OH! THE PLACES YOU'LL GO, Oh! that bygone time of Dr Seuss reading, Veronica's nose admiring, trying hard to get the tiger out of the tea pot and thousands nights of story spinning...
Tucking you in bed, a goodnight kiss and Good Night >Moon...
I won't cry Child, I'll take solace in the poetry of our beloved Shel Silverstein 'where the side walk ends'
See Child, up to now you've been sheltered, walking on the sidewalk.
But there comes always, sooner or later, that terrible edgy moment and the sidewalk ends. Then you're left to step in the dangerous traffic of life and make it safely out from one place to the other. The walk is well worth its risks and if you patiently wait, for the traffic light to pass to green then a Shel Silverstein kind of invitation might be waiting for you...
If you are a dreamer come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!
So go in Child. Take up that invitation the world is offering you and we too, will eventually chime in and sing the same song that generations of parents sang to generations of children; the lyrics going about..." Listen to the wind...carrying your heart's wishes...then you'll find... your own path...listen to the wind...in the stormy night...and you'll find...your own path... OK, OK, I'm not good at this, toneless as an empty bucket's bang bang; so go on sing it by yourself.
See Child the fire you leave behind, here, will be kept warm and alive for you to comeback whenever you like...
Speaking of fire, I remember that other poem, in Farsi, that I used to love when I was your age. Something like this:
Yes, yes, Life is Beautiful,
if you light its fire
it will soar high toward the sky
but if you let it down to die, then
all that remain
are ashes scattered in the ensuing still life.
Love you Child.
Mom
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Sunday, August 5, 2007
On change and the imperfect thoughts
Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jewelled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.
Ada Louise Huxtable
Our summer here, in Nettle country, has been a far cry from the right kind of summer days. We have yet to witness one of those 'stripping-down-to-bathing-suit' days or a perfectly balmy night...and all of it not only because of the rotten weather. Indeed ever since, a few months ago, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with an illness necessitating a major surgery, our days and nights have been angst ridden...of course nothing comparable to what himself has been going through neither what his wife (my little sis) has had to cope with, specially in front of their lovely daughter.
Yet both of them kept up the mood and acted coolly. They even took a short vacation trip just before the surgery and had a terrific time, soothing their battered spirit in the uplifting warmth of a Greek island, believing that all that happens, happens for the best as my late uncle would say.
The surgery is over now and doctors are confident that it went well. my brother-in-law has been wheeled out of ICU, that dreadful yet life saving place.
He is recovering in his hospital room and upon his own request, we are not allowed to see him. We will wait till he feels ready and comfortable to see us again.
Despite this good part, we can't just shed down our tension, not yet, not when, in a few days it will be our beloved Boston cousin's turn to undergo heavy surgery for his back.
I guess I could say... and so on in a Kurt Vonnegut manner...
Well it is just that. Going on so...
There is this old friend, that I visit every now and then in Ghent, battling deep depression for over three years now, her old self gone, trying to no avail to grip one end of the rope that will enable her or her doctors to pull it up from that dark abyss invisible to most of us.
Last I saw her, just before my brother-in-law's surgery, my tired eyes hidden behind dark glasses, I asked her to walk from our meeting point in the Zen garden just outside the train station till Sint-Baaf cathedral and light candles. Which is exactly what we did.Though I knew how Cathedrals can overwhelmingly weigh us down, outlining our smallness and that maybe our timing was wrong. But we went on. As we stood under "The Adoration of The Mystic Lamb" its incredible beauty made me feel even more weighed down in a painful way. I reflected that the brothers van Eyck in all their greatness must, most certainly, have had to go through the changes of their own lifetime. Maybe as they finished the very masterwork that kept our heads skyward, they experienced the delusion of directing time. Their Art made it through the trials of time, from the Middle Ages into the twenty first century, imperturbable in its beauty.
Then it sunk down that we too, with all our flaws and endowed with emotional intelligence, will be able to stand up to those changes no matter their conspicuous character, no matter that can take the shape of absence, your own daughter's, who is going away to the feast of the world leaving you to face the emptiness of days with no sweet sound of music practice, no complaints over a vegetarian dinner just because absolute beauty will always be on duty.
