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Silence

My ex-husband died. He died on 10-10-2020. For numerology purposes that’s a 6, one of the perfect numbers. It’s also part of the triad, the 3 numbers about which someone (Tesla? Ramanujan?) said, if we knew the significance of the numbers 3 6 9 we would be paralyzed with astonishment. His heart just stopped, refused to continue its designated purpose within the human body. There’s not a number for that unless you consider the (one) of its kind belonging to the person it inhabits going to a zero.

I have, since then, been trying to understand some things—unsuccessfully. I’ve played a lot of chess games against the computer. One of the first things we did, he and I, after meeting was to play a game of chess. He won.

The songs come back and play round and round. Simon and Garfunkel…”Hello darkness, my old friend…” And Scarborough Fair…”Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Remember me…for (s)he once was a true love of mine.” And he was then, once. A true love of mine.

I’ve had many miserable nightmarish dreams and a lot of unexpected pain. The dreams that are not such as that, the ones that seem filled with significance and symbols and complexity I can only partially decipher. I do get the sense of them, the sense that there is something incredible just out of reach. The most important things go into that place where there are no words.

But the finality of things, the end here on earth, of our consciousness, our ability to share with one another, that life that we shared so long ago, ended then—long ago. Still I go back there. To our children, those beautiful lovely babies that we had, the places, the rivers of our youth. Now there’s no one there to be able to say, “remember when…?”

We shared things unique to ourselves, our lives, our little family. The life we had together. The cottage on the river where we lived in La Crosse, the coffee shop we owned in Iowa City, the community theatre. We have not spoken for a long time, not directly. Our daughter shared between us, the answered questions, “How’s your dad doing?” “How’s your mom?”

But this is it. It’s over. Though it ended a long time ago. Now it’s no longer possible to continue the conversation.

The Sound of Silence.

Good-bye love

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Two Things

Posted by Donna May

From our two friends: Psyche’s Call with Donna May and our lovely poet, Mary Oliver. How we appreciate and love them both.

Sometimes the days are so difficult. This election, these politics, this earth, and the animals that walk with us. Sometimes we just long for our children to be small and our lives, our selves—to be ignorant.

Too many people sick, too many people playing the end-games of their lives. And still, from our dear ones—Now. Just Now. Shsssssh…

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A Pause For Beauty

Just a little pause from the news of the day, any day. Time out for just a moment’s breath, and some beauty.

Posted by nature amazing.net

A beautiful Great Egret (Breeding adult) | Also known as Common Egret, Large Egret or Great White Heron.

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Love This

Sometimes there’s just nothing to add.

“Drink water from the spring where horses drink. The horse will never drink bad water. Lay your bed where the cat sleeps. Eat the fruit that has been touched by a worm. Boldly pick the mushroom on which the insects sit. Plant the tree where the mole digs. Build your house where the snake sits to warm itself. Dig your fountain where the birds hide from heat. Go to sleep and wake up at the same time with the birds – you will reap all of the days golden grains. Eat more green – you will have strong legs and a resistant heart, like the beings of the forest. Swim often and you will feel on earth like the fish in the water. Look at the sky as often as possible and your thoughts will become light and clear. Be quiet a lot, speak little – and silence will come in your heart, and your spirit will be calm and full of peace.”
-Saint Seraphim of Sarov

Posted by Juniper Fox

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In Keeping and Why Not

  • Happy Birthday, Thomas Sterns, just a little belated, we still go through “those certain, half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats…”
  • Born: September 26, 1888, St. Louis
  • Died: January 4, 1965, London
  • Cause of Death: Emphysema
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
Ah, yes, the man.
The hero of many a lit class, many an English survivor. Who among us did not read “The Wasteland” or at least “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”? It occurs to me now though not then, why were we not queried on behalf of “love song”? Why indeed is it called a love song?
And about the above, how do we make it thru the parts where there is not only no ecstasy, but torment?
 In The Paris Review

2nd June 1951: American-English poet and playwright, TS Eliot (1888 – 1965). He wrote amongst many other things, ‘The Waste Land ‘ and the plays, ‘The Cocktail Party’ and ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. Original Publication: Picture Post – 5314 – Are Poets Really Necessary? – pub. 1951 (Photo by George Douglas/Picture Post/Getty Images)