Monday.
This is the 24th day of 2011. This year no longer feels so young to me. Tucson prematurely aged the calendar and many of us along with it. I am determined to stay far from the shadow of fear that leads to emotional and creative paralysis. In Manhattan today it is about 8º — far too frigid to risk an adventure into the urban tundra. The Stone Sage Lion who lives on my terrace has put on his icy thinking cap. He is staring through the glass doors perhaps wishing to come inside. He seems to suggest it’s time to pause from concentrating on coldness and solitude. I am giving a thought then to spring, and the inevitable renewal that accompanies it. For now, the task is to “winter through” individually and together. And here is the first stanza of Rilke’s XIIIth Sonnet To Orpheus. I am taking these words with me this week as an intimate companion.
Keep ahead of all parting, as if it were behind you, like the winter just now passed, for in winter you are so endlessly Winter, that only by Wintering through it will the heart survive.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Number 13, Part Two, Sonnets to Orpheus
Photo Credit: Alida Brill
©2011 Alida Brill, From This Terrace
Hi Alida–
Bravo!! Here’s to wintering! I love your lion; he looks like
he can withstand any weather!
xoxox,
T.
I love this, and it is so poignant. I called an old friend, that I had not talked to for quite a while other than emails, today for her birthday, and she said as she was scrolling through her phone to get to my number, her phone rang with me at the other end! Sometimes we have to bring spring to ourselves.
Alida
you know, your lion looks a lot like our old dog.
John
Do you mean your beloved Vicky? Or, a dog from your adult years? Alida