How to Be Reborn Each Day

Grief and despair, heartache and humiliation, rage and regret — this is the hellfire of the mind, hot as a nova, all-consuming as a black hole. And yet, if are courageous enough and awake enough to walk through it, in it we are annealed, forged stronger, reborn.

Non-speaking autistic poet Hannah Emerson celebrates in her shamanic poem “Center of the Universe,” found in her extraordinary collection The Kissing of Kissing (public library), song of the mind electric, great bellowing yes to life.

CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

by Hannah Emerson

Please try to go

to hell frequently

because you will

find the light there

yes yes — please

try to kiss the ideas

that you find there

yes yes — please

try to get that

it is the center

of the universe

yes yes — please

try to help yourself

by kissing the hot hot

hot life that is born

there yes yes — please

try to yell in hell

yes yes — please

try to free yourself

by pouring yourself

into the gutter all

guttural guttural yell

yes yes yes — please

try to get that you

become the being

that you came there

to be yes yes — please

try to go to the great

great great fire that you

created because you

become the light

that the fire makes

inside of you

yes yes — please

try to kiss yourself

for going there

yes yes — please

get that you are

reborn there

yes yes — please

begin your day

Drink in more soul-slaking poetry here, then revisit the story of how Dostoyevsky, just after his death sentence was repealed, found himself “regenerated into a new form… reborn for the better.”

- Author: Maria Popova, Themarginalian.org

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