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dwelling in the past
I think I said that grief is passive. It creeps over you in those famous waves, you know, whereas mourning is an active process of remembering, reliving the good and the bad, and defanging it in a way. Until you have examined all those memories, they don’t lose their power to undo you. ~ Joan Didion It comes in waves, the grief. Too, it comes in bursts reminiscent of times when visitors arrive at the door, unannounced and well-intended. Overstaying their welcome, they somehow miss the dropped hints and unsubtle signs that they really should be leaving. Wearily polite and resigned, we do the mannerly thing and wait for them to leave…
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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Art, Awesome Women, Death and dying, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Music, Rites of passage, saying goodbye, Scaffolding, Seamus Heaney
scaffolding an imperfect marriage
Laurie Anderson tells this story about the day she married her best friend, Lou Reed: “It was spring in 2008 when I was walking down a road in California feeling sorry for myself and talking on my cell with Lou. “There are so many things I’ve never done that I wanted to do,” I said. “Like what?” “You know, I never learned German, I never studied physics, I never got married.” “Why don’t we get married?” he asked. “I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll come to Colorado. How about tomorrow?” “Um – don’t you think tomorrow is too soon?” “No, I don’t.” And so the next day, we met in Boulder,…
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“let your soul and spirit fly”
“Each of us, as we pass through life, leaves traces of the passage. Sometimes the signs are as slight as a bent leaf, a twisted twig, or a seed dispersed. Sometimes, we leave behind the husks of former selves or castaway restraints. While following these trails, we grow ever more aware of our lives in connection-to our foremothers, to the elemental truths of nature, to the selves we hope to become. Woven together, we begin to see the shifting patterns of our intertwined lives. The studio work represents my journey, my passage.” ~ Sarena Mann One afternoon, in the central Phoenix kitchen of an Irish friend, I glanced up from my cup…
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Language of Cancer, Leontia Flynn, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood
the lovely uselessness of poetry
For World Poetry Day 2015. The freedom and the lovely uselessness of poetry is its whole point. ~ Leontia Flynn My parents were raised in rural County Derry, Heaney country, where they learned to be thrifty and resourceful, and also – when all else failed – to believe in the mystical powers of “folk healers,” those individuals uniquely gifted with “the cure” or “the charm” for whatever ailed us. Consulted only after it was determined that they had flummoxed the medical doctor, the folk healer meted out charms in all forms – plasters, poultices, and brown bottles. It was to such a man my father once turned after the local doctor…
