Sometimes we don’t need another project. We don’t need another problem to fix or another idea to dawn, we just need to be. We just need to rest. This week I had two different posts worked out but it all just felt like blah, blah, blah. Sometimes going round and round in our heads doesn’t let us open the door we need to walk through. This is why using other people’s words and ideas is such a powerful jumping off point. It gets us looking differently at the puzzles in our own lives that refuse to be solved.

And in this strangest of times I think we all need a different kind of time out. A time out with a bit of perspective. Sometimes it is less, not more, that keeps us afloat until the tenor of our emotional life shifts. Anna Akhmatova was a Russian poet who made it through the Russian revolution under threat of death and still she created stunning poetry. It’s a reminder that no matter what our circumstances we can still create beauty and joy in endless variations. Knowing this truth is a formidable medicine in any time.

Powerful words transcend time and circumstance. I wanted to give over-thinking and over-doing a rest and offer some words from Anna Akhmatova to let the soul slip into reverie, a subtle feeling, or a long lost memory. There are places inside only poetry can touch and this feels like one of those times when we all need a bit of the mystery revealed in unexpected ways. I offer these words as a different way of resting, in a way that opens up the secrets that still remain unseen, in a land that still remains uncharted.

A Land Not Mine

A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air, drunk like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.

Happy Sunday.

kb