whistling teapot

My shower sounds like a whistling teapot. It sings. Not nicely, though. It's more of a shrill, constant, high E above middle C sort of sound. It's one of those showers where you turn on the water, and then pull up on the little knobby thing on the spout to start the shower flowing. Pull up all the way on this one, and it starts whining. Sort of like me? My old one didn't do this. Physical plant is getting a call tomorrow.

So, I was standing in the shower, listening to it sing its brain-numbing song, and I started to get mad. This isn't right! I kept thinking. This is so unfair! I was pissed. My old one didn't do this! How did I get stuck with this P.O.S.!? And then, because I wasn't paying attention, I got shampoo in my eye. Um, ouch!? I think it was the universe telling me to stop complaining and fix the problem. So I leaned over, and fiddling with the little knobby thing, I played with it, pushing it down and up and turning it until I could get the whistling to stop. I fixed it. At least for that shower. Physical plant is still getting a call.

I finished Rainer Marie Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet this morning. This series of letters is absolutely incredible. It's a philosophical text, so not appropriate for someone looking for a quick throw-away beach read. But it's amazing. If you're a writer, an artist, a philosopher or basically a human being, you should read this text. Rilke's writing is direct and and laden with advice, some I agree with and some I don't. As an artist and a writer, I was overtaken by the honesty and incite of this German poet. His thoughts on the necessity of solitude, art and creation, God, and love were not only universally relevant, but profound and beautiful. He was a poet after all.

One of the things he discusses is the necessity of struggle and pain. I've always believed, however sadistic it sounds, that pain is the most formidable education. But struggle falls right there as well. That whistling shower this morning, as petty as that is, was a struggle that I found I had to overcome. Every struggle forces growth and maturity. I know, I know. I'm reading way too far into a whistling shower, but bear with me... Or not. But it's about learning to take charge and believe in the struggle, as my adviser always says.

Rilke writes, "... it is clear that we must hold to the difficult; ... everything in Nature grows and defends itself according to its own character and is an individual in its own right, strives to be so at any cost and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to the difficult is a certainty that will not leave us; ... the fact that a thing is difficult must be one more reason for our doing it."

I can't even begin to explain, and I won't try, how that paragraph affects me. How it involves me on a level that were I to explain, would, I think, diminish it's value. So, take it for what it is, let it wash over you. No one ever reads the same text as someone else. The same words, the same punctuation, yes. But the experience is never the same. Our lives and our histories prevent that.

I have a new book to add to my list of favorites. And I am a firm believer of passing on the good stuff. So there you go. Oh, and thanks, Bryan for cluing me in.