One thing about being a good teacher is that you can't teach everything. Or rather, in the sense that there is no action on your part that ; you can only do your best to help your student learn. And when you can't say anything, you find someone who can.

And if you're a student, when you can't say anything - sometimes you have to spring into action, muddle around, crash into things, get your hands dirty - but sometimes, when you're exhausted and panting and up to your elbows in a greasy, muddy mess, you have to sit, be quiet, open your eyes and ears. And listen for a while.

"The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit." --Wade Davis

from Chris Hardie, via Ian Bicking. Chris also has an excellent post on leaving that I'm using as a reminder to myself on how to stay properly and not "ghost" (my terminology), another on how flash mobs redefine our perception of reality, another on practicing what you preach, and another on being quiet which I identify with a lot.

And then Rainer Maria Rilke, via Josh Gay.

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

And then more.

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain... It is also good to love: because love is difficult... loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.I

I have noticed in myself a need to be alone with other people in the last few days. To just be with a small number of people that I deeply love and trust, not necessarily saying anything in particular, with no pre-set agenda, and no need for me to inject sparkling happy lemonade energy into the proceedings. Yeah, long conversations usually ensue. And at some point, I typically do get sort of hyper (it's a hard habit to break, and when I rev up, I can't stop myself sometimes). But I don't want to have to rev up all the time right now. I really don't.

Hm. I guess what I am really saying is that while I can make myself not-tired at will, I am tired. And I want to let myself be tired. And so I need to be with people I can allow myself to be tired around.

PS: I've chosen to skip the inbox cleaning for the night and just pass out now.