Poetic Sky

Arizona, Morning Sky

i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

[E.E. Cummings]





                           

Arizona, Sunset Sky

LET us go then, you and I,


When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

[T.S. Eliot]

Birthday/Deathday

You know, this really never gets old.  Enjoy.

Wednesday's Word -- Forgive

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."  (From The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, p. 359)

My musings on The Brothers Karamazov (along with circumstances in my own cell) have me thinking about forgiveness.  The word means "to excuse for a fault or an offense; to pardon."  To forgive is "to renounce anger or resentment" or to "absolve from payment of a debt."  Breaking the word apart, it comes from the Old English for-giefan, meaning to give away (for = away and "giefan" = to give).  The related Latin word "perdonare" means "to give completely, without reservation" (per = thoroughly and donare = to give).  And I like that the word "forget" (so often attached to forgive) means "to lose one's hold."


Give it (the right to exact a pound of flesh) away and let it (the pain) pack up and go.  Easier said than done.

Also makes me think of a favorite poem on the topic.  A forgiveness tree bears sweeter fruit than a poison tree, after all.      

Holding On To the Ticket

Dostoyevsky's notes for Chapter 5
of The Brothers Karamazov

It's been nearly a month since I finished reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  The novel has been on my mental to-read list for a long time, and I worked through its nearly 800 pages with determination.  I must admit that I let out at least a tiny sigh of relief when I reached the end, eager to move on to lighter fare.  But passages, images and themes from the book keep coming to my mind unbidden, sitting here and then there, trying out the rooms like a mental goldilocks.  Here is one.

I cannot sum up The Brothers Karamazov in this short post -- at least not in any manner that could do it justice.  The short of it is that there are three brothers, Dmitri (28), Ivan (24), and Alyosha (20).  All three share a father (Fyodor Pavlovich), but Dmitri is from Fyodor's first marriage, and Ivan and Alyosha are from his second marriage.  Both mothers are dead, Fyodor is a "scoundrel" (to use a word Dostoyevsky uses repeatedly throughout the book), and none of his sons really love him.  In fact, at least two of them (Dmitri and Ivan) would like to see him dead.  Dmitri, the oldest, is much like his father -- a sensualist and a scoundrel.  Ivan is an intelligent atheist.  And Alyosha (the "cherub") is a novice monk who believes fervently in God, but is not without chinks in the armor of his faith.  To make a very long story short (without spoiling all the twists and turns), someone murders the father, Fyodor, and Dmitri is arrested and tried for the crime.  I won't tell you how the book ends, because that's really not the point of this post (and you should slog through it yourself, in any event!).        

Plot aside, the book is about free will, God, faith, doubt, reason, sin, virtue, truth, deceit, guilt, love, and so much more.  But it is especially about suffering.  In one particulary gripping chapter (Book 5, Chapter 4 "Rebellion"), Ivan talks/rants to younger brother Alyosha about the inequity of the suffering in the world, speaking of the "tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center."  (I like the way that sounds, don't you?  Can't you just picture it like a soggy loaf of bread?)  Ivan laments:  "Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else."  (Talk about metaphor.) 

He then asks his monk-brother:  "Do you understand why this infamy [suffering] must be and is permitted?  Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil.  Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much?"  Rejecting the world that God has created because it is built on a foundation of suffering, Ivan proclaims:  "Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.  And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest many I am bound to give it back as soon as possible.  And that I am doing.  It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

I am no atheist.  But, like Ivan, I too struggle to understand incomprehensible suffering -- in the world, in my circle of friends and acquaintances, and in my very own life.  Like Ivan, I can't help but think that the suffering costs too much -- at least when it sacrifices the innocent on the altar of another's sin.  Or when it hits, lottery-style in a randomness that confounds all understanding.  But, unlike Ivan, I can see the joy too -- a joy that is (despite what he says) sweetened and strengthened by opposition.  Perhaps what Ivan couldn't (or chose not to) believe, is this: 

"Joy and sorrow are inseparable.  Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."  [Gibran, The Prophet]

That knowledge doesn't excuse the suffering, I suppose. But it at least grants me the perspective to hold on to my entrance ticket.

