Debra Darvick
enhance your now in word and imageWISDOM
BEFORE NOW
Meeting the Past
…The past cannot be re-written, but it can be re-read.
Debra Darvick 1956 –
Opinions — Marcus Aurelius
Light in the Darkness — Hannah Arendt
Yesterday’s Cleverness — Rumi
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Rumi, 1207 – 1273
Strange Jewels — Elizabeth Gilbert
Surely something wonderful is sheltered inside you. I say this with all confidence, because I happen to believe we are all walking repositories of buried treasure. I believe this is one of the oldest and most generous tricks the universe plays on us human beings, both for its own amusement and for ours: The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.
Elizabeth Gilbert, b. 1969
“Blue Purple Red: Amethyst Crystals” by cobalt123 is licensed under Creative Commons.
A Poem by Eugenio Montale
This verse from Eugenio Montale’s poem Low Tide was carved into a wall in Monterossa, one of the five villages that comprise Cinque Terra. Kate, our contact at Firebird Tours, kindly found for me the entire poem in translation. The verse in bold is the one in the photograph.
LOW TIDE
Evenings of cries, when the swing
rocks in the summerhouse of other days
and a dark vapor barely veils
the sea’s stillness.
rocks in the summerhouse of other days
and a dark vapor barely veils
the sea’s stillness.
Those days, no more. Now swift slanting
flights pass across the wall, the downward plunge
of everything goes on and on, the sheer coast
swallows even the reef that first lifted
you above the waves.
With the breath of spring comes
a mournful undertow of lives
engulfed and in the evening,
black bindweed, your memory only
writhes and resists.
a mournful undertow of lives
engulfed and in the evening,
black bindweed, your memory only
writhes and resists.
It lifts over the embankments, the faraway tunnel
where the train, entering, slowly crawls.
Then, unseen, a lunar flock shows up
and browses on the hills.
where the train, entering, slowly crawls.
Then, unseen, a lunar flock shows up
and browses on the hills.
Translated from Italian by William Arrowsmith
photo credit from about-cinqueterre.com