Sunday

He will die all alone at the top of a barren mountain, wearing on his head a crown of thorns.
--Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation Of Christ


And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
--Hart Crane

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'
--Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

All great and precious things are lonely.
--John Steinbeck, East Of Eden

Everyday I Bear A Burden
Every day I bear a burden, and I bear this calamity for a purpose: 
I bear the discomfort of cold and December's snow in hope of spring. 
Before the fattener-up of all who are lean, I drag this so emaciated body; 
Though they expel me from two hundred cities, I bear it for the sake of the love of a prince; 
Though my shop and house be laid waste, I bear it in fidelity to a tulip bed. 
God's love is a very strong fortress; I carry my soul's baggage inside a fortress. 
I bear the arrogance of every stonehearted stranger for the sake of a friend, of one long-suffering; 
For the sake of his ruby I dig out mountains and mine; for the sake of that rose-laden one I endure a thorn. 
For the sake of those two intoxicating eyes of his, like the intoxicated I endure crop sickness; 
For the sake of a quarry not to be contained in a snare, I spread out the snare and decoy of the hunter. 
He said, "Will you bear this sorrow till the Resurrection?" Yes, Friend, I bear it, I bear it. 
My breast is the Cave and Shams-e Tabrizi is the Companion of the Cave.
--Rumi