Wordle Fun

Oh the fun you can have with Wordle!  You paste in text, and it creates a word cloud, sizing the words based on the number of times they appear in your text.  I'll bet you can guess the poem I used for this Wordle.  And there's the message, big and clear: 

time.

And I Shall [Not] Have Some Peace There

Andre Jordan

I recently finished reading Margaret Roach's memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, trading in the fast lane for my own dirt road.  I mean, how could I not read a book that takes its title from a Yeats poem and lets me peek inside the brain of an executive who walked away from her high-powered career to go live in the woods?

The style of writing is a bit too stream of consciousness for my taste, but I enjoyed the metaphors woven throughout -- the frogs that are "twice-born" (first an egg and then emerging from tadpole to frog), the snakes in her garden (a little Book of Genesis for you), and many others.

At the beginning of the book, she references a cartoon by Andre Jordan (she linked it on her gardening blog here) that I love.  Beneath five white tree trunks are the words:

"I've decided to go and live in the woods (it's for the best)."  

As you may know, I've long been enamored with the idea of ditching the trappings of my life and retreating to the woods.  The problem is that if I did in fact go to the woods to live "deliberately," my children would still be asking me "what's for dinner" and demanding my fight mediation services every five minutes.  I would not, in fact, "have some peace there."  (I would not have it here or there.  I would not have it anywhere.)  Roach is not married and has no children.  Yeats was likewise single and childless when he wrote this poem . . . .

I'll likely need to wait until I'm old and gray to "have some peace" here or there.  And by that time, I'll be missing the lack of it.    

Lonely Crowd

I was sorting through some old files and stumbled on a poem I wrote when I was about 16.  Don't you love the dot matrix printout (with my hard copy edits to the original after printing)?  It's not a particularly good poem, of course, but wow does it resurrect what I often felt in those days, growing up in a very Catholic school as an "other."  I was the captain of the track team, and we started each and every track meet with a group chant of The Lord's Prayer given in a tight circle in the middle of the track.  I pretended to know the words.  This poem attempted to capture the long-ago feeling of isolation and loneliness that came with being "different," and the irony of creating that separation through a prayer intended to unite.

Those days are long past, but I still find myself preparing a face to meet the faces I meet.  Don't we all?

Wednesday's Word -- Cancer

Photo by Danielle Hughson -- Flickr

"Is Enya music supposed to be calming?" I wondered, sitting stripped of all dignity, clothed in a one-size-fits-all robe in the waiting area at the imaging clinic.  Perhaps so, but the Enya music was making me frantic.   

One day, one night, one moment,

my dreams could be, tomorrow.

One step, one fall, one falter,

east or west, over earth or by ocean.

One way to be my journey,

this way could be my Book of Days.*

When you're waiting to find out whether lump = breast cancer, you don't need a reminder that you're standing at a crossroads.  Not even from the soothing likes of Enya.  

Have you ever wondered about the word "cancer"?  It's such an unfortunately common word these days.  According to the American Cancer Society, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States.  Half of all men and one-third of all women in the U.S. will develop cancer during their lifetimes.  

Did you know that the word "cancer" means crab?  Maybe you knew that, because Cancer is one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac.**

Has it ever occurred to you to question why we use the same word to describe a ruthless disease and a  crustacean crawling on the ocean floor?  I suppose there is some desperate connection.  As T.S. Eliot put it (indulge me my repeated references to this beloved poem),

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

I've always loved that line.  Good pacing words, they are.  

