Thursday, December 13, 2012

^Photo: In my garden, long ago, the summer of 2009^

Today I read this quotation from Alessandro Pronzato:
"The crowded bus, the long queue, the railway platform, the traffic jam, the neighbor's television sets, the heavy-footed people on the floor above you, the person who still keeps getting the wrong number on your phone. These are the real conditions of your desert. Do not allow yourself to be irritated. Do not try to escape. Do not postpone your prayer. Kneel down. Enter that disturbed solitude. Let your silence be spoiled by those sounds. It is the beginning of your desert."
-Source: Meditations on the Sand
The quotation fits my today, and this came to mind:

Oh, desert, now I know you!
and I know where I've seen you before:
your other name is chaos,
and you're a regular at my door.
And I must learn to live you,
and make my way along
through this dusty loud distraction,
and not forget my song,
or Whom it is I sing to.
Though I have seen no sign
the memory I cling to
is a green and growing Vine.

2 comments:

  1. That is a memorable and disturbing quotation. Thank you for sharing it with us.

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  2. You're welcome, Perpetua. It seems a better, or more fitting, view of things that this distracting world holds many desert places for us.

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