Got your postcard when I went up to Brewster, for which thanks. I haven't finished reading it yet as, sadly, I have never been able to easily read your beautiful script.
You were a presence in my dream last night, with the delicacy of a spider and the reach and strength of an octopus. Can't really say what the "narrative" was, nor were you really embodied, but just weaving some kind of influence or presence throughout.
Pleased to be back in Brooklyn, yet so filled with self-loathing and disappointment that death seems the rational and right thing. (I wouldn't do this to my new roommate, so no need to be actually alarmed.)
You will perhaps (likely) too well-understand the strange feelings of astonishment and despair that this is where I am and, worse still, who I am. I am so not-in-any way-who-I-thought-I-was. No one could be more disappointed in me than I am. What is on beyond the utter squander of potential? What is this unbelievable and shocking and destructive self-deluded self-romanticism? Are there words for this? Probably French or German … maybe in Russian.
I can recite a litany of my moral failures back as far as not paying back the $.50 that Patti Snapp lent me at Farrell's Ice Cream Shop in the Stonewood Shopping Center in Downey, California in about 1970. The list goes on and on and on. And I ask myself, who was that? who did that? who was so neglectful? hubristic? unconscious? unkind?
I used to believe in redemption, enjoy the comeback. Of course, among other things, that requires hope.
When I look around our current world and see so many of my talented, well-meaning friends in such desperate, terrible, and unexpected straits, well, what else is there besides despair — désespoir — as I see no solutions, no answers, no palliatives, not much amelioration. Far from comfort, satisfaction, self-realization, and far from thriving or happiness.
Maybe a Buddhist monastery is the only answer. Or maybe I am over-thinking it already. Whatever that remedy (it feels like a dis-ease) might be, it is certainly not in anything I can see or have tried thus far.
Yours still in the struggle,
Sally Anne
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| Tupelo, hanging in at 17. |
Now, I should add that I know there are worse situations, worse lives on this planet. Pain I cannot comprehend, apprehend. I struggle to "get it" in order that I can fix it, see the situation and move on.
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| Cooder on her red silk pillow on the new (old) chair. |
The value of happiness, including small, simple pleasures, is that it gives one energy, and also is passed on to others (the "duty" of happiness that RL Stevenson spoke of). Having your words read by even a virtual community of friends is a happy thing, as is being part of a community. Even when your words are not happy, know that I like reading them and seeing your photos.
ReplyDeleteDear one, by putting these thoughts out there, your courage, yes courage, is what comes straight from your heart. And "le cour" is is where all courage comes from. More than a year of sharing takes all of that and more.
ReplyDeleteSally Anne, what makes life precious, in the midst of struggle, is the light in each of us that allows compassion and caring, capacity to bend when you feel like breaking, courage to speak your soul and to lift someone else in the process. It ain't at the end of the tunnel, it is in your heart. Love you!
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