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Wisława Szymborska
Polish poet, Nobel Prize winner (1923–2012)
The numbers
2 + 4 = 6
Lo Shu grid
Missing: 5, 8. Present digits repeat to show how many times they occur.
Life path 6 — The Caretaker
Six is read as the number of responsibility — family, service, the assumption that if something needs doing for someone else you are the one who does it. The tradition treats it warmly and then names the trap plainly: care given without limit becomes control, and the person who is always needed rarely learns to ask. Six is described as the number most likely to be exhausted and least likely to say so.
Complete lines
Line of Reason
A complete line in the grid.
Line of Action
The 8-1-6 row complete. Read as follow-through — the traditional marker of someone whose plans reliably become events.
Line of Expression
A complete line in the grid.
Cooperation
A complete line in the grid.
Care
A complete line in the grid.
Repeated numbers
2 appears 3 times
Concentrated sensitivity. Read as perception so continuous it becomes hard to switch off.
What is missing
Missing 5
The centre of the grid, so its absence is weighted heavily. Read as difficulty adapting mid-course — a preference for the plan already chosen over the plan now indicated.
Missing 8
Read as discomfort with power and money — not incapacity, but an unwillingness to claim authority openly.
Vedic — Ank Jyotish
Moolank 2 comes from the day of the month alone; Bhagyank 6 from the whole date. They differ, which is the ordinary case — the two numbers answer different questions.
Chandra
The Moon. Mind, mood, reflection. Read as receptivity and changeability.
Bhagyank uses the same arithmetic as the Western life path, so the two will always agree. That is not two traditions confirming each other — it is one calculation under two names.
In their words
Those who knewwhat was going on heremust make way forthose who know little.And less than little.And finally as little as nothing.In the grass that has overgrowncauses and effects,someone must be stretched outblade of grass in his mouthgazing at the clouds.
They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.
Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
"There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.
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