I just finished reading Salinger's For Esme with Love and Squalor, and I must say that it is the saddest story I have ever read. I wept openly as I approached the ending. I'll write more on this later, and a bit on the other heart breaking book, Night.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Monday, November 25, 2013
Looking toward Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving gives us the opportunity to reflect upon the goodness that has been showered upon us. It's all to easy to spend our lives obsessing over the things we want and to forget to give thanks for that which we have received. And we have all received so much. Everything, actually. Everything is a gift.
I want to thank you for the two happy years that we have been able to share, Margo.
I have seen and felt so much during this time. I have felt your unconditional acceptance when I was feeling insecure and wounded. I have seen your face light up when I walked into your kitchen after a long day, and it thrilled my heart. I have felt respected and valued. I have felt cherished. I can't tell you how much it has meant to me. Thank you
Thanksgiving
I'm glad to have a holiday that encourages me to turn my thoughts from my wants to what I'm grateful to have received from life.
I want to thank you for the two happy years that we have been able to share, Margo.
I have seen and felt so much during this time. I have felt your unconditional acceptance when I was feeling insecure and wounded. I have seen your face light up when I walked into your kitchen after a long day, and it thrilled my heart. I have felt respected and valued. I have felt cherished. I can't tell you how much it has meant to me. Thank you
Thanksgiving
I'm glad to have a holiday that encourages me to turn my thoughts from my wants to what I'm grateful to have received from life.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Saturday, November 23
Thanksgiving wishes
Margo,
This is the week that we offer up thanks.
to others. I thank others for it is human interactions that change me . . .
Thank you.
Being with you these last two years has been a blessing.
You always valued what I have had to say; you always treated me as if I were someone to embrace, someone to be valued. I've always
Thank you for loving my children--who they are and who they can become
I can't tell you how nice it has felt for me to walk into your kitchen and see you turn you head just a bit and smile at me.
Thank you most of all for your concern and the love that you have sent to me when I've been down. You're a very accepting person.
Margo,
This is the week that we offer up thanks.
to others. I thank others for it is human interactions that change me . . .
Thank you.
Being with you these last two years has been a blessing.
You always valued what I have had to say; you always treated me as if I were someone to embrace, someone to be valued. I've always
Thank you for loving my children--who they are and who they can become
I can't tell you how nice it has felt for me to walk into your kitchen and see you turn you head just a bit and smile at me.
Thank you most of all for your concern and the love that you have sent to me when I've been down. You're a very accepting person.
Friday, November 15, 2013
November 15--I see Shakespeare in Love
We don't have to live our lives as the characters of the poets do. We are masters of our fortune. Obstacles do not have to be insurmountable as they are in tragedies, and love need not be unrequited. It's a long and good life we have been given. Let it be so.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
October 29, 2013
. . . About that long pause in the conversation last night--
You know, of course, that I've been longing to talk with you. Please don't misinterpret my silence. All sorts of thoughts, words, memories, images were scrambling across the stage of my mind. The thing is, for the moment I just couldn't find a way to make any of them harmonize with your need for space.
I miss you dearly
--yours, Matthew
..
"To find balance . . . you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead"--Ketut
.................
The above quote is from Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Ketut is the Balinese medicine man who teaches her to meditate with love rather than discipline, to meditate with a smile.
The book has been (finished last night) the perfect thing for me to read in these days of mourning for the change that has taken place in my relationship with Margo. Just what that change is and will be is difficult for me to say, although most people would probably have more definitive words for the whole thing. But Margo and I are the types of people for whom there are no goodbyes, to paraphrase Gandhi from the eponymous movie. For me, the relationship has changed, morphing into a different phase, and doubtless it will change again with time. . . and only time knows what way that will go.
EAT, PRAY, LOVE
"To find the balance you want,. . . you must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."
. . . [as Ketut reads her palm]
"You have more good luck than anyone I've ever met," Ketut says. [This reminds me of Margo. She considers herself blessed, and then with that perspective, she sees all of the goodness in life, and with the peace and happiness that follows, things always fall into place for her. They work out. Other people see things from the opposite perspective. They feel slighted by life, and their lives are poisoned by worry, loss, and regret. I know which life I want]
Back to Ketut's words: "You have more good luck than anyone I've ever met . . . You only have one problem in your life. You worry too much. Always you get too emotional, too nervous. If I promise you that you will never have any reason in your life to ever worry about anything, will you believe me?"
I AM bowled over with this thought
It's all about faith, which I've decided is the theme for my new year--my New Year's resolution, alla Margo. FAITH
If I have faith that I don't have anything to worry about . . . then . . .