Turns out that long-ago Hippocrates (Greek physician and so-called father of medicine) used the Greek words carcinos and carcinoma for crab to describe tumors.  "Cancer" is the Latin word for crab.  It's said that Hippocrates thought the finger-like spreading projections from a cancer tumor looked like the shape of a crab.  Of course Hippocrates also believed that cancer is caused by an excess of black bile in any given site of the body (out of balance with the other lovely fluids of blood, phlegm, and yellow bile).  For the next 1400 years, people pretty much thought Hippocrates had it right.  

The ancient Egyptians, who documented the earliest cases of cancer (back in around 1500 BC), believed cancer was caused by the Gods.  The details were recorded on a papyrus, documenting eight cases of tumors occurring on the breast.  I shuddered to read that these tumors were treated by cauterization -- which involved destroying the tissue with a hot instrument called "the fire drill."  Gives new meaning to the need to get out NOW, doesn't it?  All alarms ringing.  

Thankfully, and after a tortured eternity of pondering my own far and away and book of days, I was called into another examination room, subjected to more humiliating examinations and tests (ironically performed with something the likes of Metallica in the background).  Then a smiling Doctor Gupta, summoned as messenger, informed me that I do not in fact have breast cancer.  

On the way home (after many long exhales and a short detour for some retail therapy), I found myself stuck for some time at an intersection.  A fire truck, several police cars, and a half-dozen emergency workers had taken over, lights flashing off the glass fragments littering the asphalt.  Metal crushed and folded in.  Stretcher waiting for the unmoving body extracted from what used to be a car.  For once, I wasn't even anxious or irritated by the traffic delay.  I just sat and thought and wondered and counted my blessings.  There are many ways to leave this life -- moving on to the floors of silent seas.  

*Lyrics from Enya's Far and Away.  I wonder is Enya referencing R. Chambers' 1869 The Book of Days, A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities?  Who knows.  The Book of Days has been described as a detailed description of key historical events, the life and times of people, both great and infamous, and long forgotten customs of cultures from every corner of the world.  

**I like the tale about Cancer, from the Twelve Labors of Hercules.  While Hercules was busy fighting the multi-headed Hydra monster, the goddess Hera (who hated her step-son Hercules) sent Cancer the crab to distract him.  Cancer tried to kill Hercules, but Hercules kicked Cancer so hard that it was sent into the sky.  I've witnessed what that crab can do to a person's life, and it does require something along the lines of a Herculean kick (along with a good dose of grace) to conquer it.  

Wet Soggy Monday

Taken today during my commute

This wet, soggy day brought some long-ago-penned words to mind.  This comes from a poem I wrote decades ago, but I can only recall the first part:

I awoke to rainy skies,

A wet, soggy morning,

Hopeless as my sighs.

I believe the next part involved a worm writhing on the walk, and it was downhill from there.  In all, a gloomy thing.  

The funny thing, is that now a rainy day leaves my heart happy, not hopeless.  I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.  You appreciate what you lack.  Wet, soggy mornings in Cleveland depress you, and wet, soggy mornings in the desert delight you.  My secretary today was just telling me that the sun depresses her.  How funny we humans are!  

Post Script:  I wrote my last post on Friday, and my dear, destructive one gashed open my upper lip on Saturday while trying to leap and bear hug me at the same time.  I would post a picture, but it's ghastly.  Exhibit A!

One Looks at One

For some reason, I've been thinking today about this photo I snapped as surreptitiously as I could while we were in Tunisia this past summer.  I looked at her, and she looked at me.  Such different worlds -- me from my American life and she in her North African muslim life.  But there was something about her, the way she stood with her arms crossed and attitude on her face, that I quite liked.

Somehow, it makes me think of these lines from Robert Frost's "Two Look at Two":

Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.


She saw me in my field, and I her in hers.

To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield

 The night is not young, and I have much to accomplish before I sleep.  So let me be brief.  Aren't these road-crossing caterpillar mobs something?  They appeared yesterday morning and spent the day crossing an extremely busy road near my house in droves -- inexplicably pushing towards some unknown goal.  This morning on my way to work, they were still crossing, although in diminishing numbers.

