This image is a riff of two illuminations in Hildegard of Bingen’s work, one from Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works) and one from the Scivias. These are images that have haunted me ever since I saw them when I was 18. I’ll see if I can post them tomorrow. Tonight, I need my sleep!
What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell
What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
in which you see all forms intensified.
(Out in the Open, you would be denied
your self, would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches
from us and construes the world:
to know a tree, in its true element,
throw inner space around it, from that pure
abundance in you. Surround it with restraint.
It has no limits. Not till it is held
in your renouncing is it truly there.
xoxo