You won't remember it - the apple orchard
We wandered through one April afternoon,
Climbing the hills behind the empty farm.
A city boy, I'd never seen a grove
Burst in full flower or breathed the bittersweet
Perfume of blossoms mingled with the dust.
A quarter mile of trees in fragrant rows
Arching above us. We walked the aisle,
Alone in spring's ephemeral cathedral.
We had the luck, if you can call it that,
Of having been in love but never lovers-
The bright flame burning, fed by pure desire.
Nothing consumed, such secrets brought to light!
There was a moment when I stood behind you,
Reached out to spin you toward me…but I stopped.
What more could I have wanted from that day?
Everything, of course. Perhaps that was the point-
To learn that what we will not grasp is lost.
- Dana Gioia
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Friday, July 18, 2014
On Blogging
Hi, guys!
It's been seven lifetimes, I know. And only two people bother reading this thing, which is cool. I mean, I'm not heartbroken or anything.
I've been down on blogging because it distracts from schoolwork-writing, which is overwhelming. But the truth is, I've been getting a lot of good essay ideas from old blog posts on this here puppy. So there is a value to using this, as long as I don't let it become my focus or a giant time-suck.
And, as long as any (tiny) readership I gather up understands that my energy isn't going into any high-quality writing, I might as well continue to blather here from time to time. Write about whatever motivates me. See if anything sticks.
Right now I'm working on the following, all due on August 1st:
- One long nonfiction essay, 25 pages or so
- One shorter nonfiction essay, 5 pages
- Fiction writing of any length, to try it on for size, in consideration for a genre-switch
- Two academic annotations on books recently read, each 2-3 pages long
- Reading the six books required for the month.
What a life, kids. Thank god I love this shit. Otherwise I'd expire.
Much love to anyone still lingering and maybe-reading! Hope to be posting more soon.
It's been seven lifetimes, I know. And only two people bother reading this thing, which is cool. I mean, I'm not heartbroken or anything.
I've been down on blogging because it distracts from schoolwork-writing, which is overwhelming. But the truth is, I've been getting a lot of good essay ideas from old blog posts on this here puppy. So there is a value to using this, as long as I don't let it become my focus or a giant time-suck.
And, as long as any (tiny) readership I gather up understands that my energy isn't going into any high-quality writing, I might as well continue to blather here from time to time. Write about whatever motivates me. See if anything sticks.
Right now I'm working on the following, all due on August 1st:
- One long nonfiction essay, 25 pages or so
- One shorter nonfiction essay, 5 pages
- Fiction writing of any length, to try it on for size, in consideration for a genre-switch
- Two academic annotations on books recently read, each 2-3 pages long
- Reading the six books required for the month.
What a life, kids. Thank god I love this shit. Otherwise I'd expire.
Much love to anyone still lingering and maybe-reading! Hope to be posting more soon.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Move On
Stop worrying where you're going - move on.
If you can know where you're going, you've gone.
Just keep moving on.
I chose, and my world was shaken - so what?
The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not.
You have to move on.
Look at what you want,
not at where you are,
not at what you'll be.
Look at all the things you've done for me:
opened up my eyes, taught me how to see,
notice every tree,
understand the light,
concentrate on now.
I want to explore the light.
I want to find how to get through,
through to something new,
something of my own - move on.
Move on.
Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision - they usually do.
You keep moving on.
Look at what you've done, then at what you want,
not at where you are, what you'll be.
Look at all the things you've done for me.
Let me give to you something in return.
See what's in my eyes
and the color of my hair
and the way it catches light
and the care
and the feeling
and the life moving on.
We've always belonged together.
We will always belong together.
Just keep moving on.
Anything you do, let it come from you.
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see...
- Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim
If you can know where you're going, you've gone.
Just keep moving on.
I chose, and my world was shaken - so what?
The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not.
You have to move on.
Look at what you want,
not at where you are,
not at what you'll be.
Look at all the things you've done for me:
opened up my eyes, taught me how to see,
notice every tree,
understand the light,
concentrate on now.
I want to explore the light.
I want to find how to get through,
through to something new,
something of my own - move on.
Move on.
Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision - they usually do.
You keep moving on.
Look at what you've done, then at what you want,
not at where you are, what you'll be.
Look at all the things you've done for me.
Let me give to you something in return.
See what's in my eyes
and the color of my hair
and the way it catches light
and the care
and the feeling
and the life moving on.
We've always belonged together.
We will always belong together.
Just keep moving on.
Anything you do, let it come from you.
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see...
- Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim
Birthdays, Remembered
Today is my 33rd birthday. It's a quiet one, as they tend to be these days. Right now I'm alone at home, in bed, drinking coffee and listening to the birds and the traffic under my window. It's a good way to start a day. The sun is shining after a week of rain, which feels like a little gift as well.
Ten years ago today, I was in Europe with my friend Kelly. We woke up in Oslo, Norway, and took an all-day train ride to Bergen, on the opposite side of the country. The train was comfortable, with a dining car, hot coffee, alcohol, huge windows, seats at tables as if you were in a restaurant. That was my favorite part of European train travel - the tables. Every time I'm on a train the urge to write grows, so having space to spread out my books and notebooks was just delicious.
Oslo is at sea level, so this train took us up and up, overland and through the mountaintops. At one point it stopped, and we were able to get off and walk around. There was snow everywhere, in the middle of May. Kelly took a picture of me in jeans and a thin t-shirt, my hair in a ponytail, my sunglasses on, snow everywhere, my arms up in the international symbol of "what the fuck??" and a huge smile on my face.
Then we got back on, and started the trek down into the fjords. It's the steepest train ride in the world down into Flaam, with waterfalls gushing by, ice everywhere, dizzying drops and twists. And once you reach the bottom, you transfer from the train to a small boat, and travel through the waterways at the bottom of those endless fjords feeling like you're swallowed by a canyon, like you're a tiny insect, so small, so nothing, so insignificant inside all of that earth, the sky so far away.
In Bergen we explored the waterfront, figured out the bus system, headed to a hostel, and checked in. We were one of the only people there. We ordered a pizza for dinner - Norwegian pizza is interesting - and ate it in their common area in the quiet. The hostel was huge, sparse, with spotless warm wood and wide windows and white chairs. Around 11 o'clock we were exhausted, but the sun was still high in the sky so we went on a brief hike on the hillside in the backyard. There were wildflowers everywhere. The sun warmed the brightly colored houses, the bay, that cold North Sea, all whitecaps and blue water.
It was the start of six weeks of backpacking, the start of my adult life, the start of everything. It was physically challenging and emotionally overwhelming. I slept like the dead that night on a creaky metal bunk bed in a wide dorm room of other empty bunk beds, except for my tiny friend in the bed below me. Her birthday present to me was a CD, The Darkness, and we listened to it over and over again. We had everything ahead of us and, better than that, we knew it.
There are birthdays - most of them - of which I remember nothing. They pass through my mind in a blurry sameness, an air of general conviviality and celebration to them, but nothing momentous to mark them with. That's probably fine and normal. If we're lucky, we live for a long time. We collect many birthdays. But 23 was special. It's imprinted into my heart. It was my first breath of the cool air of post-school freedom. I wanted it to count, and it did.
23 was a long time ago now, though. And 43 is a long time away. Ten years can mean everything, can change the entire landscape of your being. Or they can change nothing. I guess that's all up to you. To everyone.
If I'm a lucky enough soul to live another ten years, the only thing I'm inclined to wish for is the ability to live them all the way through. To hold them close, to feel them fully, to not sleep through it. It's all so beautiful, so hard, so lovely. I don't want to let it pass me by.
Happy birthday to all the other spring babies. Make it count.
Ten years ago today, I was in Europe with my friend Kelly. We woke up in Oslo, Norway, and took an all-day train ride to Bergen, on the opposite side of the country. The train was comfortable, with a dining car, hot coffee, alcohol, huge windows, seats at tables as if you were in a restaurant. That was my favorite part of European train travel - the tables. Every time I'm on a train the urge to write grows, so having space to spread out my books and notebooks was just delicious.
Oslo is at sea level, so this train took us up and up, overland and through the mountaintops. At one point it stopped, and we were able to get off and walk around. There was snow everywhere, in the middle of May. Kelly took a picture of me in jeans and a thin t-shirt, my hair in a ponytail, my sunglasses on, snow everywhere, my arms up in the international symbol of "what the fuck??" and a huge smile on my face.
Then we got back on, and started the trek down into the fjords. It's the steepest train ride in the world down into Flaam, with waterfalls gushing by, ice everywhere, dizzying drops and twists. And once you reach the bottom, you transfer from the train to a small boat, and travel through the waterways at the bottom of those endless fjords feeling like you're swallowed by a canyon, like you're a tiny insect, so small, so nothing, so insignificant inside all of that earth, the sky so far away.
