In Order to Arrive
I’m not sure why, but I feel like quoting a little T.S. Eliot today. Here’s what speaks to me now, from The Four Quartets:
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
***
(photo by Nichole Robertson, from Paris in Color Notes, published by Chronicle Books)