6 thoughts on “Christopher Billings”

1. A few thoughts from Christopher’s Collected Writings which I reread on the 25th anniversary of completing his task:

   The effort to divide attention is one of those rare activities that contains within itself both payment and reward. (1985)

   The greatest paradox about the idea of service is that, in order to understand it, one first needs to wish to serve one’s higher Self. (1986)

   Try to see yourself as that which infuses the machine with life. By doing so, you can also conceive of this concentrated energy (which is slowly becoming you,) as inhabiting other machines, imparting life to them. Involving oneself in the aims, fears, and desires of the machine is simply a common weakness from which one must gradually distance oneself. Concentrate on that which is most real. (1991)

   The more I perceive how the creative drive is dependent on the level of energy that a machine happens to contain in a given moment, the less personally I take the entire “issue” of artistic creativity and production. As Rilke put it (in drastic paraphrase): “Don’t do it unless you have to.” Said slightly differently: if the machine is supposed to be a medium for the expression of higher influences, it won’t be possible to avoid it. (1992)

   In fact, I am stronger, more stable, more unified (or less divided), more compassionate, more mature. Still, time is running out for the body, and this is a factor. Hopefully, if will allow me to focus on serious preparations for death. (1994)

   Complexity tends to disguise deficiency while simplicity easily emphasizes excellence. (1998)

2. “I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.”
   – Horace

   In memory of your beautiful Soul….

3. Sonnet for Christopher Billings

   written July 5, 1998

   Straight, fine and fair, a lover of the good,
   You leave us lightly, for you were prepared
   In every moment. Those of us who wait
   Know now how readily you did depart.

   What had you ever told us of this journey?
   But you said nothing. Shall we curve, we bend,
   Surrender as you learned to, growing strong;
   Achieve the hard-won readiness you won?

   We saw the fruit of what your work had borne:
   Acceptance, equanimity, and peace.
   You shared these out; we shall remember them,
   And what you take with you, you gave to us.

4. This is a poem that Christopher wrote in February 1997

   And If

   And if any or all of it does come to pass,
   It will mean exactly the same for you and me.
   Because the Gods have always held us like this,
   In a wild, careening balance between two poles:
   At one end, exposed like wide-eyed infants
   To the buffetings of a brutal world,
   While on the other we are mysteriously preserved,
   Snatched in secret from the jaws of ruin
   And promptly pressed ahead to meet
   The next precisely orchestrated challenge.

5. This is a poem that Christopher wrote in June 1983 for our wedding in July:

   Standing alone, watching, studying you at great distance,
   Curious of how it is that we can spread vast wings of sense across space,
   Touching so much, probing, measuring so much,
   And all without that distance ever closing.

   More curious, still, how, in a time-shattering flash,
   All divisions are expunged,
   And I feel the soft wing-tip as it brushes by my face,
   So that I know you have, for an instant, been nearby;
   That you were there infant soul, all along,
   And that I close the gap each time I near myself.

6. This is the entire poem that Christopher wrote when he first visited Apollo in July 1976:

   And when we are again here
   Inexplicably upon the windy road,
   And starry dusk again, now,
   Unalterably fixed, vast,
   Infinitely yields to breezes,
   While we, losing grasp,
   Perceive again, changing,
   The sinuous envelope rippling,
   We encased, gliding, without recourse
   To thought or poor excuse;
   And it is now, we reach again, straining
   As the beast steps again, again
   Before our floundering silence impervious,
   His patterns locked for all time,
   His every issue ordained, foretold.

   And yet our reach this time is true,
   Finding its hold, precious hold
   Upon the night’s soft wind:
   That which, curiously, like a child,
   Makes visit in cooling eddies
   About his striding frame,
   Soothing his ancient cravings,
   Transporting us, released, upon its gentleness
   To sweep in light across the swelling earth.
   And we knowing, in this moment full well,
   That the beast walks, as he must,
   Towards his vacuous death, while we,
   In our own faltering way breed life
   Eternal.