reading.

it's winter break, meaning i have way too much free time on my hands.

going out of my mind.

resolved to branch out and start reading for fun again.

starting with German lit.

i'm really falling in love with Rainer Maria Rilke, and i thought i'd share some of my favorite bits:

Entering

Whoever you may be: step into the evening.
Step out of the room where everything is known.
Whoever you are,
your house is the last before the far-off.
With your eyes, which are almost too tired
to free themselves from the familiar,
you slowly take one black tree and set it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made a world.
It is big
and like a word, still ripening in silence.
And though your mind would fabricate its meaning,
your eyes tenderly let go of what they see.


Lifting My Eyes

Lifting my eyes from the book, from the
tightly sequenced lines
to the full and perfect night:
Oh how like the stars my buried feelings
break free,
as if a bouquet of wildflowers
had come untied:

The upswing of the light ones, the bowing sway of the heavy ones
and the delicate ones' timid curve.
Everywhere joy in relation and nowhere
grasping;
world in abundance and earth enough.

it looks as though that time-honored tradition of accidentally and melodramatically reading books that go along with whatever post-adolescent/adolescent experiences i'm going through.

all i want to do is set out and write well.

too see and create.

give back.

set out, run away.

be me.

the only thing that's stopping me, i know, is myself.

i need to finally grow up and prepare myself for doing the things that make me happy.