there is a moment in the friend by sigrid nunez that made my heart grow in size. the narrator at one point mentions rilke’s definition of love as two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other. then later on in the book, she reflects on the day she spent with a dog she recently adopted and says “Now, watching him sleep, I feel a surge of contentment. There follows another, deeper feeling, singular and mysterious, yet at the same time perfectly familiar. I don’t know why it takes a full minute for me to name it. What are we, Apollo and I, if not two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other?”
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.”
If the dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine — which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity — it is the key to many reservations.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
