Throughstone #6: Gratitude for a Century of Whimsical Discipline

I wonder if living to the century mark is more likely if you live a life of discipline or one of whimsy? Maybe it doesn’t really matter, since both imply a sense of purpose. 

For Mary de Rachewiltz, I think it might be “whimsical discipline” – the ability to believe things into existence. How else could one imagine their way down from a remote Tirolean farm and into an international vortex of arts and culture, quietly carrying the vision of one day being a princess, only to discover a castle ruin that she restored with more sweat equity than legal tender. She turned the concept of “castle” inside-out, inviting invaders like me from around the world to partake of the convergent wisdom she’d inherited from farmers and poets, including:

1. Learn it today. You’ll understand it tomorrow.
2. The world will not stop if you stop, precisely at 4:00 every day, for tea…
3. …but the world will be enriched if you do stop at 4:00 to have tea every day. 
4. Memorization is the gift that keeps on giving.
5. Art can be laborious; labor can be artful.  
6. Know-how-is-connected-to-know-why. 
7. Intense pragmatism doesn’t preclude audacious vision. 
8. There is no such thing as trash—it’s an unnecessary modern contrivance. 
9. We’re short-sighted if we don’t understand the power of the Great American Experiment; we’re fools if we let it slip away. 
10. Our ancestors are the guardians of our future, if we’re paying attention. 
11. Uphill prevents downhill.

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More on Mary’s extraordinary life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_de_Rachewiltz

The most wonderful of places: https://www.brunnenburg.net/en/ 

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“Throughstone 250” is a purposefully constrained blog project. As a long-winded Southerner constrained by Vermont’s limited porch season and the Yankee penchant for paragraphs of three words or less, I’ve opted to aim for semi-daily reflections of precisely 250 words for the foreseeable future.

250 means something right now. Maybe more than we anticipated. It’s symbolic but incredibly important…and a 250 word count seems much less constrained than a 5-7-5 syllable count for a haiku. 

Like many others, I’m struggling to make meaning out of these tumultuous days. I’ve always found it useful to try and write my way out of tough spots. Looking for throughstones is just one more effort to try and generate some meaning from the mayhem.

More free-ranging rambles here, if you’re so inclined: https://www.freerangeprof.com/blog