From “Staying Alive” – Mary Oliver

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one piles, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe – that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.

from “Staying Alive”, in Upstream, 2016, pp. 12-22.

I think that all revolves around what we decide to do with our own precious life. I don’t much believe in good luck or bad luck. I think you can at least try to give your life the shape you want. Those who are prey for the coincidences, those who give up without even trying, those who keep going on, and on, and on, dragging their old bones as if they were a burden… Is this life? Is this how life was supposed to be? Or is it just a form of compassion that they are looking for? Why don’t they take their life in their hands, they grab it and squeeze it till it bleeds out. Something good can happen. And anything can happen in any direction. It’s chancy out there, as Annie Dillard used to say. It’s damn chancy and you gotta take a chance. You gotta try. Life is not miserable in itself. People make it miserable. I ain’t saying everything is always perfect. Most of the times it isn’t perfect at all. It’s nibbled away. It’s cracked. It just doesn’t make sense, no matter how hard we try to give it a shape, to give it a direction, if not the right one.

And yet, those who keep fighting, those who have understood what they want, those who are burning with desire and dreams. Those will make something out of their life. I still don’t know what, and I’m actually scared to find out. But I want to live.

Keep it wild and simple

AnaKWildness

From “My Friend Walt Whitman” by Mary Oliver

In Ohio, in the 1950s, I had a few friends who kept me sane, alert, and loyal to my own best and wildest inclinations. My town was no more or less congenial to the fact of poetry than any other small town in America – I make no special case of a solitary childhood. Estrangement from the mainstream of that time and place was an unavoidable precondition, no doubt, to the life I was choosing from among all the lives possible to me.

from Mary Oliver’s essay “My Friend Walt Whitman”, in Upstream, 2016, p. 9

So there is a choice. A choice of ONE life among all the others. That’s the point. Choosing and not being chosen. It’s gonna be hard, but you cannot keep being chosen. You have to start choosing.

So choose. Choose a better life. Choose a new family. Choose a new house. Choose a new life. Choose a better future. Choose to close the door. Choose to be always happy. Choose to smile. Choose to take your life and do whatever you want. Choose to dream. And choose to follow that dream till you’re there.

Keep it wild and simple

AnaKWildness

“This Morning” – Mary Oliver

This morning the redbirds’ eggs
have hatched and already the chicks
are chirping for food. They don’t
know where it’s coming from, they
just keep shouting, “More! More!”
As to anything else, they haven’t
had a single thought. Their eyes
haven’t yet opened, they know nothing
about the sky that’s waiting. Or
the thousands, the millions of trees.
They don’t even Know they have wings.

And just like that, like a simple
neighborhood event, a miracle is
taking place.

“This Morning”, by Mary Oliver

Keep it wild and simple.

AnaKWildness

From “Upstream” – Mary Oliver

I walked, all one spring day, upstream, sometimes in the midst of the ripples, sometimes along the shore. My company were violets, Dutchman’s-breeches, spring beauties, trilliums, bloodroot, ferns rising so curled one could feel the upward push of the delicate hairs upon their bodies. My parents were downstream, not far away, then farther away because I was walking the wrong way, upstream instead of downstream. Finally I was advertised on the hotline of help, and yet there I was, slopping along happily in the stream’s coolness. So maybe I was the right way after all. If this was lost, let us all be lost always. The beech leaves were just slipping their copper coats; pale green and quivering they arrived into the year. My heart opened, and opened again. The water pushed against my effort, then its glassy permission to step ahead touched my ankles. The sense of going toward the source.

I do not think that I ever, in fact, returned home.

from Mary Oliver. “Upstream”, in Upstream, New York: Penguin Press, 2016. pp. 4-5.

Heading upstream, despite anything else.

Keep it wild and simple.

AnaKWildness

Upstream – Mary Oliver

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”

I think that growing up means entering the world, means going out of your shell.

Think of a seed. To grow and become a tree it needs to go out of its skin.

Think of a bird. To fly away it needs to fly out of the nest.

Think of a chick, cracking the shell of its egg with such energy.

Think of you, willing to leave everything behind, blooming, flourishing, simply going out in the world and BEING.

Keep it wild and simple.

AnaKWildness

“Don’t Worry” – Mary Oliver

Things take the time they take. Don’t
worry.
How many roads did Saint Augustine follow
before he became Saint Augustine?

“Don’t Worry” by Mary Oliver, in Felicity.

Ci vuole il tempo che ci vuole. Non / preoccuparti. / Quante strade ha seguito Sant’Agostino / prima di diventare Sant’Agostino?

