AUGUST 2009

1608. “What hurts now, but might become love”

M. Hollander, “Friend Fever”

—like the ache of awe; like contradiction fatigue; like many becomings whose final shape you can never name.

Note: “How strange must I feel myself in foreign parts” (James Boswell).

1621. “Forth, pilgrim, forth!”

Chaucer, “Truth”

A word of swift direction spells out a state of being, a being alert and full of purpose and promise. If you didn’t know you were a pilgrim before, an earnest wayfarer going from here to someplace you hope will be better than here, well you certainly do at the sound of the speaking; you do as soon as you hear the lifting voice, urgent but calm, telling you, by a single, repeated syllable, that it’s time to leave, or time to return.

Note: “it’s time” (T. S. Eliot).