May 16, 2010


...for in our gazing lies our truest acquiring. Would to God our hands were as our eyes are: so ready in grasping, so wide in holding, so carefree in letting all things go; then we would become truly rich. But we do not become rich by having something dwell in our hands and wither there: everything is meant to stream through their grip as through the festive gate of entrance and homecoming. Our hands are not meant to be coffins; rather beds in which the things engage in twilight slumber and accomplish many a dream, out of whose darkness their fondest secrecies speak. But the things are meant to wander on beyond our hands, sturdy and strong, and we are meant to retain nothing of them but the courageous morning song that floats and shimmers behind fading steps. For possession is poverty and worry; having had possessed is the only unconcerned possessing.

- Rainer Maria Rilke "Diaries of a Young Poet"


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