static

why is it that when you have to get up early in the morning, sleep becomes as elusive and mythical as a unicorn?

there are times when i read something, particularly something exceptionally brilliant, that i cannot help but wishing that i had written it. such is the case with most of Rilke's works. poetry, prose, it matters not, the sheer level of his brilliance always leaves me speechless. especially in the presence of words such as these...

The Book of a Monastic Life, I, 7
—Ranier Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make—
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake—

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could posess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all the lives,
in gladness.

so much brilliance. so much insight. so much perfection.

this love poem to God— written so many years ago, in a language i do not understand, by a man i would have loved to have met— is exactly where this dark night finds me.