This Week in Photos: Choose Your Own Adventure

Good news: I woke up this morning and the sun was shining.  After almost 2 weeks of daily rain, I was thrilled!

This week, I noticed that my former “Week in Reviews in Photos” posts have grown more and more full of words to narrate the pictures.  My original motive, however, was to have one day of the week where I just shut my trap and let you see what I see in this fantastic place.

So this week, I’ll take a break from the commentary. The images are yours to turn into a story of my adventures over the past few weeks.  Instead, I offer a Rilke poem from “Sonnets to Orpheus,” which I’ve been reading for literary comfort and aesthetic inspiration. (This translation by M.D. Hester Norton)  It really reflects the intensity of emotion that beginning my family and historical research in Taiwan has evoked.

Now I’m going to go take a walk in the sunshine!  Hope you have a great weekend.

Second Part, Number 12

 

Will transformation. O be enraptured with flame,

wherein a thing eludes you that is boastful with changes;

that projecting spirit, which masters the earthly,

loves in the swing of the figure nothing so much as the point of inflection.

 

What shuts itself into remaining already is starkness;

does it think itself safe in the shelter of inconspicuous gray?

Beware, from afar a hardest comes warning the hard.

Woe–, an absent hammer lifts!

 

Who pours himself forth as a spring, him Cognizance knows;

and she leads him enchanted through the realm of serene creation,

that often ends with beginning and with ending begins.

 

Every happy space they wander wondering through

is child or grandchild of parting. And the transformed Daphne, since feeling

laurel-like, wants you to change yourself into wind.