Thinking
Thinking this morning about the decency and strength of the people connected to my life. Thinking about love and the necessity of give and take, helping hands, the downside of too much solitude. All the people in my life who don't know how much I love them. How keeping the desire to give needs to be stoked because if you don't watch out, it curls up, dries out and drifts off as you get older. Fear causes a gathering in of the soul.
Read this yesterday and it knocked me out. From Howard's End by E.M Forster:
"Looking back on the last six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite efforts we nerve ourselves for the crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty."
Yes yes yes yes yes.
Thinking this morning about the decency and strength of the people connected to my life. Thinking about love and the necessity of give and take, helping hands, the downside of too much solitude. All the people in my life who don't know how much I love them. How keeping the desire to give needs to be stoked because if you don't watch out, it curls up, dries out and drifts off as you get older. Fear causes a gathering in of the soul.
Read this yesterday and it knocked me out. From Howard's End by E.M Forster:
"Looking back on the last six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite efforts we nerve ourselves for the crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty."
Yes yes yes yes yes.
posted by MJ at 11:58 AM
14 Comments:
i love youor brain.
and I love you!
did I mentchen I cant spell?
I am a good example of a staggerer; however not a fully armed one. I sort of stagger thru life half unaware and trusting, constantly fooled by false clues, false smiles, phony words. How DOES one become prepared to manage life, Mary Jane? Where do you find these quotes? Are they stored up in your brain clammering to come out? Maybe that it the difference betweeen a poet and a staggerer!
I can't spell either, Buddy! Thank God for spellcheck!
Oh Linder Lou, I am a classic staggerer, always waiting for the other shoe to drop and trying to prepare for possible calamity. Part of the reason I am at Binder still, terrified to change because right now my salary can keep a roof over our heads, feed kids, buy clothes and gas, etc. New means unknown and possible loss of what I already have. Fear kills through stagnation. I copied that quote out of Howard's End which I have been reading at work. I don't have anything memorized, I will remember a few words and know that I loved something and then hunt it down to copy here.
Well, I count your brain amazin' whether you remember the whole quote or just a part of one. I can only remember bits and pieces, and not accurately enough to EVER find them again, I must admit!
Do not fear stagnation due to being held prisoner at Binder Mary Lou. As soon as you get your license thingy straightened out, we'll break you loose, don't worry!
I feel like my arms have turned into AK 47's lately, and every step I take encounters yet another crisis. I'd be perfectly happy to be defensless and trusting in the right environment, but unfortunately it's a battle every day lately to pay bills and not lose the shirt off my back....sigh. I still have the ability to love thank God, when I lose that I won't have anything left.
That is heart breaking, Anonymous. Is it due to your mortgage problems? Were you able to get that all straightened out? I remember you saying that you might wind up out on the street. Is there anything some new friends can do to help?
Thank you Linderloo, we will be o.k. It has just been a juggling act with our bills while waiting to close on the sale of our apartment. We were at risk of losing the mortgage that was offered to us for the new place we are buying because our credit rating has changed, but a nice person at the mortgage company took pity on us and helped us work it out. These are ripple affects from a very evil man that pulled out of buying our apartment 2 days before the closing. We had to pay extra money not to lose the deposit we put down on the house we are about to buy, and have extra legal fees because of this whole mess, not to mention maxing out credit cards trying to keep us afloat in the mean time....sigh. All will be well soon, it should only be about a week before we are in the new home. I will invite you to come over and have mint juleps in the garden with me and Sr.!
Gee, I hope that all works out for you! Buying a new home and selling your old home at the same time seems to require nerves of steel and the ability to juggle!!
Mint juleps would be devine! I'll bring dog biscuits too!
I will bring a muzzle.
Why are you so evil?
hereditary
Hello Sr., here is a poem for you:
The Traveling Onion
When I think how far the onion has traveled
Just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
All forgotten miracles,
Crackly paper on the drainboard
Pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
And onion falls apart on the chopping block,
A history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
But never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided
or its traditionally honorable career:
for the sake of others,
disappear.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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