On "lightness", from Italo Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millenium"

“There remains one thread, the one I first started to unwind: that of literature as an existential function, the search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living…

I am accustomed to consider literature a search for knowledge. In order to move onto existential ground, I have to think of literature as extended to anthropology and ethnology and mythology. Faced with the precarious existence of tribal life—drought, sickness, evil influences—the shaman responded by ridding his body of weight and flying to another world, another level of perception, where he could find the strength to change the face of reality. In centuries and civilizations closer to us, in villages where the women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks or even on lighter vehicles such as ears of wheat or pieces of straw. Before being codified by the Inquisition, these visions were part of the folk imagination, or we might even say of lived experience. I find it a steady feature in anthropology, this link between the levitation desired and the privation actually suffered. It is this anthropological device that literature perpetuates.”

- Italo Calvino

Mark Strand - "The Night, The Porch"

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

Blessings for the New Year

“Let there be peace. Grant goodness, blessing, and grace, constancy and compassion to us all.

Avinu — bless and unite all human beings in the light of your presence; for your light has shown us a holy path for living: devotion to love, generosity, blessedness, mercy, life, and peace.”

- from CCAR Machzor for Rosh Hashanah