And I guess we all have to follow many roads, and yet our own roads, to find ourselves. Full and rounded. Like apples. So just follow the road you think it’s better for you. Don’t let them steal your dream. Look at the aim. Be confident. Believe in you. Believe in your future. Believe that something will happen. It’s all in your hands.

Gotta believe.

And don’t stop. RUN and FIGHT.

Keep it wild and simple.

AnaKWildness

 

“Both Worlds” – Mary Oliver

Forever busy, it seems,
with words,
finally
I put the pen down

and crumple
most of the sheets
and leave one or two,
sometimes a few,

for the next morning.
Day after day —
year after year —
it has gone on this way,

I rise from the chair,
I put on my jacket
and leave the house
for that other world —

the first one,
the holy one —
where the trees say
nothing the toad says

nothing the dirt
says nothing and yet
what has always happened
keeps happening:

the trees flourish,
the toad leaps,
and out of the silent dirt
the blood-red roses rise.

“Both Worlds” by Mary Oliver, in Red Robin, Boston: Beacon Press. 2008: 51-52.

Sempre indaffarata, sembra, / con parole, / finalmente / poso la penna

e accartoccio / quasi tutti i fogli / e ne lascio uno o due, / a volte alcuni,

per la mattina seguente. / Giorno dopo giorno– / anno dopo anno — / si va all’osso così,

Mi alzo dalla sedia, / mi metto la giacca / e lascio la casa / per quell’altro mondo–

il primo / il sacro– / dove gli alberi non dicono / nulla il rospo non dice

nulla la terra non / dice nulla ed eppure / quello che è sempre successo / continua a succedere:

gli alberi prosperano, / il rospo salta, / e dalla terra muta / le rose rosso sangue si alzano.

(attempted translation by AnaKWildness)

There are days when you just need a bit of poetry, a hot tea. And hope.

Keep it wild and simple.

AnaKWildness

p.s. I’d like to thank all my readers! You are getting higher and higher and I am very proud and happy that Essential Facts of Life is rising! Thanks thanks thanks, wherever you come from, whatever the reasons you are here: thanks.

 

“What is it?” – Mary Oliver

[…]

and how could anyone believe
that anything in this world
is only what it appears to be—
that anything is ever final—
that anything, in spite of its absence,
ever dies
a perfect death?

from”What is it?”, in House of Light (1990) by Mary Oliver

I don’t want to upload a photo here. Because it should have been the photo of my new little fellow, who passed away this morning. But I could not bear the weight of death, I’m sorry. Not now, not like this, not today. I thought he had come to remind me that I need to fight, that I can still be useful in this world. Now that he’s gone, I don’t know who I am, I don’t know why I am here. I just know that I don’t want to be like this anymore. What’s the meaning of all of this? What’s the point? Why? …I’ll never know.

A.

“The Deer” – Mary Oliver

You never know.
The body of night opens
like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.
And on the hillside two deer are walking along
just as though this wasn’t

the owned, tilled earth of today
but the past.
I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind’s eye –
there they are, in the long grass,
like two sisters.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it –
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don’t do this

I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn’t just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.

“The Deer” (House of Light) by Mary Oliver

Keep wild and free. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

AnaKWildness

From “Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?”

[…] And now I will tell you the truth.

Everything in the world

comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

from “Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?” by Mary Oliver (in Why I Wake Up Early)

Yesterday I walked for an incredible amount of miles in a natural reservation by the lake. And I felt that if you really let the world comes closer, it will come, and cordially. As a yellow leaf casually falling on your path. As a cat sleeping in the dim light. As a great tit singing on a hidden branch. As a dead swan by the shore of the river, half eaten and half rotten, but still white as snow. Everything will come, it must come. The only thing we can do is be ready for it. It will happen. And you gotta believe.

Keep it stronger.

AnaKWildness

“The World I Live In” – Mary Oliver

I have refused to live

          locked in the orderly house of

                    reasons and proofs.

from “The World I Live In” by Mary Oliver.

The new collection of poems by Mary Oliver, “FELICITY”, is coming out soon. I do not know whether I am ready or not, but I’d like to live where she lives, in that nook among the trees, where dreams can still come true, where fairies fly and it is still possible to live the way you’ve always wanted. This is not the world we all live in, this is the world of our deepest and most secret dreams, this is the world we’ve always craved but that no one has ever reached. This is the world I’d like to live in, in order not to die, in order not to bend my head and feel miserable.

Try to keep it wild and free.

AnaKWildness

I want to break free (as Freddie said).

“Lilies” – Mary Oliver

Tratto da Mary Oliver, “Lilies”, in House of Light (1990):

I have been thinking

about living

like the lilies

that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall

in the wedge of the wind,

and have no shelter

from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.

[…]

White Lilies