In Bergen we explored the waterfront, figured out the bus system, headed to a hostel, and checked in. We were one of the only people there. We ordered a pizza for dinner - Norwegian pizza is interesting - and ate it in their common area in the quiet. The hostel was huge, sparse, with spotless warm wood and wide windows and white chairs. Around 11 o'clock we were exhausted, but the sun was still high in the sky so we went on a brief hike on the hillside in the backyard. There were wildflowers everywhere. The sun warmed the brightly colored houses, the bay, that cold North Sea, all whitecaps and blue water.
It was the start of six weeks of backpacking, the start of my adult life, the start of everything. It was physically challenging and emotionally overwhelming. I slept like the dead that night on a creaky metal bunk bed in a wide dorm room of other empty bunk beds, except for my tiny friend in the bed below me. Her birthday present to me was a CD, The Darkness, and we listened to it over and over again. We had everything ahead of us and, better than that, we knew it.
There are birthdays - most of them - of which I remember nothing. They pass through my mind in a blurry sameness, an air of general conviviality and celebration to them, but nothing momentous to mark them with. That's probably fine and normal. If we're lucky, we live for a long time. We collect many birthdays. But 23 was special. It's imprinted into my heart. It was my first breath of the cool air of post-school freedom. I wanted it to count, and it did.
23 was a long time ago now, though. And 43 is a long time away. Ten years can mean everything, can change the entire landscape of your being. Or they can change nothing. I guess that's all up to you. To everyone.
If I'm a lucky enough soul to live another ten years, the only thing I'm inclined to wish for is the ability to live them all the way through. To hold them close, to feel them fully, to not sleep through it. It's all so beautiful, so hard, so lovely. I don't want to let it pass me by.
Happy birthday to all the other spring babies. Make it count.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
On Traveling To Beautiful Places
Every day I'm still looking for God
and I'm still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
Certainly in the oceans,
in the islands that lay in the distance
continents of ice, continents of sand
each with its own set of creatures
and God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with
maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it's late, for all of us,
and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
burning the world as we go.
- Mary Oliver
and I'm still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
Certainly in the oceans,
in the islands that lay in the distance
continents of ice, continents of sand
each with its own set of creatures
and God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with
maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it's late, for all of us,
and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
burning the world as we go.
- Mary Oliver
Friday, March 14, 2014
Why You Travel
You don't want the children to know how afraid
you are. You want to be sure their hold on life
is steady, sturdy. Were mothers and fathers
always this anxious, holding the ringing
receiver close to the ear: Why don't they answer
where could they be? There's a conspiracy
to protect the young, so they'll be fearless,
it's why you travel - it's a way of trying
to let go, of lying. You don't sit
in a stiff chair and worry, you keep moving.
Postcards from the Alamo, the Alhambra.
Photos of you in Barcelona, Gaudi's park
swirling behind you. There you are in the Garden
of the Master of the Fishing Nets, one red tree
against a white wall, koi swarming
over each other in the thick demoralized pond.
You, fainting at the Buddhist caves.
Climbing with thousands on the Great Wall,
wearing a straw hat, a backpack, a year
before the students at Tiananmen Square.
Having the time of your life, blistered and smiling.
The acid of your fear could eat the world.
- Gail Mazur
About a year and a half ago, I submitted a travel piece in a writing class I was taking. It was about how I fell into travel as a lifestyle, as a career, and how passionate I am about movement and seeing the world. I was proud of it.
The feedback was decent, but the instructor had one innocent question: why? Why do you travel? Why, for you, is movement so meaningful? What does it represent, and what does it heal, or save?
The essay was hollow, she said. Nice enough, but ringing empty. What was the undercurrent beneath my essay? (Which is actually asking, what is the undercurrent of my whole life?)
I was blindsided by this question. The truth is that I have no idea. What a weird concept, to realize you have no idea why you are the way you are.
Something in here rings true, though.
"It's a way of trying to let go, of lying. You don't sit in a stiff chair and worry, you keep moving."
Traveling is like dousing yourself in electricity. If you're doing it right, everything should feel different. The air, the sounds, the sights, the colors. You should be a little bit afraid. You climb off the airplane in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and all of your senses are heightened, brightened. You are instantly more alive than you would have been at home, setting the coffee for the morning and straightening the kitchen. And you are thankful for this, and aware of your moments. Aware, for once, of the precise sound your footsteps are making on new earth.
What's so wrong with staying still? I still don't know. And I'm not sure that it matters. We all find our meaning however we can. Or we should.
you are. You want to be sure their hold on life
is steady, sturdy. Were mothers and fathers
always this anxious, holding the ringing
receiver close to the ear: Why don't they answer
where could they be? There's a conspiracy
to protect the young, so they'll be fearless,
it's why you travel - it's a way of trying
to let go, of lying. You don't sit
in a stiff chair and worry, you keep moving.
