Interview with Hara Tamiki
by Anne Carson
I: Death.
HT: Death made me grow up.
I: Love.
HT: Love made me endure.
I: Madness.
HT: Madness made me suffer.
I: Passion.
HT: Passion bewildered me.
I: Balance.
HT: Balance is my goddess.
I: Dreams.
HT: Dreams are everything now.
I: Gods.
HT: Gods cause me to be silent.
I: Bureaucrats.
HT: Bureaucrats make me melancholy.
I: Tears.
HT: Tears are my sisters.
I: Laughter.
HT: I wish I had a splendid laugh.
I: War.
HT: Ah war.
I: Humankind.
HT: Humankind is glass.
I: Why not take the shorter way home.
HT: There was no shorter way home.
In this poem by the brilliant Anne Carson, the last two lines hit home for me: „I: Why not take the shorter way home. / HT: There was no shorter way home.“
Tuning in to breathing, committing oneself to breathing, is like taking a way home. And the way seems endless, if it can be called a way, since so often the journey seems to lack any direction. There are only moments of realisation that I‘m on my way home, that there even is such a thing as home. And those are the moments that I know: there is no shorter way home.
Source: Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours, Vintage, 2001