Become an Event
Recently a friend sent me a line from the Czech poet Petr Hruška: ‘Díval jsem se na strom rostoucí ve dvoře tak dlouho, dokud se nestal událostí.’ Which is to say: ‘I kept looking at the tree growing in the yard until it became an event.’ When a thing becomes an event, we are alerted to the life within it. Ceasing to be an object, it draws us into conversation, potentially a kind of communion. I think again of Dom Porion’s insight, dear to me: ‘I ascertain the riches contained in a single perspective, the outline of a mountain, say, with its pine trees in the golden glory of May, in the mists of October, or whenever. We must become the mirror of this beauty and its echo. It always reveals something new, yet every time it says it all.’ ‘I wonder’, the Carthusian asks, ‘whether travel is worth the bother.’ A pertinent question. If only I could open my eyes and see what, who, is before me now.
