no place

Where you come from is gone, 

where you thought you were going to was never there, 

and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. 

Where is there a place for you to be? 

No place. 

Nothing outside you can give you any place. 

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

You needn't look at the sky because 

it's not going to open up and show no place behind it. 

You needn't search for any hole in the ground 

to look through into somewhere else. 

You can't go neither forwards nor backwards 

into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them. 

In yourself right now is all the place you've got. 

If there was any Fall, look there, 

if there was any Redemption, look there, 

and if you expect any Judgment, look there, 

because they all three will have to be in your time 

and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?

~ Flannery O'Connor

from Wise Blood

art by georgia okeeffe

with thanks to whiskeyriver