Today's inspiration

No one lives his life.
Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little
pleasures, we come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.


Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived lives.


Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke's Book of Hours
Barrow & Macy, tr.