Gushy and Grateful

Hey Guys! I'm feeling all gushy and grateful right now so I just thought I'd write a quick post to tell you all about it. Yesterday I received a book in the mail from a good friend. We have a neat friendship in that I seem to just randomly connect with him like every few years, whenever I need like guidance about where to go with my art (and life) from here. So recently we started writing again and he asked if I had ever read the book "Letters by a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke. I hadn't so he totally sent me a copy! I pretty much spent the whole day yesterday laying in bed reading it and I can tell you it is amazing and exactly what I needed to read. I highly recommend it to all you artists out there, and actually just to everyone in general. It's sooper moving to read these heart felt letters from Rilke that he wrote to a young poet (who in the introduction states that their correspondence started after he wrote a letter to Rilke, who's work he really admired, in which he 'revealed himself without reserve as he had never done before or since to another human being." I get tingles just thinking about it :) Anyway, here's a quote that stood out to me from it so far:

"...have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now." ~Rainer Maria Rilke (pg 21)

and actually that got me interested in reading more of Rilke's stuff, and I have since stumbled on this other quote by him, not sure what book it's from but it's beautiful.

"I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other." ~Rainer Maria Rilke

So anyway, I am just gushing with gratitude to Jay for sendin me exactly what I needed, and thought I'd take a moment to point out how awesome random acts of kindness are and how much we can help each other on our journeys :) People are amazing. Oh, and I started a word document where I'm going to keep track of cool quotes, so if you have any I'd love to hear 'em (it doesn't just have to be Rilke quotes either;)

I may as well end this post with my all time favorite quote ever, said to me at 14 by my 21 year old friend Dez at he put his hand on my heart:

"Don't draw back from anything you feel is important." ~Dez (I don't even know his last name, but his advice has stuck with me;)

lovek!