The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais NinRead
I looked upon a clock to find the truth. The hours were passing like ivory chess figures, striking piano notes, and the minutes raced on wires mounted like tin soldiers. Hours like tall ebony women with gongs between their legs, tolling continuously so that I could not count them. I heard the rolling of my heart-beats; I heard the footsteps of my dreams, and the beat of time was lost among them like the face of truth.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates the complex interplay between time, truth, and perception in life.
Anais Nin's quote reflects on the nature of time and how it interacts with human experience and aspiration. By using vivid imagery and metaphor, she conveys a sense of urgency, the fleeting nature of time, and the difficulty in grasping truth amidst the chaos of life. The comparison of time to chess figures and soldiers highlights both its strategic and imposing qualities, suggesting that understanding truth requires a deep engagement with the passage of time and our own inner rhythms.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion on the nature of time and existence.
The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.
I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worthy nor such a one as that he should grant this to me, since I know most surely that poverty and affliction become me better than delights and riches.
Too much freedom can lead to the soul's decay.
Grief, like Covid-19, mutates and escapes the inoculation of both time and the reassurance of loving friends. It is less sledgehammer and more screwdriver, drilling little holes in your head and heart, leaving you haunted by the ifs and buts of your decisions.
In all things there is a law of cycles.
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