Photo Journal

Reading Rilke in Joshua tree

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Entrance
By Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the distant:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which wearily
just free themselves of the worn-out threshold,
very slowly you raise one black tree
and set it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you’ve made the world. And it’s immense
and like a word ripening in silence.
And as your will reaches for its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go. . .

(Translation from The Poetry of Rilke, by Edward Snow)

When I read this poem by Rilke, it evoked my feelings about being in Joshua Tree in the dark with the silhouettes of trees, black and twisted against the sky, feeling like I was at the edge of everything.

I was in California for a week visiting friends and camping at Joshua Tree . I’m a little jet lagged, but I’m so happy I got to visit Joshua Tree finally - I’ll write more about the trip next week.

Thank you for being here.