2.14.2020 – There is a place where

There is a place where
love begins and where love ends
and love asks nothing

Is love worse living?

Is love worth living?

Is life without love worth living?

Is that so hard?

Why is that so hard?

In the movie, “Shenandoah”, Doug McClure ask Jimmy Stewart for permission to marry his daughter.

Jimmy Stewart, who is sitting on his front porch, tells McClure to sit down as he doesn’t like people looking down on him, says to McClure, “Do you like her?”

“Sir, I ….”

“No, no. You just said you loved her. There’s some difference between lovin’ and likin'”

Why is that so hard?

Why is that so hard to understand?

Alicia Keys is the same ball park with the lines, “I keep on fallin’ In and out of love with you. Makes me so confused.”

All these questions.

Even after being married 30 years, all these questions.

I am in love, no question there.

Am I making this way to complicated?

It’s a bit of shock that I had the answer 30 years ago.

Back in the day it was a big deal to have the wedding program laid out on a computer.

What today is a word document with different fonts and sizes was seen as really cool.

My soon-to-be-wife asked me if there was anything I would like to included on the program.

I asked that Carl Sandburg’s Poem, Explanations of Love, be on the back.

The final line of this poem?

“love asks nothing.”

Explanations of Love
Carl Sandburg

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends.

There is a touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries.

There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open hearth
furnace or a little green-fire acetylene torch.

There are single careless bywords portentous as a
big bend in the Mississippi River.

Hands, eyes, bywords–out of these love makes
battlegrounds and workshops.

There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it
is never written till long afterward.

There are explanations of love in all languages
and not one found wiser than this:

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends—and love asks nothing.

1.20.2020 – MLK Birthday

MLK Birthday
come so far, so far to go
Shall we yet overcome?

I found myself in a one of those small vendor booths at an antique mall in Dahlonega, Georgia on MLK Day.

The booth was filled with Confederate flags, blankets, license plates, mugs and books.

Faceout upon faceout of books.

Books with titles like “IN THE HOUSE OF ABRAHAM-Was Lincoln Illegitimate?“

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis.

And

Living Confederate Principles: A Heritage For All Time

Lots of arguments waiting to get started.

Arguing with folks whose minds were made up a long time ago.

Come far.

But so far to come.

Shall we yet overcome?

I am reminded of the lines from Mr. Sandburg’s poem, Grass.

What places is this?

Where are we now?

I am the grass ….

let me work.

Some day.

Grass by Carl Sandburg.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we

I am the grass.
Let me work.

1.9.2020 – swinging on a star

swinging on a star
take moon beams home in a jar
moonlit morning hopes

The Google says that the Moon today is in a Waxing Gibbous phase. This phase is when the moon is more than 50% illuminated but not yet a Full Moon. The phase lasts round 7 days with the moon becoming more illuminated each day until the Full Moon.

It was cold and clear last night when my wife and I went for walk.

Cold for Georgia anyway.

Clear and lit by the Waxing Gibbous Moon.

Moonlight was strong enough that we cast shadows and the old song about catching moonbeams in a jar stuck in my brain.

Innocent and sweet thoughts to end the day.

When I left for work this morning that Waxing Gibbous Moon was still shining.

It was low enough in the trees that I could have, like the Court Jester in Thurber’s Many Moons, climbed up in a tree and grabbed the moon for the Princess to wear on a chain around her neck.

(When the Moon shows up the next night, the King worries that his daughter will notice. The Court Jester suggests asking the Princess how that happened when she has the Moon on a chain around her neck. The Princess replies “That is easy, silly,” she said. “When I lose a tooth, a new one grows in its place, doesn’t it?”)

Mr. Debussy’s prélude, La fille aux cheveux de lin (otherwise known as The Girl With The Flaxen Hair) was playing on the radio.

Where does this music come from?

A bad mood and crummy attitude that has been percolating inside me this week didn’t have a chance.

Like the Court Jester, I winked at the moon, “for it seemed to the Court Jester that the moon had winked at him.”

The moment may not last long.

I am, after all, on my way to work.

For now.

For a few minutes.

For a wink of an eye.

I am swinging on a star.

December 12 – Past year, how much good,

Past year, how much good,
I take credit? How much bad,
I think is my fault?

Can I answer that question?

Honestly?

Easy!

I doubt I really accomplished and did anything that might be considered good or good for people this last year.

The amount of bad things?

Things I consider to be ‘my fault’ are countless.

Beyond numbering.

I am smart enough to know that isn’t true.

I did do some good.

Not everything was my fault.

I am somewhat smart enough to know that thinking this way is wrong.

But.

There it is.

Maybe it just the easy way out.

Yup, it’s me, it’s all on me.

Pile it on.

Considered in the abstract, it’s kinda stupid to feel this way.

If I cannot take credit for anything good, then why do I line up at the ‘remorse, oh woe is me’ window at the feelings bank?

James Thurber wrote in his fable, The White Deer, about the Royal Astronomer and the King.

“There was a knock on the door and Paz, the Royal Astronomer, came into the room. He was a young pink-cheeked man in a pink robe and his pink eyes peered through pink lenses.
“A huge pink comet, Sire,” he said, “just barely missed the earth a little while ago. It made an awful hissing sound, like hot irons stuck in water.”
“They aim these things at me,” said [King] Clode, “Everything is aimed at me.”

Well, you know what.

The next time a meteor passes the earth.

The next time something goes wrong.

The next time somebody is looking for someone to blame.

I am going to say (or at least think) not my fault.

Of course, still get going to try fix the issue or help out (if possible).

But its not on me.

The next time.

September 18 – moment beyond words

moment beyond words
Grand daughter and James Thurber
being read to me

After saying it was a moment beyond words, I am going to try and put my feelings into words.

Very inadequate words.

I asked my Grand Daughter if she wanted a story before bedtime and I picked up my copy of Thurber Carnival and found the fable, The Moth and Star.

Azaria said she would like a story but she grabbed the book and read to me.

My first grade grand daughter, working her way through James Thurber, sounding out the words like ‘impressionable’ and ‘singed’. pausing to look up to me for the occasional definition, was such stuff as dreams are made from.

My hope for the today is that everyone, anyone should have such a moment in their life.

The Moth and the Star

A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Stars aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You get somewhere that way,” said the moth’s father. “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.” But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”

The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught up in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.

Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.

from Further fables for our time by James Thurber, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1956.