This particular quote has kept me from despair on a number of occasions. I post it separately from the chapter discussion because I didn't want it to get lost in the thread!

There are it seems, two muses. The Muse of Inspiration who gives us inarticulate visions and desire and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say. ‘It is yet more difficult than you thought.’ This is the muse of form. It may be than, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.


Wendall Berry


Gassho

Anne

~lahst~