Is it possible that, after all these years, I am still surprised by the acts of kindness that I witness and receive and the curious acts of pettiness with which I'm confronted? Apparently, so. One might think that with entrance to the Last Quarter of Life, one gets a card that reads:
Long-lived and Seen It All
And, while I suppose I/we have, seen it all that is, the sense of surprise remains.
Kindness requires so little. A asks B to do C or shows B their need to receive C and B -- if s/he has the resources to do so -- says "sure." I suppose this applies in Spades to promises made, but applies just as well to these quotidian requests that seem to arise often enough in a day to provide both the Giver and the Given-to a sense of hopefulness about the future.
I haven't been writing much, lately. I think I've been witnessing too much of the darkness. Indeed, I've come to recognize a certain sense of pressure and heaviness not in my heart but right down the middle ... esophageal mourning of some sorts. I think it an old feeling but still one that I've only recently come to fully experience. It happens routinely when I witness A asking B to do C and B almost reflexively needing to say "no" before agreeing to the requested favor.
Por Favor!
My visceral response goes beyond the heaviness down the middle of my chest. Glimmers of tears
warm my eyes. My entire body feels heavy. My speech becomes difficult and words don't come. We were mere children when the lyricists of Hair, the Musical wrote:
warm my eyes. My entire body feels heavy. My speech becomes difficult and words don't come. We were mere children when the lyricists of Hair, the Musical wrote:
How can people be so heartless?
How can people be so cruel?
Easy to be hard, easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings?
How can they ignore their friends?
Easy to be proud, easy to say no
And especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend? I need a friend.
Frankly, I think it may be altogether too obvious to anyone reading these notes -- about an aging-guy's attempt to deal with a World that leaves too many behind -- that the author got mud-stuck in the romanticized ethos of the so-called Sixties. And even though he may not be hunched over the keyboard smoking dope, it is still the case that he mourns.
Just these weeks on both the world-stage and locally in his four cubits:
Just these weeks on both the world-stage and locally in his four cubits:
Beheadings and Burnings.
Hate speech about others who are different.
Hate speech about others who are different.
Failures to keep promises to Near-and-Dear.
Sharing by a friend turning into shaming by others.
Lovers gratuitously saying "no" to each other.
Lovers gratuitously saying "no" to each other.
Politicians squabbling with and slandering other politicians.
I thought about this outloud with someone I consider a kind friend. They cited a poem by Rainer Rilke that -- as far as I allowed myself to hear -- spoke of the need to befriend the reality of the shadowy and aggressive and powerful parts of our personality. Maybe it was his Hymn -- frankly I was too busy thinking in my own head about the horrors that I just noted, above:
For the first time I see you rising,
Hearsaid, remote, incredible War God.
How very thickly terrible action has been sown
Among the peaceful fruits of the field, action suddenly grown to maturity.
Yesterday it was still small, needed nurture, now it is
Standing there tall as a man: tomorrow
It will outgrow man. For the glowing God
Will suddenly tear his crop
Out of the nation which gave it roots, and the harvest will begin.
At last a God. Since we were often no longer able to grasp
The peaceful God, the God of Battle suddenly grips us,
Hurling his brand: and over the heart full of homeland
Screams his crimson heaven in which, thunderous, he dwells.
I found it hard -- whatever the poem -- to take it in and rather reflexively suggested the reading of Lagerkvyst's (one page) The Venerated Bones to act as counterpoise:
Couldn't get a link to it but it's online and very brief, if you're curious.
Indeed, I know! I do know that I'm a hopeless romantic here in another loving-and-brutal century in which I do not feel quite at home.
Sam Hinton -- I think he was a Biologist and Folk singer but, anyhow, I seem to recall listening to him with M. at the Newport Folk Festival in maybe 1965 -- used to say:
The Choice can be no clearer: Peace to the World or the World in Pieces.
Cheer up, Howard. Fifty years ago, today, you and M met.
Hear! Hear! A Toast to that brave Soul, M!
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