Well, that's the key to happiness. And it's that worldview of Margo's that I've been talking about wherein we feel blessed with what we have and we know that good things will happen to us because this is a charmed, wonderful gift of a life that we've been given
(76) Protestants (Midwesterners, say) feel in control of their lives because they seem themselves as free agents doing good acts in this life.
Catholics (Italians) feel that life is fated, and they can't even make a dinner appointment two weeks out because they don't feel in control of their destiny
(100) "What is the nature of the universe?"--friend: "Why ask?"
(104) What is your one word? "Seek"? "Feel"?Maybe it's "feel" for me. Rome's is "sex"
(115) Sicilians . . . "the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity"
INDIA
Om Namah Shivaya--I honor the divinity that resides within me
Our whole business therefore in this life . . is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen" (Saint Augustine)
(152) [as a precocious child] "another one gone. The closer I watched time, the faster it spun, and that summer went by so quickly that it made my head hurt, and at the end of every day I remember thinking, "another one gone," and bursting into tears
(183) Guilt's just your Ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear."
(200) "Why have I been chasing happiiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?
On love and whether or not you've found someone you can spend your life with:
"Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever--or not?"
(315) "You love new boyfriend?
I think so. YUes.
Then you must spoil him. And he must spoil you.:
OK, I promised"
"So me and my lover, we take off our shoes, we pile our small bags of belonging on the tops of our heads and we prepare to leap over the edge of that boat together, into the sea.
I say: "Attraversiamo"
Let's cross over
"To find balance . . . you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead"--Ketut
.................
The above quote is from Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Ketut is the Balinese medicine man who teaches her to meditate with love rather than discipline, to meditate with a smile.
The book has been (finished last night) the perfect thing for me to read in these days of mourning for the change that has taken place in my relationship with Margo. Just what that change is and will be is difficult for me to say, although most people would probably have more definitive words for the whole thing. But Margo and I are the types of people for whom there are no goodbyes, to paraphrase Gandhi from the eponymous movie. For me, the relationship has changed, morphing into a different phase, and doubtless it will change again with time. . . and only time knows what way that will go.
EAT, PRAY, LOVE
"To find the balance you want,. . . you must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."
. . . [as Ketut reads her palm]
"You have more good luck than anyone I've ever met," Ketut says. [This reminds me of Margo. She considers herself blessed, and then with that perspective, she sees all of the goodness in life, and with the peace and happiness that follows, things always fall into place for her. They work out. Other people see things from the opposite perspective. They feel slighted by life, and their lives are poisoned by worry, loss, and regret. I know which life I want]
Back to Ketut's words: "You have more good luck than anyone I've ever met . . . You only have one problem in your life. You worry too much. Always you get too emotional, too nervous. If I promise you that you will never have any reason in your life to ever worry about anything, will you believe me?"
I AM bowled over with this thought
It's all about faith, which I've decided is the theme for my new year--my New Year's resolution, alla Margo. FAITH
If I have faith that I don't have anything to worry about . . . then . . .
Well, that's the key to happiness. And it's that worldview of Margo's that I've been talking about wherein we feel blessed with what we have and we know that good things will happen to us because this is a charmed, wonderful gift of a life that we've been given
(76) Protestants (Midwesterners, say) feel in control of their lives because they seem themselves as free agents doing good acts in this life.
Catholics (Italians) feel that life is fated, and they can't even make a dinner appointment two weeks out because they don't feel in control of their destiny
(100) "What is the nature of the universe?"--friend: "Why ask?"
(104) What is your one word? "Seek"? "Feel"?Maybe it's "feel" for me. Rome's is "sex"
(115) Sicilians . . . "the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity"
INDIA
Om Namah Shivaya--I honor the divinity that resides within me
Our whole business therefore in this life . . is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen" (Saint Augustine)
(152) [as a precocious child] "another one gone. The closer I watched time, the faster it spun, and that summer went by so quickly that it made my head hurt, and at the end of every day I remember thinking, "another one gone," and bursting into tears
(183) Guilt's just your Ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear."
(200) "Why have I been chasing happiiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?
On love and whether or not you've found someone you can spend your life with:
"Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever--or not?"
(315) "You love new boyfriend?
I think so. YUes.
Then you must spoil him. And he must spoil you.:
OK, I promised"
"So me and my lover, we take off our shoes, we pile our small bags of belonging on the tops of our heads and we prepare to leap over the edge of that boat together, into the sea.
I say: "Attraversiamo"
Let's cross over
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