Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness… Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (from Letters to a Young Poet)

Has it really been a week now since the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced “Epic Fury” on Iran?  The night before that, Friday, 02/27/2026, the LAFPI Blog editor sent me the reminder that it’s my week to blog.  Meanwhile, it’s also Lenten season, and Ramadan at the same time.  I decided I will not be blogging about any leading headlines. With the weight of world events, I’m feeling quite tired and sad in every sense of the word. 

Right now, I choose to just attend to what’s necessary.  Cut back on social media, cut back on texting, cut back in general on unnecessary noise.  The simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other, rather than one word after another has been my steady gait.  I mean this literally.  I’ve just been hiking in the nearby park and criss-crossing the trails.  Words escape me.  I have images juxtaposed upon another.  

I am deadheading the faded blossoms and the accumulation of non-sense.  This spring cleaning has awakened my consciousness of the joy I’ve been robbing myself of.  I miss writing poetry.  There was a time that writing a poem came to me so innocently pure.  The high states of being in-love prompted expression of the bursting ecstasy.  The “mean reds” and deep blues flowed like spilt fountain pen ink all over the page and onto the table; the stain taking shape, come what may.

The theme of yesterday’s homily was the importance of faithfulness and accountability for what has been entrusted to us from the divine.  Everyone has a talent, and yes, some are gifted with more than one, hence more is expected from those with more talents to offer.  I felt the priest was speaking directly to me for not being faithful and accountable for my writing.  It’s been on my mind a lot, for quite sometime.   

A couple of weeks ago, I had the inkling for “diving into the wreck” of poetry.  I carried around a book of poems, but not really burying myself into it.  Then recently, I had thirty minutes to spare before the 5:30 PM mass, and I ordered steamed dumplings at Northern Cafe Dumpling House.  While the order was being prepared, I crossed the Figueroa Street to peruse the books at the Goodwill, and I quickly found a paperback of a collection of essays and poems by Adrienne Rich.  I felt fortuitous, and guided to be on the right track. I’ve been absorbing her works I hadn’t read before. 

Tonight, walking under the canvas of stars and moon, in its waning gibbous phase, I recalled a bible book from the old days at The Imagined Life acting studio with Diane Castle.  One of the required reading was “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke.  When I got home, I quickly found my copy.  When I opened the book, a couple of pictures fell out.  They were of my beloved Bruno Herve Commereuc.  One picture shows Bruno, in front of a stove,  holding a sauté pan with one hand while the other is spooning something into the pan.  The other picture shows him relaxed and thoughtful, on a chair, surprisingly holding a Coca Cola can (and not a glass of wine).  I remember he told me this was the upstairs of Angelique Cafe, his first restaurant in Los Angeles.  During this time in his life he looks like a young poet.  There was a sweet mien in his gaze and deep passion in the set of his jaws.  

The pictures were inserted at the end of “Eight”, the eighth letter of Rilke to Kappus, written on August 12th, 1904.  This particular letter addresses the sadness that Kappus revealed to Rilke in a prior letter. 

Rilke advises the Kappus on the poignancy of his sadness. 

I believe that almost all our sadness are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living…

And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad:  because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than the other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside.  The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much more unswervingly does the new go into us…

At 2 o’clock tonight, I will adjust my wristwatch one hour ahead to “spring” forward.  This perhaps is a jump start on getting out of the quagmire that I feel anxious to get out of so I can get on with life.  But, I know it’s not the way through.  I need to be more still, and more patient and more open to this sadness and let it run through me, without hanging on to anything.