The Concourse of the Birds painted by Habib Allah. The hoopoe, center right, instructs the other birds on the Sufi path.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
— Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (via grumblr)
CARAVAGGIO
The Seven Acts of Mercy
c. 1607
Oil on canvas, 390 x 260 cm
Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples
And the days are not full enough.
And the nights are not full enough.
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.
— Ezra Pound
We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for in our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.
— Hermann Hesse
