advice to myself.
am going to try to invoke some deeper discipline here. shut off my head. ignore my heart for a bit. redirect my thoughts with action, sweat, even bluster. be grateful. still so much to be grateful for.
as Greg Brown writes:
my heart was torn
I'd made up my mind
I'd keep to myself and just be kind
and need nothing
just need nothing
love my folks my kids
my friends and make it on through
to the end
no more suffering
over loving
Friday, October 26, 2007
six inches.
no. not your six inches. (and mine too, more like five, four).
four inches between my nose and the side of a red truck flying past me. soooooo hadn't seen it. wasn't warned by my walking companion who didn't see it coming either. was just about to walk across the road. the tiniest hesitation. missed by a whisker. felt a breeze on my whisker even. wouldn't have even finished my sentence. would have been pulped.
this - much like the story of my father who was leaning out of a window in Beirut. popped his head back in for a second to relay an observation and at just that second a concrete block fell right passed the window where his head had been.
but as my sister said, 'almost died' stories are very uninteresting.
why did she always have to be so interesting.
I looked back at the road once I'd walked across it. The moment of my almost-squishing visible to me from the other side. I wish I could look back at her pool like that - what could have happened - right then, right there. The end in an instant. But what when something DOES happen/has happened: her story, absence, the memories of her rich and FUN and beautiful life and consequences of her lonely, horrible death permeate everything - was the immediate second thing I thought of after, 'damn - that was close!'.. I got hit by that black truck two years ago as impactfully as I almost did last night but that passed right through my body in the form of one phrase - then leaving just my soul as so much mush. One second to the next and all the rest just relentless consequence.
I don't want to die too but i can see now, as i never could before, how you can get kinda boxed in by your story, how you can kinda want out of it, how, as they say, life can be just suffering. I never believed that before. Anyway, it was a curious moment - the truck passed and my blown back hair still settling. More of a 'huh. interesting' than a revelation. I would like it to have been a revelation. A fast fix would have been nice. But this is a long story. And the dye is cast. I must quit being amazed that all has changed and try to invent who I will be instead of looking to reconstruct who I was when my parts are scattered up and down the east and west coasts: some in boxes, some stored with friends, some here- recognizable, but not.
ah. the grief blog. what a bore....
I had a little salvo yesterday though, earlier. Playing on my sister's electronic keyboard. The sustain offered a very different feeling than a regular keyboard. There, I could hold onto something for a long long time. Note overlapping with note. It didn't sound too bad. Was the first time I've felt like myself since this summer. That, more of a revelation: Hey, THERE I am!! Maybe, just maybe, I can peel myself off the Great Sidewalk of Life. Going to run off and get some mineral spirits today, see if I can't find that old girl of me somewhere.
four inches between my nose and the side of a red truck flying past me. soooooo hadn't seen it. wasn't warned by my walking companion who didn't see it coming either. was just about to walk across the road. the tiniest hesitation. missed by a whisker. felt a breeze on my whisker even. wouldn't have even finished my sentence. would have been pulped.
this - much like the story of my father who was leaning out of a window in Beirut. popped his head back in for a second to relay an observation and at just that second a concrete block fell right passed the window where his head had been.
but as my sister said, 'almost died' stories are very uninteresting.
why did she always have to be so interesting.
I looked back at the road once I'd walked across it. The moment of my almost-squishing visible to me from the other side. I wish I could look back at her pool like that - what could have happened - right then, right there. The end in an instant. But what when something DOES happen/has happened: her story, absence, the memories of her rich and FUN and beautiful life and consequences of her lonely, horrible death permeate everything - was the immediate second thing I thought of after, 'damn - that was close!'.. I got hit by that black truck two years ago as impactfully as I almost did last night but that passed right through my body in the form of one phrase - then leaving just my soul as so much mush. One second to the next and all the rest just relentless consequence.
I don't want to die too but i can see now, as i never could before, how you can get kinda boxed in by your story, how you can kinda want out of it, how, as they say, life can be just suffering. I never believed that before. Anyway, it was a curious moment - the truck passed and my blown back hair still settling. More of a 'huh. interesting' than a revelation. I would like it to have been a revelation. A fast fix would have been nice. But this is a long story. And the dye is cast. I must quit being amazed that all has changed and try to invent who I will be instead of looking to reconstruct who I was when my parts are scattered up and down the east and west coasts: some in boxes, some stored with friends, some here- recognizable, but not.
ah. the grief blog. what a bore....
I had a little salvo yesterday though, earlier. Playing on my sister's electronic keyboard. The sustain offered a very different feeling than a regular keyboard. There, I could hold onto something for a long long time. Note overlapping with note. It didn't sound too bad. Was the first time I've felt like myself since this summer. That, more of a revelation: Hey, THERE I am!! Maybe, just maybe, I can peel myself off the Great Sidewalk of Life. Going to run off and get some mineral spirits today, see if I can't find that old girl of me somewhere.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
either is a mistake
i chose one.
it was a mistake.
actually, i didn't choose but I said things that changed things. I don't want to become afraid of that. But these consquences are daunting.
how quickly we fall in love.
how little we know about what we need, can do, should do, have done, might do. how little we are sure about whether the satisfactions of the day are easing the soul or not.
i see no point anymore in making plans of any kind. nothing works out as planned.
often that's good - because we're too dumb to know any better. or, we just lose (all? again?) and, lost in nuance, start thinking anew, planning. As if we could plan, as if it wasn't well past midnight in our lives, as if it was ever just our karma we were negotiating, or that even if it was, it would play out at all - properly.
how could we know how it will come down when the next five minutes is different than we guess. totally. how can we know who will be lucky, who will be hard, or sick or beautiful, who seems delightful and then betrays, who will be the steadfast friend, the one there at the dark hour, or the one last standing. i'm always wrong, it seems. and yet there are the surprising friends and the ones who we are sure will be break us and turn out to be all the meaning we have found. and yet alsoontheotherhand people never seem to really change. in the end, when is the end, we will have been right, right??
and about ourselves -
to hold onto the self or give it away?
maybe either isn't a mistake.
maybe just one.
it was a mistake.
actually, i didn't choose but I said things that changed things. I don't want to become afraid of that. But these consquences are daunting.
how quickly we fall in love.
how little we know about what we need, can do, should do, have done, might do. how little we are sure about whether the satisfactions of the day are easing the soul or not.
i see no point anymore in making plans of any kind. nothing works out as planned.
often that's good - because we're too dumb to know any better. or, we just lose (all? again?) and, lost in nuance, start thinking anew, planning. As if we could plan, as if it wasn't well past midnight in our lives, as if it was ever just our karma we were negotiating, or that even if it was, it would play out at all - properly.
how could we know how it will come down when the next five minutes is different than we guess. totally. how can we know who will be lucky, who will be hard, or sick or beautiful, who seems delightful and then betrays, who will be the steadfast friend, the one there at the dark hour, or the one last standing. i'm always wrong, it seems. and yet there are the surprising friends and the ones who we are sure will be break us and turn out to be all the meaning we have found. and yet alsoontheotherhand people never seem to really change. in the end, when is the end, we will have been right, right??
and about ourselves -
to hold onto the self or give it away?
maybe either isn't a mistake.
maybe just one.
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