“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding V
I have struggled for weeks, months actually, with the proper beginning here. Wanting this space to be just right, and the words that fill it for the first time to be words to not regret and words that would set the right banter here for years ahead. When you write like this, you are supposed to find your niche and your voice from the beginning.
But, I don’t know where these ideas will go and what the space will need to look like. I just need to start, knowing that every time I put down a new sentence it is the end of that thought, and that makes room for another, a new direction if I need it. I don’t have to have it figured out. I just need to start and get the beginning over so I can move to the hope of another beginning.
Eliot helps me a little further along in Little Gidding:
“With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling,
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
I want to explore, that is what I love.
I am not a poet even though I sometimes carry Eliot when I travel. More than anything I see myself as the son of a machinist who always had courage to step into the next thing. This space and my voice, if I have one, will change because we start over at each end with new hope and another glimmer of this “Love and the voice of this Calling.” When we arrive where we started we go into the next day with new glimpses of Grace and Truth, knowing as if for the first time.
Thanks for the adventure. Let’s see where it goes.
