Category: Uncategorized

Today’s offering is a poem. I am honoured that Rémy Deck, a brilliant musician and composer, offered to score my recording of it. That is to be listened to first, if you please, and then you can find the transcript and an explanation below.

I am judging myself every day. Whatever I am, whoever she is, not enough, not right.

Compared to those who are scared to feed their families, am I a fool because I fear for all?

We are in a new hollow. Deep, yet, with not knowing.

I can barely type, my fingers heavy on the keys. And I cry with anger over the impossibilities that are being shouted in my country as certainties, regardless of the additional lives that could be lost.

Of course, it does not matter, now, who is doing the “better job” in this crisis for it is up to us, globally, to do the best job, as a community, whole.

So, me, and you, let us think to put our ego thinking aside…that continual train that says, “No.”

It would seem as though while we cannot help but to listen blindly to our world leaders (some of whom are doing whole heartedly well while others are shouting out through the dark) we most certainly can listen to ourselves. Instinctively, we know.

What needs to be done. What is not being done nor taken under hand?

As this goes on, I cannot imagine that anyone but us will actually make the change for things to be better.

Can we do it?

In the midst of our every day, every night grief, can we pay respect to all whom we have lost in saying “Ca suffit.” That’s enough.

That’s enough, now. That’s enough.

(and yet we are so far from done)

A few weeks ago, Ruth Ribeaucourt sent me an article entitled, “That discomfort you are feeling is grief” . It was an incredibly helpful tool at a time when we were not yet speaking of universal grieving but it has come back to me today in acknowledgement that one of the primary steps in processing it is…anger.

I wrote this poem last night because I was so angry that I couldn’t sleep. It is anger that has such amplitude that at times, I turn it in on myself. So without, so within. Anger that somehow, despite all conceiving, my home country has a dangerous president who did nothing, is doing nothing when his country is deep in crisis with nearly 50,000 deaths already reported with more to come. Who casually suggests disinfectant injections – which are most-likely lethal – as a possible cure for COVID 19. That a financial bailout is readily available for large corporations while people like my Sister struggle around the clock to keep her small business afloat. And what about the family featured in This New York Times article , who do not know how they are going to eat and whose daughter is vomiting because they can no longer afford her much needed medication? That there are people getting in line at 4am for food donations and will have to wait six hours to receive them?

How is this possible? How? In the so-called world’s richest nation? We have to speak up. This has to stop. That’s enough. We can do so much better than this.

So here we are. Right in the middle of it. Maybe. Because, honestly, none of us has a clue as to what is really going on or how long this pandemic will last. I am not a news bandit, never have been, but I listen to the wires of the world to try and hear what my fellow human beings are thinking…let alone, what decisions their governments are taking (sometimes on their own) for us.

One of the tiny but yet important things, belonging to the hum and thrum are these discussions. Amongst you, amongst me and all over the world.

It’s both odd and not – everything is to me, actually, in this moment – but I mean specifically what we are saying to one another during this time.

Do you see it? Or am I alone? But I am having conversations that are achingly direct. Usually, we would warm up to this sort of opening, at best, over months.

And yet here we are.

Virtual friends that I have never seen in person, nor have heard their voices, have suddenly offered a shared agreement to be open, a sort of grace.

And that feels scary in itself beyond belief.

So here we are.

What is amazing, is that we are all so rock bottom dollar, that we have given up the game of (fortune and fame) to just admit, “No, I don’t know what is next. And I am scared.”

What a difference this is, you know?

Our collective, western society has been droning on for so long, “I got this.” “I got this.” It is the engine behind what we were taught to be.

And yet, of course, we have been thrown to the seas; monsters are knocking at the door…caving it in. Choose your metaphor.

What is beautiful…and yes, it is hard and unfair to talk about beauty within this ongoing breath of death…but. But…there are, and have been a lot of exchanges that are…beautiful. Tears shed and words broken like bread.

