“Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there.”In their strange cosmogony predating Copernicus by two millennia, the ancient Greek scientific sect of the Pythagoreans placed at the center of the universe a ball of fire. It was not hell but the heart of creation. Hell, Milton told us centuries and civilizations later, is something else, somewhere else: “The mind is its own place,” he wrote in Paradise Lost, “and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” Grief and despair, heartache and humiliation, rage and regret — this is the hellfire of the mind, hot as a nova, all-consuming as a black hole. And yet, if are courageous enough and awake enough to walk through it, in it we are annealed, forged stronger, reborn. That is what the non-speaking autistic poet Hannah Emerson celebrates in her shamanic poem “Center of the Universe,” found in her extraordinary collection The Kissing of Kissing (public library), song of the mind electric, great bellowing yes to life.CENTER OF THE UNIVERSEby Hannah EmersonPlease try to goto hell frequentlybecause you willfind the light thereyes yes — pleasetry to kiss the ideasthat you find thereyes yes — pleasetry to get thatit is the centerof the universeyes yes — pleasetry to help yourselfby kissing the hot hothot life that is bornthere yes yes — pleasetry to yell in hellyes yes — pleasetry to free yourselfby pouring yourselfinto the gutter allguttural guttural yellyes yes yes — pleasetry to get that youbecome the beingthat you came thereto be yes yes — pleasetry to go to the greatgreat great fire that youcreated because youbecome the lightthat the fire makesinside of youyes yes — pleasetry to kiss yourselffor going thereyes yes — pleaseget that you arereborn thereyes yes — pleasebegin your dayDrink in more soul-slaking poetry here, then revisit the story of how Dostoyevsky, just after his death sentence was repealed, found himself “regenerated into a new form… reborn for the better.”donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.