I can't stop puzzling over them.  I have lived here for well over a decade now and have never observed such behavior.  They are crossing from the Indian Reservation side to the Phoenix suburb side.  I keep asking people who live near me, "have you seen the caterpillars?"  "Do you have any idea why they're crossing?"

No one seems to find this curiosity as curious as I do.  And no one seems to care about whether they make it.  And me, I'm the crazy lady who's driving about 5 MPH in a 50 MPH zone, trying not to run over the little guys and hoping they do make it -- wherever and whyever they're going.  

So in honor of the little guys, I've had these lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses" in my head all day:

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all western stars, until I die.
. . .
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

I apply all sorts of medicines to my life when I'm feeling less than cheery.  You know, when you're not exactly tripping the light fantastic (ala "L'Allegro" by John Milton).  Well, I'm currently trying to break out of an unwarranted funk.  I was doing the bus driver gig this morning, taking my kids to school.  Right in front of my wheels, in the middle of the road, I saw the tiniest baby bunny ever, with no parent bunny in sight.  


If you know me, you know I will go to all sorts of lengths to save an animal's life, so of course I held up the entire frantically, frenzied queue of harried parents desperately trying to drop their kids off before the tolling of the last school bell.  I had to let that little guy pass to safety, no matter the honking.  And the bunny was so incredibly tiny (smaller than a small potato) that no one had a clue as to what I was doing.  I was just the irritating car in the line that wouldn't move.  

Despite my unhappy, irritated state, the baby bunny ordeal reminded me of one of my best funk-averting medications -- laughter.  Not just any laughter -- laughing at yourself.  

Many years ago -- probably a decade ago -- I encountered a similar scene.  I was rushing home from work a bit earlier than usual; the sun was just setting.  Right in the middle of the road in the loop that encircles our housing development -- a line of three, waddling baby ducks lost and confused.  I of course pulled over to the side of the road, parked, got out, and attempted to stand in as a surrogate mother duck to guide those ducks to the fake lake  in the center of our neighborhood.  I ended up herding, more than leading.  

But here's the funny part -- the moment that still flits into my mind from time to time and leaves me smiling.  A car of teenage boys drove by, arms and heads hanging out of windows.  I must have been a sight.  Skirt and blouse and heels -- and ducks.  Well, those young boys slowed and yelled out the window to me:  "YOU'RE TOO WHITE" and then sped away, laughing.  I stopped in my tracks, jaw hanging, no comeback coming to my lips.  All I could think was "True."  The car was gone anyway.  And then all I could do was laugh.  I had long given up my skin-cancer-inducing-and-fruitless efforts to get tan.  White is alright.  But the audacity to say (yell) such a thing!  

So, when I find myself too gloomy, taking myself too seriously, I think of those boys (who are grown ups now).  And I laugh.  And it makes me feel good.  I'll probably be telling this story to my grandchildren years and years down the road just for the joy of it.    

Climbing Trees and Shivering Timbers

The other day, my 5-year-old daughter recited a poem for me that is simple, but clever:

Shiver me timbers,

Let the wind blow,

We'll know much more

After we grow.  

I remember a spring morning this past school year.  I had just dropped off my 7-year-old at her school, and my 5-year-old and I drove in silence.  Out of the blue (and with some anxiety), she said:  "Mom, I can't take care of you when you're old.  I don't even know how to drive or cook!"  I suppressed a laugh and told her not to worry.  "I hope you won't need to take care of me until many, many years from now.  And by then, you'll know how to do so much you'll amaze yourself!"    

Whenever I start thinking about everything I still don't know (or worse -- what I know but don't do as I should), I feel overwhelmed.  Shiver me timbers, indeed!*  But of course you can't know everything at once.  We learn in bits, adding each particle to the amalgamated whole.  Sometimes you just have to let the wind blow, and the seasons of life come and go.  

