If the preceding quote is my present, maybe this one is aspiration: release, clarity of mind, if not of heart... Maybe it's a thought of a seed of a start of a maybe of where it goes from this moment...forward or backward? Maybe. Anyway, it's more found-fragments lifted from Hillman.
Culture
generation fermentation decay
looks backward and reaches back
for invisibilities, to make them present
to peel, flail, excite individual sensitivity
so that it can again
notice the again
be in touch with these invisibles
orient life by their compass
the back wards display the backwards
recurring forms that do not change
which repeat in every age
these forms of chronic disorder
are the gods in disguise
seeing through to them
is a grounding act of culture
see through the manifestations of time
into the eternal patterns
think again of your own backward back ward
the timeless incurable aspect of the soul
nursing it and sitting with it
tracing the invisible mystery in it
letting compassion come for your own chronic disorder
moves you from future thinking to essential thinking
upon life's meaning and death's
upon love and its failure
upon what is truly important
upon the small things
necessitated by the limitations
begin to hear differently
watch differently
absorb more
confronted with the unbearable in my own nature
I show more trepidation
which is after all the first piece of compassion
Finally
I come to appreciate the chronic itself
more than slowing down
more than an occasion for tolerance
or instruction in survival
I come to see that things chronic
have nothing to do with civilized time
either future time when it will be better
or present time and adjustment
rather
the timeless structures of being which accompany us
keep company with us
may continue beyond
in the shadows of the gods
are the very gods themselves
-- James Hillman, from an essay called "Chronic Disorder"
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