Whatever I imagined I would write today is gone. This has been the most fucked up year in most people's existence. It certainly has been for me. You begin to think there might be a little respite, but there isn't. The weather will change, you think, and that will make a difference. Something. Anything. You think about doing something to lose the Covid Fifteen you have put on these last lockdown months. You can't figure out if this is the right time or the wrong time to quit drinking. You've actually begun to think about how to get on with things. Then the news comes in. Your friends text you. RBG is dead. In normal times, this would be sad. But these are not normal times in any way, and your reaction to the news is both manic and depressive. All your wit is gone. You know you are going into a battle you will surely lose, but go you must.
There will be no winning, even in victory. You realize the beast will maul you before it dies.
ReplyDeleteA friend texted this last night - a good, practicing Jewish friend.
"According to Jewish tradition, a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah, which began tonight, is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness. Baruch Dayan HaEmet."
I pulled a poem book off the shelf. Chinese Poetry. How many thousands of years has China been in existence. 6000?
Such wars - such sorrows. Such endurance.
What I think is important is not to become one of the Hope-less. But to seek Endurance. I choose Light as my guide. But whatever practice one chooses ...now is a good time to practice hard.
I am powerless to the future of the Supreme Court.
However we are not powerless to giving out kindness. To each other and especially "In Such Hard Times" (another book I pulled down, the poetry of Wei Ying-wu) to ourselves.
Affect what is possible within your world and do not dwell in the darkness of fear and anxiety. There is no grace there.
RBG wouldn't like that - I suspect. She shined a great light from that tiny body - didn't she.
Nothing struck me in flipping through the Chinese. So I leave this - and while it is a more personal poem - Life is personal. All of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHOHi5ueo0A
Just got a message from my father who will turn 90 this coming birthday.
ReplyDeleteOur neighborhood was decaying after I left home for school and so he sold our house, took out a thirty year mortgage he never thought he’d live long enough to pay off, and bought a big ole farm house out in the country for he and my Mama 40 years ago. He plated a Norwegian Maple tree that spring in the back yard to commemorate the move and it has grown into a magnificent beauty. It died this fall without changing color, and he had to have it cut down today. He has lived long enough to pay off that mortgage and like Linda Loman put it is "free and clear," but is brokenhearted about the tree and the forty years of memories that it held.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
In Our Time-- alienation, loss, grief, separation--but it was beautiful.
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