Another Meeting

Last night ... one of the attendees just final galley proofs of book on kids' development, particularly around language. The group is, indeed, getting old. Maybe 60-90 or a little better. I was sitting there thinking as the conversation wandered from what chickens experienced before being slaughtered to the % of genes separating chimps from hominid chomps, from the territory shared by Philosophers, Psychologists and Theologians. I think we likely spoke about one of the chapters of the soon-to-be-published and decided, if I may be permitted to wander as I do anyway here, what to read but not talk about next month ... I was thinking how such meetings might prepare one for the Day Room of a Nursing Home. Loose associative paths connecting A to B to Chickens and Chimps.

My Grandmother, Mother and Mother-in-Law all ended up in such places, suffering from Alzheimers. Many of us Last Quarter folk carry with us the knowledge (if not the gene itself ) that we may be beyond any point of return from a trip to some specific illness that our forebears bore.

Still, I went out this AM to try my return to running. My heart wasn't cooperative but I kept up my jog at 6. A neighbor was out with his two pooches behind one of those invisible fences that's supposed to keep les barkers at bay. Life is, in part, I suppose, about trust. All my parts are intact ... though my heart continues its refusal to settle down into a comfortable rhythm, this morning. I remind myself of Kunitz while remembering that my people begin their days with a prayer thanking God for giving strength to the weary, to which I typically respond with a more than hearty Amen:

The Layers

By Stanley Kunitz 1905–2006 Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face,

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.