today is my birthday

i'm 22 today. it's raining outside. the day feels like a quiet gunshot.

some words from rainer:

"Go into yourself an explore the depths whence your life wells forth; at its source you will find to the question whether you must create. Accept it as it sounds, without enquiring too closely into every word. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. [...] Perhaps however, after this descent into yourself and into your aloneness, you will have to renounce your claim to become a poet."

"Love your solitude and bear the pain which it has caused you with fair-sounding lament. For those that are near you are far, you say, and this shows that distance begins to grow round you. And when your nearness is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very great; be glad of your growing, into which you can take no one else with you, and be good to those that remain behind, and be self-possessed and quiet with them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not comprehend."

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, (I, IV)