Imaginary Biography
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly
First Childhood, no limits, no renunciations,
no goals. Such unthinking joy.
Then abruptly terror, schoolrooms, boundaries,
. . captivity,
and a plunge into temptation and deep loss.
Defiance. The one crushed will be the crusher
. . now,
and he avenges his defeats, wrestles, wins,
and overpowers others, slowly, act by act.
And then all alone in space, in lightness, in cold.
But deep in the shape he has made to stand erect
he takes a breath, as if reaching for the First,
. . Primitive....
Then God explodes from his hiding place.
Do you ever feel like there is knowledge that the world is hiding from you? Sometimes mundane, sometimes momentous, this knowledge seems to have eluded you for decades, though it would have been terribly helpful. If this is commonplace in your life, remember, its not you, there is no great personal conspiracy directed at your being, the rest of the world isn't that organized and I am sorry to break it to you, but everyone else is rarely thinking about you. This missing essence of information is simply a function of the immense nature of things. Why should we hold ourselves to such a high standard of awareness? I'm just grateful if I can remember to pick up cat litter and light bulbs while shopping.
Knowledge is such a precarious thing, it depends on many factors, within and outside of our control. I was struck today, putting on my socks, that I owe all of you who have never been inside a feed store a piece of valuable knowledge, an open secret rural folk have kept from our city brethern. In the winter, in places like Minnesota where outside temperatures can drop below 10 degrees F, the amount of moisture that is in the air that is then heated can be lower than the driest of deserts. For instance an outdoor air temperature of 0 degrees F, when heated to 68 degrees has an approximate humidity of less than 2%. It's no surprise that old wood stairs dry and creak, or that our old heals dry out and crack.
I was over 50 before this happened to me for the first time, a condition that is surprisingly painful. It happens when the callous tissue on the heal of your foot dries out so much it splits open. The first time this happened I went to the pharmacy and bought a product with "Feet" in the name. It worked, albeit slowly. The product looks and feels like Crisco my Mother used in making cookies. However, after I turned 60, nothing seemed to cure my cracked heals. A friend of mine, who grew up on a dairy farm, saw me hobbling and asked what was wrong. I said, "a cracked heal" and recounted my frustration in getting it to heal up (kind of a foot pun). He said; "go to the feed store and get one of the products intended for cow udders. I use it on my hands and feet to cure dry skin."
I promptly went to my local farm supply store and picked up Dr. Naylor Udder Balm. It worked like a charm. My current little tin will last for years. It's a miracle cream. It made me ponder how we find a way to share the institutional knowledge that urban people know, like where's the best place to buy bulk spices and get your electric guitar fixed, and the secret knowledge that rural people know, like where's the best places to go swimming in a lake, and create a kind of helpful cultural exchange that is not Reddit, but occurs face to face over coffee. In our increasingly polarized society, maybe a little thing like the joy of udder butter is something that we could all agree on.
For the Old Gnostics
by Robert Bly
The Fathers put their trust in the end of the world
And they were wrong. The Gnostics were right and not
Right. Dragons copulate with their knobby tails.
Some somnolent wealth rises unconcerned,
Yes, over there! Ponderous stubborn
Sorrow weighs down the flying Gospels.
Scholars cobble together new versions.
The untempered soul grumbles in empty light.
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