“The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on
Nor all your piety, nor wit, will lure it back to cancel half a line
Nor all your tears wash away a word of it”
by Omar Khayyam
I love this more than I hate it. I am able to use it to shut down some of the past shit.
This is from Edward Fitzgerald’s version of the Rubaiyat. It’s a wonderful, transcendent rendition, but many of the quatrain’s are not literal translations. Anyway, Fitzgerald’s poetry sort of stands on its own.
Have you read the entire rendition? If not, I highly recommend that you do. Here are some lines that intoxicate the mind and heart like no others.
XVIII.
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The courts where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter – the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
XIX.
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
XX.
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean –
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
XXI.
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears:
To-morrow – Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years.
XXII.
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
I brought this topic up for a specific reason. It is not about omar Khayyam. But about what the MOVING FINGER has to say about handling lif’e’s shit. For example I sold property at a loss probably because I was stupid and needing the money. Now nothing is going to bring that property back. So I think MOVING FINGER, and the past is sidestepped once again for now.
I don’t think it says anything about stupidity, though maybe that’s implied for people who bring up Omar Kyayyam, get a reply extolling the intoxicating and wondrous beauty of Persian poetry, and then bring it down to the level of one’s own idiotic behavior. I bet there’s a lesson there for star gazers everywhere who are forced to bend down and smell someone else’s shit.
Jonquil--------------do you hate me?
The moving finger writes and then moves on--------it is never coming back, never, never.
Of course not. I just hate how you ruined the thread.
That gave me the chills. It sort of reminds me of amor fati, or love of destiny. To love and to accept completely everything that has ever happened to us or been a part of us, because there is really nothing that we can do about it anyway and it all becomes a part of who we are and we learn from it. It makes much more sense to me than to go on struggling and regretting and hating. I think it is both wise and logical to move on. To me, there really is beauty in saying Yes and affirming every moment. Nothing becomes lost because of it and we remain much more in the Now.
It almost goes hand in hand with the Serenity prayer…and one can be an atheist or an ignostic like me and still derive benefit and meaning from it.
Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change…
courage to change the things i can
and wisdom to know the difference…
That and amor fati, which takes those words even higher, into actually loving the life which we have been dealt with, I think, almost slows that ‘moving finger’ to a halt. I was raised in an orphanage and never in some of my wildest nightmares at that time did i think that i would come to, not only accept the past, as we truly have no choice, though we can certainly change the patterns of it, but actually love it because it was and is a part of who I am, what it made me, and who I will be. If we allow it to, that moving finger can keep us swimming in every moment that we experience it.
I am with you. Living now and being able to leave the past (most of the time). Especially all the shit that can’t be changed.
I edited that above.
And you don’t actually leave the past. What you can leave behind, you can return to. It’s not like we can compartmentalize our lives. it just becomes a part of the total You.
Like a river.
I don’t agree. You can’t go back to the past, never. I like that river idea, but some things you cannot return to no matter how hard you paddle. Of course it is part of you. The idea is, some things you can’t correct, so don’t spend time with it.
But this is just what I am talking about, turtle. I agree, we really cannot Ever go back to the past but yet we do or try to. What i meant was that in our ‘mentality’ of ‘leaving the past behind’, we have the option of returning to it. If it has become incorporated into our very being, where does it go? But, again, we do try to ‘leave it behind’ by rationalizing it, understanding it (though there is nothing wrong with ‘seeing’ it for what it is and learning from it by looking at patterns, and we also try to make allowances for it. We live it within our memories by struggling with it, by regretting what has already been done, by hating ourselves for it. We have no control over ‘spilled milk’. All we can do is to continue to pour more milk into that neverending cup, that fills and empties with time. And perhaps look at the stuff that we view as ‘stupid’ as simply human learning experiences…and then hitch a ride on the back of that moving finger…weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It’s a fun ride.
I agree. I just don’t want to spend any extra time on mistakes or on things that happened to me, especially after I have learned all there is to learn. There is one exception. Some disease hit me and I thought it was something that I should of avoided. Well now it feels real good saying I am a human being and I get disease like every other person. I couldn’t have done anything to prevent that disease.