Time spent drawing with my niece, in the afternoon light, our inside chit-chat at long last hushed by our concentration; times when my daughter arrives, late night from say a London trip, entering by the front gate while my son makes his come back from one of his nightly bike rides from the back door, in almost a synchronized motion, joining each other over a late snack on the kitchen counter, Their laughter fading in the night as fatigue takes over, or when I walk out of a cathedral with a cherished friend battling ugly depression, but able to laugh in a self mocking way while talking, over coffee and speculoos, about her own history of passing out on the most impromptus moments in life, actually finding herself lay down on a marble table in the lobby of an old Roman house... I take off my dark glasses and let my eyes get, once again, acquainted with light and the lighter side of life. So the changes come up close to the point of becoming memories.
Summer 2007 is not yet over and there is hope for balmy nights, meanwhile spending evenings with Haruki Murakami, sipping chilled white wine has its own rewards. In the opening pages of his "Norwegian Wood" he so pertinently points out that:" Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts."
Flora
Ada Louise Huxtable
Our summer here, in Nettle country, has been a far cry from the right kind of summer days. We have yet to witness one of those 'stripping-down-to-bathing-suit' days or a perfectly balmy night...and all of it not only because of the rotten weather. Indeed ever since, a few months ago, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with an illness necessitating a major surgery, our days and nights have been angst ridden...of course nothing comparable to what himself has been going through neither what his wife (my little sis) has had to cope with, specially in front of their lovely daughter.
Yet both of them kept up the mood and acted coolly. They even took a short vacation trip just before the surgery and had a terrific time, soothing their battered spirit in the uplifting warmth of a Greek island, believing that all that happens, happens for the best as my late uncle would say.
The surgery is over now and doctors are confident that it went well. my brother-in-law has been wheeled out of ICU, that dreadful yet life saving place.
He is recovering in his hospital room and upon his own request, we are not allowed to see him. We will wait till he feels ready and comfortable to see us again.
Despite this good part, we can't just shed down our tension, not yet, not when, in a few days it will be our beloved Boston cousin's turn to undergo heavy surgery for his back.
I guess I could say... and so on in a Kurt Vonnegut manner...
Well it is just that. Going on so...
There is this old friend, that I visit every now and then in Ghent, battling deep depression for over three years now, her old self gone, trying to no avail to grip one end of the rope that will enable her or her doctors to pull it up from that dark abyss invisible to most of us.
Last I saw her, just before my brother-in-law's surgery, my tired eyes hidden behind dark glasses, I asked her to walk from our meeting point in the Zen garden just outside the train station till Sint-Baaf cathedral and light candles. Which is exactly what we did.Though I knew how Cathedrals can overwhelmingly weigh us down, outlining our smallness and that maybe our timing was wrong. But we went on. As we stood under "The Adoration of The Mystic Lamb" its incredible beauty made me feel even more weighed down in a painful way. I reflected that the brothers van Eyck in all their greatness must, most certainly, have had to go through the changes of their own lifetime. Maybe as they finished the very masterwork that kept our heads skyward, they experienced the delusion of directing time. Their Art made it through the trials of time, from the Middle Ages into the twenty first century, imperturbable in its beauty.
Then it sunk down that we too, with all our flaws and endowed with emotional intelligence, will be able to stand up to those changes no matter their conspicuous character, no matter that can take the shape of absence, your own daughter's, who is going away to the feast of the world leaving you to face the emptiness of days with no sweet sound of music practice, no complaints over a vegetarian dinner just because absolute beauty will always be on duty.
Time spent drawing with my niece, in the afternoon light, our inside chit-chat at long last hushed by our concentration; times when my daughter arrives, late night from say a London trip, entering by the front gate while my son makes his come back from one of his nightly bike rides from the back door, in almost a synchronized motion, joining each other over a late snack on the kitchen counter, Their laughter fading in the night as fatigue takes over, or when I walk out of a cathedral with a cherished friend battling ugly depression, but able to laugh in a self mocking way while talking, over coffee and speculoos, about her own history of passing out on the most impromptus moments in life, actually finding herself lay down on a marble table in the lobby of an old Roman house... I take off my dark glasses and let my eyes get, once again, acquainted with light and the lighter side of life. So the changes come up close to the point of becoming memories.
Summer 2007 is not yet over and there is hope for balmy nights, meanwhile spending evenings with Haruki Murakami, sipping chilled white wine has its own rewards. In the opening pages of his "Norwegian Wood" he so pertinently points out that:" Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts."
Flora
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