Symptoms

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free. Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee. If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by. If I, if I have been untrue I hope you know it was never to you. Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me. But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee. I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, "You must not ask for so much." And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?" Oh like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free. Leonard Cohen, Bird on the Wire

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him. Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Time Does Not Bring Relief" (1931)

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world? Because, properly attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion. Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action. Be ignited, or be gone. Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pulls gentle enough to call you master, strong enough to call you fool; because it lives like a desperate trained falcon in the high sweet air, and you can always haul it down to tame it in your drawer. A kite is a fish you have already caught in a pool where no fish come, so you play him carefully and long, and hope he won't give up, or the wind die down. A kite is the last poem you've written, so you give it to the wind, but you don't let it go until someone finds you something else to do. A kite is a contract of glory that must be made with the sun, so you make friends with the field the river and the wind, then you pray the whole cold night before, under the travelling cordless moon, So make you worthy and lyric and pure. Leonard Cohen, "A Kite is a Victim" from The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)

Lesley Chamberlain, 'How to Read Rilke Today?' in Rilke: The Last Inward Man (2022)

Lesley Chamberlain, 'How to Read Rilke Today?' in Rilke: The Last Inward Man (2022)

Lesley Chamberlain, 'How to Read Rilke Today?' in Rilke: The Last Inward Man (2022)

Henry Miller

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Spiritual Laws (1841)

The Lacanian teaching regarding the subject's relationship to the other is thus actually quite beautiful, for it says: Do not use the other as a means of filling your void. Rather, hold open this void so that the other can enter without having to sacrifice its otherness, without having to mold itself to the shape of your lack. This is difficult, for you have paid the price of lack for your subjectivity, and you have a deeply melancholic attachment to what you think you have lost. You try to plug your void by inserting an object into it. But this is a useless endeavor because the object cannot redeem you, and is thus bound to always disappoint you in the end. Indeed, the object does not have a choice but to disappoint you because you are asking for the impossible. You are asking for the kind of healing that you will never be able to attain. Your task then is nothing less than to change both your way of being in the world and your expectations regarding what it means to be a human being. You need to understand that the voice inside you is what makes you human even as it causes you anxiety. It gives you access to meaning by mobilizing all of your creative capacities. And it makes you capable of love. It is consequently your responsibility to learn to live with this void in such a way that these creative and loving capacities do not go to waste. Mari Ruti, Reinventing the Soul: Posthumanist Theory and Psychoanalysis (2006)