Prompt: Paradox
“I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough. . .”
We humans are complex creatures.
Life is complex. Existence, reality, walking, breathing, being.
Infinitely complex.
We are not static.
We change, we grow, we learn, we forget.
We age, then regress.
We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with, debatably.
Undebatably, people change us, we change them.
The world changes us and we change the world.
I, half-a-world-away from most of you, have been changed by electrical signals firing in your brain.
Maybe you have been changed by the electricity in my brain too?
What a precious gift!
But today, I could be too busy to write, to scared to share.
That’s me too. . .the artist who won’t create.
The lover who won’t love.
The friend who won’t act like a friend.
Brennan Manning put it best:
When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
Prompt: Paradox
Where do you see paradoxes in you and around you? How do you articulate paradox in your poetry?
I Too Am Alone in the World by Rilke and Our Share of Night to Bear by Emily Dickenson are below for inspiration.
Please leave a comment if you would like to be added as an author.
I’m excited to see what you create!
[I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough] by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.
Our Share of Night to Bear
Emily Dickinson
Our share of night to bear,
Our share of morning,
Our blank in bliss to fill,
Our blank in scorning.
Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way.
Here a mist, and there a mist,
Afterwards — day!
Guérin Asante Sylvia Wohlfarth Dennett Anna Rozwadowska Lindsay Lonai Linegar Carver Bain Michelle Muses Aaska Ejaz Chiedza Kikumi LB Blue Fences kurt gasbarra Tre L. Loadholt
Jo Ann Harris FILZA CHAUDHRY Suwimali Bandara Kurt Gasbarra Crystal E.Wild Flower Sarah Book Amy Jo Reynolds antoinette nevitt Dennett