Craig Brandis

Venice is burning!
    Come closer to me
Venice is writhing in light
    boats, flags, the dukes palace
    all under watery sun spray
    spectral and cloud real

sails tearing, stern lights going out
 waves like vermin
overflowing rails and decks
  Yoshibei leaps into the sea

“To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing. Hence the question is not to find out if this is or is not prejudicial to art. The question, for all those who cannot live without art and what it signifies, is merely to find out how, among the police forces of so many ideologies (how many churches, what solitude!), the strange liberty of creation is possible.”

–Albert Camus, 1957

This is a letter from E.B. White on the subject of hope. He wrote it in response to someone’s letter predicting a grim future for humanity:

North Brooklin, Maine
30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau,
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,
E. B. White

James Stockdale, the longest held American prisoner of war in Vietnam,  said the love of poetry was an important quality for enduring the unendurable. “You thirst to remember, the clutter of all the trivia evaporates and with care you make deep excursions into past recollections. Verses were hoarded and gone over each day. The person who had memorized a lot of poetry was the bearer of great gifts.”

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives… A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. “

—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“One cannot be too scrupulous, too sincere, too submissive before nature… But one ought to be more or less master of one’s model.” 

–Cezanne