is cloaked and the familiar appears foreign. I suppose it’s the adventure of being immersed in a storm that draws me outside, or maybe it’s the thought of doing what most people would tell me not to do. A blizzard is a rebellion against the norm. It turns our expectations upside down and does its own thing, and I find it reassuring and a bit thrilling.

      “The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.” — e e cummings

      The ego is the enemy, the Stoics and Ryan Holiday would suggest, and this week my ego experienced a generous portion of highs and a healthy dose of lows. I put it all aside and focus on who I’d like to be instead. There’s no use living your life for the approval of others, for they only see the world through their own filter. You’ve got to be yourself, and find out who you are with every new experience, every new thrill and setback and odd twist of fate.

      The wind picks up, and billions of snowflakes surf the breeze to beach themselves where they may, transforming the landscape in their huddled masses. Packed in together in swirling madness, most land where the wind takes them. But the funny part of a blizzard is that where the snow lands isn’t always where it might stay. The wind can easily lift snow up again, to land in an entirely different place.

      The world is similarly mad. The masses land where they’re carried by the wind currents of place and expectation and obligation. Yet we might still surf the breeze and find our own landing place. Should we choose to get out there and fly.