Postcards from the Alamo, the Alhambra.
Photos of you in Barcelona, Gaudi's park
swirling behind you. There you are in the Garden
of the Master of the Fishing Nets, one red tree
against a white wall, koi swarming
over each other in the thick demoralized pond.
You, fainting at the Buddhist caves.
Climbing with thousands on the Great Wall,
wearing a straw hat, a backpack, a year
before the students at Tiananmen Square.
Having the time of your life, blistered and smiling.
The acid of your fear could eat the world.
- Gail Mazur
About a year and a half ago, I submitted a travel piece in a writing class I was taking. It was about how I fell into travel as a lifestyle, as a career, and how passionate I am about movement and seeing the world. I was proud of it.
The feedback was decent, but the instructor had one innocent question: why? Why do you travel? Why, for you, is movement so meaningful? What does it represent, and what does it heal, or save?
The essay was hollow, she said. Nice enough, but ringing empty. What was the undercurrent beneath my essay? (Which is actually asking, what is the undercurrent of my whole life?)
I was blindsided by this question. The truth is that I have no idea. What a weird concept, to realize you have no idea why you are the way you are.
Something in here rings true, though.
"It's a way of trying to let go, of lying. You don't sit in a stiff chair and worry, you keep moving."
Traveling is like dousing yourself in electricity. If you're doing it right, everything should feel different. The air, the sounds, the sights, the colors. You should be a little bit afraid. You climb off the airplane in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and all of your senses are heightened, brightened. You are instantly more alive than you would have been at home, setting the coffee for the morning and straightening the kitchen. And you are thankful for this, and aware of your moments. Aware, for once, of the precise sound your footsteps are making on new earth.
What's so wrong with staying still? I still don't know. And I'm not sure that it matters. We all find our meaning however we can. Or we should.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
How Do We Fall In Love?
In the children's book "Big Questions From Little People," author Jeanette Winterson responds to the question, "How do we fall in love?":
"You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It's like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else's planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colors people wear. It's a big surprise, falling in love, because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signaled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else's orbit and after awhile you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your old socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favorite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone that you don't want to be without. That's it.
P.S. You have to be brave."
This phrasing is so sweet. (I hate the word sweet.) But sweet this is, in a nice way. Not too syrupy-cute. Just simple. I love the idea of two people falling in love and reading each other their favorite stories. And bringing your dog. And the image of two planets hitching together.
Oh, internet. Sometimes you bring such nice little happies to me.
"You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It's like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else's planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colors people wear. It's a big surprise, falling in love, because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signaled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else's orbit and after awhile you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your old socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favorite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone that you don't want to be without. That's it.
P.S. You have to be brave."
This phrasing is so sweet. (I hate the word sweet.) But sweet this is, in a nice way. Not too syrupy-cute. Just simple. I love the idea of two people falling in love and reading each other their favorite stories. And bringing your dog. And the image of two planets hitching together.
Oh, internet. Sometimes you bring such nice little happies to me.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Came across this last night; ended up crying real tears into my couch cushions. If you don't find this tumblr hilarious, we are not friends. Leave my life. We don't understand each other anyway.
Iceland on Tumblr
Hm. Making a blog in the voice/perspective of every country on earth? Now *that* is a project I could get behind/waste my life on.
Iceland on Tumblr
Hm. Making a blog in the voice/perspective of every country on earth? Now *that* is a project I could get behind/waste my life on.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
The Beggar Maid
It's a rainy, warmish night in my neck of the woods. Warm enough to have the bedroom window open to the outside air, after months of being stifled and confined, after all that bitter cold and ice. It feels heavenly.
So I'm in my bed, eating cookies and drinking green tea out of a mug that was a present from someone I adore, which feels nice. And I'm working my way through a big, heavy, marvelous book - Alice Munro's Selected Stories. I'm not sure there could be a better way to spend a Thursday night, for me.
Every single story in this book - in any of her books, this is my third - has at least one sentence that leaps through the page and punches me in the face. But somehow, gently. With grace. She is masterful.
(I suppose this is why they gave her a Nobel Prize this year. I am so late to this party.)
I tend to be enthusiastic about things that I love, it's true. But I'm glad, now that I'm learning more about "serious" literature (although I'm always down for non-serious literature, let's not be snobs, people) that I'm learning discretion. The more widely I read, the more able I am to discern something worth truly marveling at.
When I read Alice Munro, all I can think is, this is a woman who understands people. Who tells the truth about them. Even though it's fiction, it is all lined with razorblades of truth. And it's all so ordinary, just stories about ordinary people living ordinary lives. But illuminated. My very favorite kind of stories - simple and true. If you've never read her, begin. I just read The Beggar Maid, and feel like I could read it five more times before I can even begin to discern the layers of intelligence and depth under the surface line of the plot itself.
