Moore's "Soul Mates"

For those of you who've been around for any length of time, you well know my devout adoration and affection for Thomas Moore. First introduced to him through The Care of the Soul: A Guide to Cultivating Sacredness in Everyday Life, I was intrigued and quickly amassed all Moore I could find at any used bookstore (is there any other kind?!)

Last year, he published A Life at Work and joel, jess, and i went to hear him read from the piece at Elliot Bay Books. It was such a delightful and well-timed experience as we were all, ARE all, in the time of life where we question our careers in an attempt to slow down and live more soulfully instead of monetarily.

Just last week, I picked up Soul Mates on tape (our freaking CD player is broken) and have greatly enjoyed being reemerged into Moore's ideologies. He never fails to offend and challenge my "churched" sensibilities and instead ushers me into the truly sacred.

Soul Mates is ather amazing installment in Moore's lifelong quest towards avodacting the mysterious and unfathomable depths of the human soul and how it can possible amalgamate to another equally enigmatic human soul. Moore confronts moralism in sexuality as well as pondering the needs of soul - in that it often wants detachment just as much as attachment, coldness as well as passion. Though I consider myself a lover of soul and proponent of the soul's journey, Moore never ceases to press further into the..another amazing installment in Moore's lifelong quest towards advocating the mysterious and unfathomable depths of the human soul and how it can possible amalgamate to another equally enigmatic human soul. Moore confronts moralism in sexuality as well as pondering the needs of soul - in that it often wants detachment just as much as attachment, coldness as well as passion. Though I consider myself a lover of soul and proponent of the soul's journey, Moore never ceases to press further into the process and combats the arid analysis of relationships and the "lets fix it" mentality through practical means, and encourages relationships to delve into every aspect of the relationship - even the vices - in an effort to hear what the soul of your being has to say. Always challenging, never simple, forever entrenched in the mythology of Jungian and Grecian archetypes, I find Moore more and more (hah) offering me a truth older and safer than I know...

As a result, I have picked up another of his, The Soul of Sex.

Until nex time,
mme. bookling

Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

I feel about Rilke as my husband once felt about jambalaya.

Let me explain.
Joel had never once in his then 25 years of life heard the word jambalaya. When this came up in conversation one afternoon, I was so incredulously shocked at his not knowing the dish much less the word, so I took the matter before a tribunal of friends. Even after their calm assurances that such a thing existed, he would have none of it. He has certainly come around, but the point is the disorientation we feel when our lives have never encountered something that others seem to know about. It's as if we were completely absent that day in school...

So I ask how an English major could graduate without even the mention of Rainer Maria Rilke. I have no idea and I blame Christian education. :)

Now that I know, I will never again look back. Rilke has moved me to my very core and couldn't have been encountered at a more perfect time (I know I say that often, but I feel that the divine must orchestrate the influence of literature for me as he would introduce people into another's).

In Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, I found words spoken with soul-wrenching truth and simplicity. He advises a young poet on matters of art, criticism, the existence of god, solitude, sadness, and poetry. Of course I would love it. I have so many passages marked that to include my favorites would certainly infringe on copyright laws. Let me narrow down a few:

He mentions that in judging your own art, one should never ask if it is good or bad, but if it was necessary. "A work of art is good if it has risen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it" (9).

I shared this passage in a letter to an artist, but it is so relevant:
"Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born; this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast" (24).

Lastly, I love his advise about sadness. When life brings us pain, he encourages humans to enter solitude as much as possible. "For the quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadness..."(85). I love this idea, and not to the exclusion of entering into the support of those you love, but in combating the way our western culture deals (by not dealing) with sadness. Sadness always has a message for our soul, and if we jump out of it as a potato out of boiling water, we will miss much of the secret rooms of our insides.

I am seriously crushing on Rilke,
mme. sadness

Stories of lovers: Keeping Sane without Work

it's all books all the time here at le chateau bookling.

in this comfortable and slow solitude (i realize that sounds like a personal hell for some), i am rediscovering my voracious appetite for reading. in previous years, i could never start one book before i had finished another; but now, i find myself capable of such infidelity.

i am juggling 6 right now.
such scandal.

in each of these books, i am finding something to glean for each different little room of my soul. and these days, those needs are quite variegated.

So how does she juggle so many lovers, you ask?! Well, here's how it goes. I wake up and wander out to my spot on the couch. I pick up my Women Poets from Antiquity to Now and give myself a refresher lesson about whomever I am reading that day. Today, it was the gothic Mz. Emily Bronte. This is the book of sleepy, morning kisses for me; my coherence is subconscious at best and the sweet expository words linger even after I close the door.

I then wander over to Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain which I find reminiscent of Augustine's confessions; a happy correlation for me. I have found MUCH pleasure in autobiographical writing these days; perhaps this is because I hope to do the same and am finding all of these meaningful examples. This is the book of passion for me; my eyes hungrily finger each word in a blind, fast fit of the senses. I cannot get enough fast enough.

I then feel the call of Mz. Plath. She is a nostalgic, illusive distant lover in a smart tweed suit. She smells like cigarettes and tragedy. She is the acadamian, the professor I am too intimidated to address. Lately, I have had to dodge into the shrubs when I see her walking into her lecture. I long for what I cannot have.

So I divert myself to Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. This lover is the one that makes me giddy with pre-teen infatuation. Where has he been? Why hasn't he noticed me yet? So I will voyeuristicly read his letters intended for some other fledgling and unashamedly transfer his admonitions to myself. He speaks of solitude; he fails at marrying the need for human love with human solitude - but knows that all creative work is birthed from solitude. You had me at "solitude."

Thus ends my morning coupling.
I save the other two for nighttime...
When the imagination comes to life in my bedroom.

I tenderly open Watership Down. I look up at the clock, and I have been lost in the world of rabbits for the last 30 minutes. This lover is as a child loves her father-figure. She aches to be in his presence, but doesn't want him to know it. She admires him. She relys on him, takes his presence for granted. It doesn't feel too important, but only because she doesn't know a life without him.This will be a long read for me - I will nibble off a chapter or two and then mouth it, savoring its lingering aftertaste.

The last one falls into the category of my romance with educating myself. I am an information gatherer, analyzer, and implementer. We added a new addition to our lives last month, and I am determined to do as right by her as possible.

Ladies and gents, I give you the GEEEEEKIEST book ever: How to Think Like a Cat. This came as a recommendation from a friend, and it has been most helpful for this young cat owner (who has never owned a cat, much less any animal of her own).

~i told you. reading is sexy,
mme. bookling