In truth, we are never really "grown" or "un-grown."  Instead, we are "growing."  In fact, the word "grow" comes from the Indo-European root *ghre, meaning "to become green."  

I remember a summer morning a year ago, sitting among the pine trees in Flagstaff with my then 6-year-old daughter.  So peaceful.  Perfect.  "What, do you think, is the difference between being a grown-up and being a child?"  She considered for about thirty seconds (an eternity for a child) and responded:  "A grown-up can climb taller trees."  She was not speaking in metaphor, but her answer left me pondering for days.  Of course, she is right.  The growing in each of us (if it is to remain green) stretches ever higher, but never stops.  

*The phrase "shiver me timbers" is based on nautical slang and is a reference to the timbers (wooden support frames) of a sailing ship.  In heavy seas, ships would be lifted up and pounded down so hard as to "shiver" the timbers, startling the sailors.  Such an exclamation was meant to convey a feeling of fear and awe.  

Wrath Repressed, or Wrath Expressed?

Wrath is such a strong word.  Wrath is not mere irritation, but rather "violent anger; vehement exasperation; indignation; rage; fury."  I get upset when my children act like there's no sound coming out of my mouth.  I get exasperated (but not vehemently) when my husband lectures me.  I grumble and murmur when someone at work does something to undermine or disrespect me.

But I don't rage.  No wrath.  No violent anger.  No fury.

I've been thinking recently about anger and how we manifest and resolve it.  I repress.   I let it simmer, and let it pass.  For the most part, this works for me.  Or at least it works better than the alternative.  Although I deal with disputes for a living, the truth is that -- in my personal life -- I don't like contention.  I'd rather internalize the injustice, kill the unkindness with kindness, and believe that it will all come out fairly in some future grand reckoning of life.

Pondering on the topic, the words of William Blake's poem "A Poison Tree" came to mind.  Do you know this one?  What do you think, does repressing and holding onto anger yield poisonous fruit?  Perhaps for both the one growing it and the one partaking of it.  I suppose the key is not to let the tree grow in the first place?  Pull it out before it can take root?

A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

~William Blake, 1794

Surprised By Joy?

Surprised by joy -- impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport -- Oh!  with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind --
But how could I forget thee?  Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?  That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn 
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
~William Wordsworth

Today has me pondering on the age old question of "how could such a thing happen?"  Over the weekend, I read a novel about a man and a woman who are friends for nearly 20 years and eventually get married, only to have the woman die, completely unexpectedly, at the age of 37, leaving the man to go on without her, trying to find joy in the days stretching ahead.  With this fiction on my mind, I was going about my morning, still wallowing a bit in the sadness of it all, when I got the news that the husband of a good friend died yesterday of heart problems.  He was 36.  His wife is weeks away from giving birth to their fourth child.  What a sickening blow.

So the thought I have had throughout the day is how and when will this friend, now a thirty-something widow with soon-to-be-four children find joy again?  And this Wordsworth poem came to mind.

Wordsworth was grappling with his own grief when he wrote it.  His youngest daughter, Catherine, died in 1812 when she was only three years old.  This poem describes the double grief that goes along with the loss of someone dear -- the death itself, and then (almost worse) the memory pangs that grip and cramp like some sort of cruel after-birth, long after the fact.  Wordsworth seems to berate himself for slipping up, forgetting for a moment, and feeling joyful -- chiding, "But how could I forget thee?"

But I've always considered the poem a hopeful one.  The human spirit is a resilient one.  Joy finds a way to creep in -- even if (for a time) only in bits and pieces.  

I'M Free Too!

I often lie in bed at night with my daughters (who share a room), talking when they're supposed to be sleeping.  I take turns.  One night I rest in one daughter's bed, the next in the other's.  Their favorite night-time activity (and tactic for getting me to stay just a few minutes longer) is to ask me to tell them stories. Stories about when I was a kid.  Stories about my brothers and sisters.  And especially, stories about the funny things they themselves did "when they were little."  Some of the stories have an actual plot, but many consist of little clever things one or the other once said.  Lodged in my brain. 

