March 16, 2026

The greatest, nearest, and most pressing human loss in particular shelters the fruit of
consolation most reliably. Get to the bottom of this intensity and have faith in what is most
horrible, instead of fighting it off—it reveals itself for those who can trust it . . . as a kind
of initiation. By way of loss, by way of such vast and immeasurable experiences of loss,
we are quite powerfully introduced into the whole. Death is only a relentless way of
making us familiar and even intimate with the side of our existence that is turned away
from us (what should I stress more: “our” or “existence”? Both carry the heaviest emphasis
here, as if counterbalanced by the weight of all the stars!)
—Rainer Maria Rilke, To Countess Alexandrine Schwerin, June 16, 1922

We are voyagers, discoverers

of the not-known,

the unrecorded;

we have no map;

possibly we will reach haven,

heaven.

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) 



Etty Hillesum 

I have noticed that my powers of observation register everything unerringly, and that gives me special joy. With all the destruction, with all my tiredness, suffering, and everything else, this is constant: my joy, the artist's joy in observing things and in shaping them mentally into an image.

שמתי לב שכושר ההבחנה שלי קולט הכול לאשורו וזה מסב לי שמחה מיוחדת. עם כל החורבן, העייפות, הסבל וכל שאר הדברים, עדיין קיימת תמיד השמחה שלי, שמחת האמן כשהוא מבחין בדברים ומעצב אותם ברוחו לכלל דימוי.

لقد لاحظت بأن قوتي بتسجيل كل شيء بدون أخطاء يعطيني فرحة خاصة. مع كل الدمار والتعب والمعاناة وكل شيء آخر، هذا هو المستمر فرحتي فرحة الفنان في ملاحظة الأشياء وتشكيلها عقليا ووضعها في صورة.

ايتي ها