Inge took this shot a few years back when I travelled to met her in Tibet. She’d been living and working in a town called Ganzi (Karze if you’re Tibetan) teaching English at a free school. I’d arrived the day before — it had taken me 5 days to get there from Sydney.
She took this shot while we were walking back from the main Ganzi monastery after receiving a surprise blessing — hence the red dot. Ganzi is 3,800 meters above sea level and I remember being rather puffed.
As I look at the photo now, I see is a tired, puffy-faced old geezer who’s looking forward to a beer.
The poem is a favourite. I obviously think it applies.
a warning to my readers
by Wendell Berry
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
Wendell Berry is a prolific author whose writing is rooted in the notion that one’s work ought to be connected with one’s place. His poetic voice is simple and resonant.
This was the first poem of his I read. It was given to me by a friend who wanted to encourage me to write.
A Timbered Choir
by Wendell Berry
I would not have been a poet
Except that I have been in love
Alive in this mortal world,
Or an essayist except that I
Have been bewildered and afraid,
Or a storyteller had I not heard
Stories passing to me through the air,
Or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
And words have come to me
Out of their deep caves
Needing to be remembered.
But on days when I am lucky
Or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
That two make in making marriage
That for all our trying, all
Our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
Has no tongue. Or I give myself
To gravity, light, and air
And am carried back
To solitary work in fields
And woods, where my hands
Rest upon a world unnamed,
Complete, unanswerable, and final
As our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
To life beyond words, silent
And secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.
