We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate.

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant path, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

Isn't it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.

Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant.