First of all, a little tip for ALL of my readers who drive.
If you're driving along and you see a girl walking, and you think, "gee, it's raining, I should pick her up so she doesn't get wet," DON'T DO IT. This is especially important if you're driving around at dusk or at night, and/or in a shitty neighborhood.
You see there's not a chance in hell I'm stopping to get into ANYONE'S car after dark on the corner of Court and Stuyvesant Streets. I don't care if I know you, I don't care if you're my neighbor or an acquaintance or WHO you are; if I don't immediately recognize your car -- and I don't recognize any cars except Aaron's and my mom's without a REAL close inspection -- you are a stranger, and I am NOT riding with you. Remember that pedestrians CANNOT see into your car windows to see who you are.
You might just be trying to do something nice for a girl who looks like she's walked a long way, or who's wandering through pouring rain, but it is NOT considered a nice gesture when you scare the bejeepers out of somebody.
Along those same lines, if you're lost after dark in a nasty neighborhood, for gahd's sake, pull into a gas station for directions. Don't ask the scrawny chick with the bookbag and the glasses, because you're only going to succeed in scaring the hell out of her, and she's probably going to take off running instead of giving you directions ANYWAY.
Wednesday evening. Eighty-fifty in the evening. Waiting at a bus stop at Broome Community College. Reading to keep my mind occupied; reading to give my brain something to ponder instead of Human Sexuality 120 things.
Came across the following... Had to struggle not to weep...
...And it was as if I were merely translating into words the great soundings of the solitary moonsea at our side, and we were both listeners. I said: "You must find the confidence for everything, and the place where there is space for all your riches. Other wise you will pass life and yourself by. That would be a great pity. There are such golden treasures in both. You should leave home. Not just for six to seven weeks. Leave. There is a great difference. For a short trip you will only take along a few things. You will select what is most necessary, and finally, when you are in that foreign place, you will find yourself lacking certain things. Nothing weighty, but something dear: a picture, a book, a remembrance; some small trifle that you would hardly think of at home. Now you miss it. It's the same with one's spiritual luggage and the soul's provisions: you take along for six to seven weeks only what is most suitable. You arrive at a foreign place and remain a foreigner there because you don't have enough home with you to spread out around yourself. And then that being-limited: when in that distant country something really comes toward you, something that demands much, that demands You of yourself, then you don't have yourself with you and begin thinking 'why risk it, I'll be traveling back tomorrow toward the old things anyway....'" And I went on in this vein, saying things that by now I have quite forgotten, and then: "I wish I could show you something from out there like a gift one brings back from a fairy-tale people and says with shuddering wonderment: 'Yes, such things do exist there.' That's the way I'd like to show you something." -- As we stood by the gate at half past ten, the lady said: "And you don't consider that unfeminine?" "Oh," I said, "a man can be rich in possessing, but a woman forgets her wealth if she is not allowed to give freely of it. You must have space to place something out of yourself. You must experience some form of motherhood. A day must come that wants something of you, and a second and a third: each with a different wish. When you finally see how you can accomplish everything, there will be no end of self-confidence and joy. Try it. Go away and don't think of coming home. Go as one would like to walk by the sea at night, forever on and on under the many silent stars. Try it." "I will." And she gave me her hand full of a deep gratefulness. >
--Rainer Maria Rilke, "Diaries of a Young Poet."
*sigh*
If Herr Rilke wasn't dead, I would like to give him MY hand full of a deep gratefulness, too. I must admit, a lot of his words are just masturbatory images and musings; you can tell he just wrote because he had to, and not because he ALWAYS had something profound to say, although most of the time, he tries to make everything seem profound. And sometimes, I think he gets carried away and starts professing beliefs that are... well, a bit weird. That may be an indication of the culture in which he lived, or it may be that he was just a weird, weird man, which I don't doubt for a second. But DAMN, if anybody ever walked up to me and started spouting off things like the above, I'd probably worship them forever. It's rare that words touch me so deeply. Helena, choking back tears at a community college bus stop over the words of a man who's been dead since before World War I? Man, them's powerful words, you know? That is immortality, a state I'm unlikely to ever reach, but one which thrills me anyway.
And you know... Another odd little thing about Herr Rilke... I've seen a couple of photographs of him... He's a handsome man with very dark eyes and a thin frame. He looks very solemn. Brooding, almost. He doesn't look like someone who would be easy to get to know. Yet... he looks a lot like someone I have seen before, someone I never knew: a dark and solemn man with smooth skin and black, moody eyes. A photograph that spent many decades adorning my great-grandmother's dresser, one Joseph S. Ryszkowski, a native of Poland who sailed to Ellis Island one fine day in 1910 or so, changed his surname to the German word for "one who makes noise," and spent his remaining years blinking those black eyes at his wife and two sons. A good-looking man. Darkly, solemnly handsome. Upon his death, long before my birth, his photograph was resurrected to its final resting place in my great-grandmother's house, where it would give me a creepy "watched" feeling for as many years as I sneaked over to look at it. I sneaked over to look at it many, many times. The similarities between that photograph and the photographs of Herr Rilke are quite eerie...
Anyway... I'm off to bed now...
~Helena*