Card of the day: The World reversed
In this time of waiting for new light, I keep asking myself: what really are we waiting for? And The World reversed image suggests to me to reevaluate this narrative. The story in The World is, in a sense, what to wait for: the beginning that is intrinsically in the end. Accomplishment and success along with new beginnings. But reversed suggests an alternative: that maybe waiting for that moment, sacred though it is, is not the right approach. Rather, the present moment is the gift, and though yes there are moments where something does begin and come to an end, maybe waiting for the beginning and the end doesn’t have the same effect as detaching oneself from that anticipation, for anticipation implies dissatisfaction.
William Stafford has a poem about such a moment in “You Reading This, Be Ready.” I like the title in this context, first of all, because this season of waiting is, partially, to be ready for something to come, the Second Coming, revelation, redemption, whatever. Waiting for the end of times and thus a new, better life. But that’s not where his poem goes.
Instead, the speaker of the poem brings us to now. To the sunlight that creeps “along a shining floor,” to the “scent of old wood” and to a “softened/sound from outside.” This poem is mostly a series of questions, not an interrogation, but a queried call back to reality from a mindset where we linger when we expect something better in the future. The speaker asks, “Are you waiting/for time to show you some better thoughts?” We’re waiting for new light—new thoughts, more inspiration. But what comes with new light that cannot be found from within the self right now, from “the breathing respect that you carry/wherever you go”? We begin and are born from dark waters. Before there was light, there was dark. Seeds germinate beneath the dark soil.
Rilke says of the dark: “But the darkness pulls in everything-/Shapes and fires, animals and myself,/How easily it gathers them! (“You, Darkness”) Whereas the darkness engulfs, the fire is “that fence in the world.” Light separates and distinguishes while dark embraces. When we are endarkened (see my poem “Wolf Endarkenment” in Wolfcraft, upcoming early 2025), we are open to the present moment and to the World.
Bibliography:
Rilke, Rainer Maria. “You, Darkness.” All Poetry. https://allpoetry.com/poem/14327160-You–Darkness-by-Rainer-Maria-Rilke
Stafford, William. “You Reading This, Be Ready.” Mindfulness Association, 27 Jan. 2019. https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/words-of-wonder/you-reading-this-be-ready-william-stafford/