Oh, graduate school. You're going to exhaust me, aren't you?
"This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
This is what happens.
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you."
- Runaway, Alice Munro
So I'm in my bed, eating cookies and drinking green tea out of a mug that was a present from someone I adore, which feels nice. And I'm working my way through a big, heavy, marvelous book - Alice Munro's Selected Stories. I'm not sure there could be a better way to spend a Thursday night, for me.
Every single story in this book - in any of her books, this is my third - has at least one sentence that leaps through the page and punches me in the face. But somehow, gently. With grace. She is masterful.
(I suppose this is why they gave her a Nobel Prize this year. I am so late to this party.)
I tend to be enthusiastic about things that I love, it's true. But I'm glad, now that I'm learning more about "serious" literature (although I'm always down for non-serious literature, let's not be snobs, people) that I'm learning discretion. The more widely I read, the more able I am to discern something worth truly marveling at.
When I read Alice Munro, all I can think is, this is a woman who understands people. Who tells the truth about them. Even though it's fiction, it is all lined with razorblades of truth. And it's all so ordinary, just stories about ordinary people living ordinary lives. But illuminated. My very favorite kind of stories - simple and true. If you've never read her, begin. I just read The Beggar Maid, and feel like I could read it five more times before I can even begin to discern the layers of intelligence and depth under the surface line of the plot itself.
Oh, graduate school. You're going to exhaust me, aren't you?
"This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
This is what happens.
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you."
- Runaway, Alice Munro
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
Be we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so remarkably well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end has magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in a tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
- Jack Gilbert
Italics mine, above.
I struggle with poetry that is religious, because I am not religious. I envy those that have faith. I wish I had access to that particular well, but I don't. And although that element is missing for me, the poem here still rings true, doesn't it?
I don't need to put my faith in a religion, or into the hands of a hard formulaic god, in order to believe in praising the beauty of simple things.
Our lives are made up of these simple things, these ordinary moments. And I fervently believe in paying attention, and in offering up appreciation for all of my moments - the dark and the light.
Who do I offer my appreciation to? The air, I guess. The sea. Directly to the source - the music itself, or the laughing friend. The Bengal tiger, the seaside town. I thank the things themselves, instead of an unseen creator pulling invisible strings.
Does it matter who I thank? To me, what matters is the noticing. The appreciating. The love.
Last night I walked my dog down a dark, silent street that's covered in ice, under a clear black sky lit with stars. My dog was jaunty, pouncing at nothing, her warm breath making little puffs over frozen snow mounds. It was a sad night. I was thinking of a friend of mine, who I knew to be suffering. I was thinking, then, of other friends, old and new. Lost and kept. Of their past sufferings, and my own, and all of our collective future ones, always hovering just over our heads. All the warm spots we each inhabit on this frozen, spinning planet, and the love that connects us to one another on our own dark nights.
I appreciate the connections. The beauty. The loss. My friend, and his heavy heart.
All of us.
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
Be we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so remarkably well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end has magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in a tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
- Jack Gilbert
Italics mine, above.
I struggle with poetry that is religious, because I am not religious. I envy those that have faith. I wish I had access to that particular well, but I don't. And although that element is missing for me, the poem here still rings true, doesn't it?
I don't need to put my faith in a religion, or into the hands of a hard formulaic god, in order to believe in praising the beauty of simple things.
Our lives are made up of these simple things, these ordinary moments. And I fervently believe in paying attention, and in offering up appreciation for all of my moments - the dark and the light.
Who do I offer my appreciation to? The air, I guess. The sea. Directly to the source - the music itself, or the laughing friend. The Bengal tiger, the seaside town. I thank the things themselves, instead of an unseen creator pulling invisible strings.
Does it matter who I thank? To me, what matters is the noticing. The appreciating. The love.
Last night I walked my dog down a dark, silent street that's covered in ice, under a clear black sky lit with stars. My dog was jaunty, pouncing at nothing, her warm breath making little puffs over frozen snow mounds. It was a sad night. I was thinking of a friend of mine, who I knew to be suffering. I was thinking, then, of other friends, old and new. Lost and kept. Of their past sufferings, and my own, and all of our collective future ones, always hovering just over our heads. All the warm spots we each inhabit on this frozen, spinning planet, and the love that connects us to one another on our own dark nights.
I appreciate the connections. The beauty. The loss. My friend, and his heavy heart.
All of us.
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