You must go by the way of dispossession (Second Quartet)

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
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 ecstacy.

Morning and fog. This is the palate that I know: the greys and blues and smooth of the sea, and the wings of birds, their salt-air cries over sand dunes and wild roses, low sky, high water. Sitting close to the windows in the back room, close to the river, brackish water, stretching out into the sea. It begins to rain, wet against the window panes. We read poetry after breakfast. We say we'll talk for an hour, but none of us believe in watches—Faulkner says that clocks kill time—and we've gone well over.

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.


These are words for the knight of faith. And Matt makes excellent french press coffee -- best black.

Other echoes inhabit the garden. Shall we follow? (First Quartet)

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence.

Cups of tea stacked up on old books, curling steam. We have turned out all the lights. Why are holy places dark places?

Samantha says the wind sounds like the Harpies, screaming along the corners of the house, and speaks of the dancer, at the still point of the turning world.

David says that England is covered by time, a beautiful and oppressive history, English pride and resentment, pressing down.

We agree that Love has no time – and Nathan mentions the Boethian Wheel, the Primum Mobile - Love is the centerpoint.

Katie talks about eternity, set in the hearts of men. We will always be longing, frustrated by the limitations of our lives and our words.

Like Derrida said, Matt reminds us, we're all watching words slide around eachother, clumsily.

And Dr. Mitchell quotes Plato – because music touches the soul of children – and prepares them to behold true beauty. There are children in this poem. Who are they? Who are we?

We play music for one another – Simon & Garfunkel, Addaggio for Strings, Over the Rhine, and Tu Se Morta - we've all chosen music for our objects of beauty.

And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation...

We are speaking exactly of this: that this moment in the dark is something we will never ever get down well enough for ourselves or for others to behold again fully. It exists only in memory and memory is fleeting. It is expressed only in words and words are too imprecise. Even as we sit here, in the dim borrowed house, creaking in our chairs, speaking in quiet voices, we are loosing everything we have to the tyranny of time.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark...

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

T. S. Elliot

Four Quartets II.III

Here's to a weekend alongside the river god...