Creativity of the Gifted

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him...

a touch is a blow,

a sound is a noise,

a misfortune is a tragedy,

a joy is an ecstasy,

a friend is a lover,

a lover is a god,

and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

-Pearl Buck.

The Quintessence of Loneliness

The Quintessence of Loneliness

I am like a heroin addict
In my longing for a sublime state,

For that ground of Conscious Nothing,
Where the Rose ever
Blooms.

Oh, the Friend
Has done me a great favor
and has so thoroughly ruined my life,

What else would you expect
Seeing God would do!

Out of the ashes of this broken frame
There is a noble rising son pining for death,
Because,

Since we first met, Beloved,
I have become a foreigner
To every world
Except that one
In which there is only You
Or - Me.

Now that the heart has held
That which can never be touched
My subsistence is a blessed
Desolation.

And from that I cry out for more loneliness.

I am lonely.
I am so lonely, dear Beloved,
For the quintessence of Loneliness,

For what is more alone than God?

Hafiz,
What is more pure and alone,

Magnificently Sovereign,
Than God.


Hafiz (1320-1389)
from "The Gift", Poems by Hafiz, translation by Daniel Ladinsky