For example, the ever-entertaining and sage comment from Olivia when she was almost 3:  "Mom, poop is good for you.  But not to eat."  Or the too-clever-to-punish justification from Hannah when she was 6, responding to my frustrated query as to why she was jamming candy into her mouth an hour before dinner:  "I'm cleaning it up, Mom!  I didn't know where else to put it." 

So in honor of the 4th of July, here's one of my favorites from one of my daughters (then 3) in response to my explanation that on the 4th of July we celebrate the fact that we are all free.  "I'M three [pronounced free] too, mommy!!!"  Love it.

And here are a few lines I'm chewing on from Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) from his Freedom XIV:

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.

And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.

And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
. . .
I quite like the thought that you should not/cannot wait for the things that "girdle your life" to release you before you consider yourself "free."  I think it's quite true that the chains that bind are often fastened by our own hands.  What I'm thinking about now, is what "fragments" of myself I can discard . . . . 

Have a great holiday weekend!

Ice Would Be Nice

FIRE AND ICE
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~Robert Frost

So, what do you think -- fire or ice?  From what I've tasted of summers in Phoenix, I think I hold with those who favor ice.  Temperatures aside, both icy hatred and fiery anger are powerfully painful.  It's a toss up for me.  Which do you think is worse -- when someone gives you the cold shoulder or silent treatment, or when someone just lets you have it?  

Fragmentary Blue

Malta, May 2010

Such a blue.    

Something I quite like from Robert Frost:

Fragmentary Blue


Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?


Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

The blue water of Malta isn't sky, but it is heavenly.  Looking at vacation photos of the Mediterranean gives my wish for blue a whet.  I'll just have to dream for now.

Wednesday's Word -- Introvert

Introvert

I just got home from a professional social event, and I'm sapped.  Not just from the effort of socializing alone, of course (the day was my usual bear), but it didn't help.  Isn't that sapped feeling the sure sign of introversion?  

It's an interesting word.  It literally means, "to turn inwards," and comes from an indo-european root meaning to turn, bend or wind.  One dictionary defines the word to mean "a person who is more concerned with his own thoughts and feelings than with other people or happenings outside him."  That's actually not accurate or fair.  I'm an introvert (so saith Myer Briggs), and I am concerned with other people's thoughts and feelings, often to a fault.  I just find it draining rather than invigorating, that's all.  

I remember listening to Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock" as a teenager (repeatedly) and loving the lyrics (particularly the part about having my books and my poetry to protect me):  

A winter's day 
In a deep and dark December; 
I am alone, 
Gazing from my window to the streets below 
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 

I've built walls, 
A fortress deep and mighty, 
That none may penetrate. 
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. 
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 

Don't talk of love, 
But I've heard the words before; 
It's sleeping in my memory. 
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died. 
If I never loved I never would have cried. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 

I have my books 
And my poetry to protect me; 
I am shielded in my armor, 
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. 
I touch no one and no one touches me. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 

And a rock feels no pain; 
And an island never cries.

But of course I am not a rock nor an island.  And I do feel pain, and I do cry.  Don't we all, regardless of whether we turn and bend inwards or outwards or some other direction?

Take a Rest

I'm feeling completely overwhelmed by the task of getting my work done so (like Cinderella with her chores to complete before she can go to the ball) I can leave on my trip.  I'm up to my eyeballs in lists of "to do," and yet the dream of crossing it all off feels pretty much unreachable.  I'm sleep-deprived and bone tired with no relief in sight until we leave on Tuesday.  Even then, I'm not sure 14 hours of flying with three young children qualifies as "relief."  

Along the lines of my last post, isn't this lovely (despite poor quality because I scanned it from a small ad in a magazine)?  I'll just take a break for a few minutes to imagine resting here, beneath the words of Ovid.

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