treat yourself to something beautiful
watch this all the way through and feel the beauty of her voice move the audience to tears
-15 year old emma kok sings ‘voila’ – with andre rieu, maastrict 2023
—
“after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
-aldous huxley
during the wake
we all gathered inside
close together
to talk, eat, laugh, cry, listen to music, tell stories, remember
celebrate a life
the children from 4-10
all played together
went outside
chalk in hand
wrote a beautiful welcome to all who would come
and loving tributes to the one who had left.
“tears are words that need to be written.”
-paul coelho
“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.
We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
—
in memoriam of r.s. – you will be greatly missed and thanks for the music
—
credits:
text: Matt Haig – The Midnight Library, 2020.
art: Grant Haffner – Into the night, 1978
ten years ago
this surprise postcard
appeared in my mailbox
from a former student
now far away
addressed to peaches
my affectionate nickname
sent to me
when she was seven not yet eight
her only message
a beautiful poem
summed up
life
in three lines
love is love
life is life
there is nothing else to it.
i knew way back when
she was just four not yet five
learning
how to hold a pencil to write
she was a beat poet and roller derby queen of adventure.
—
“one should write because one loves the shape of stories and sentences
and the creation of different words on a page.”
-annie proulx
my favorite shirt
lived in
worn to softness
tissue paper thin
color gone
shapeless and frayed
always feels like home.
—
“there is a special blessing in old clothes;
that aside from their comfort,
for which especially they are to be cherished.
they confer a certain kind of anonymity on one who wears them gladly;
all their bright places rubbed in a uniform dullness,
they achieve an appearance so nearly nondescript
that only a close scrutiny could learn that ever they held shape at all.’
-maude meagher
come, children, gather round my knee;
something is about to be.
tonight’s december thirty-first,
something is about to burst.
the clock is crouching, dark and small,
like a time bomb in the hall.
hark! it’s midnight, children dear.
duck! here comes another year.
-ogden nash.
—
art credit: ed gorey, the house
(not our real hands, but good for perspective)
mine is the tinkerbelle hand with a minor ‘injury’ and his, the paul bunyan hand with a major trauma.
waiting in the store checkout line
browsing through my phone
the man in front of me
laughing and chatting with the cashier
saying it was a challenge to sign the receipt
because of his hand
hearing this
turned to face him
beginning to take in the situation
(major cast on his arm and hand)
while i quickly blurted out:
“it’s the worst, isn’t it?!”
whining about having an injury too
he asked me what happened
explaining the battle with my car door
he had a young daughter with him
was so kind and gentle with her
laughing and chatting
just as he had done with the cashier
when i asked him what happened
wondering why he had such a big cast
he told me his story
it involved him trying to stop someone
from stealing his fiancee’s car
and
a dog attack
instant perspective shift
before i could say anything
he turned to go
saying,
“i’m sorry that happened to you and i hope you heal really soon.”
all i could say was, “you too..”
how fortunate the people in his life are
even the strangers he encounters in his day
lucky to cross paths with him
this gentle giant
walks softly
teaching huge lessons.
—
“look at you comforting others with the words you want to hear.”
-author unknown
hope tree, karin zeller
———
buddhist philosopher daisaku ikeda wrote this insightful look at the nature of happiness in his essay collection, “Hope Is a Decision.” ikeda spent 50 years writing the essays in the book. they all relate in some form to the nature of hope, and how we can take it upon ourselves to maintain it, even during tumultuous times. consider it a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you choose to be hopeful, you will be. just like if you choose to try and make others happy, it will increase your own happiness. and, as ikeda also notes in his essay, those choices will “illuminate our final years with dignity.”
yesterday
my sister let us know
she lost her husband
of so many years
on christmas day
in this
the same year
he lost his father
before too long
we’ll fly to her
to be together
for a remembrance and celebration of his life.
—
“sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.”
-charles henry parkhurst
I didn't have my glasses on.... 