As we struggle on, day by day…we speak.

Some yell, but most speak. And often, in so doing, they rattle the cages of their vulnerability, whispering what they would never dare to otherwise.

These moments seem to be the building blocks of our future.

Or could be.

“I can’t do this anymore.” “I feel alone and I am tired of it.” “I don’t want my life to be some form of bullshit just because society says so.” “I am not going back. I am not.”

What I am hearing.

To say, listen. Listen. Listen, can you listen?

(We can be all of the things we did not think we were capable of.)

To ribbon up my two previous posts, a Leonard Cohen quote – one that I have cited here before but seems especially appropriate now: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

 

Those midnight days. As if there is a hole in the roof of our collective church, and the rain is falling down, down through the beams, drops falling free.

And yet, there is Beauty ever-present. Unrepentant. Partout. 

She can be garish in comparison, this thing called Spring. And yet how we need her.

We breathe, we “can’t breathe”, we check our breathing. Upon rising, or at every twinge or cough. Knowing that there are others who are asking elsewhere in great fear escalating. Silently, we say thank you.

It is like a litany, this gratitude. Beads on a rosary, for those of us who are relatively ok. Who do not have to call every hour to check on a loved one’s status, who do not have to contend with a lost job, less food, bitter feuds or finances.

Or loss. That felted word, death. Not for me yet, not yet, so thank you.

I beg the tears to fall for release. It is part of the terrain of a too feeling heart and
yet they do not come. I am such in shock. A grieving for all and those who will never be again.

Joan Sutherland, a teacher of the Zen koan tradition recently wrote: “Grief is a form of love, how we go on loving in the absence of the beloved. It is the transformation of love through loss, and how we are initiated into a new world.”

If this grief is like a chapel onto itself, stone upon stone and block by block, there must be a light somewhere in our beings, even when whispered as quietly as a prayer. Or so I believe. One gives birth to the other.

We are here, we remain, what will we be?

During the late afternoon’s sweet golden hour, or the early morning (it is now 5:30 am), these are the questions that I ask myself. Blinking in the dark, or heart racing.

The response doesn’t feel like Hope. Hope is calling something into being and it feels too soon for that yet.

No, but perhaps…I can have a spark of Faith. One not born from any religion. It feels like to refuse that feeling would be disrespectful to all who are fighting so hard in order to move through and beyond a reality that is brutal. Incomprehensible. We must stand by the side of those on the front lines. In a hospital or a home.

So I will hold that light gently. For myself, for my family and our broken but not fallen church of the world. Faith just is, it exists and that feels like freedom.

Despite my falling down (or sitting numbly still), that is an active choice that I can make so that it may grow and go where needed. It will.

PS. I am updating this post to include an article from the NY Times about our universal – and personal grieving during this time of the Corona virus. It is absolutely worth the read, most certainly if you catch yourself in a state of blame…wondering “Why do I feel this way? So much?”…This can help.

https://nyti.ms/3aWoraY

I didn’t want to see it. That things between us were slipping down; that we were beginning to argue more frequently, although neither of us are fighters.

When it was simple, it was blissful. But when it wasn’t, it was something like ugly, the French use the word “glauque.” And little by little, the worst of those moments somehow seemed to loom large, like a big balloon figure in a parade, over the million moments of quiet happiness. Contentment came into question.

He had said some rather fantastical things in the beginning, ones to turn a girls head. I remember a so casually stated, “I would be happy to spend the rest of my days with you,” that it was almost like he was he sipping his words inward with his breath, just as he was trying to dare them out.

I didn’t, couldn’t, make a big top tent of a thing about it then. Now, I wish I would have more…to have tested what he had said with a prodding fork of contentious vulnerability to see if it was true. Or to see if it had been..only true in that particular moment. For I know that happens sometimes. How human we are, stumbling through. We blurt out. Some of what he said was not always so solid as to induce certainty. I have done the same.

Despite the brevity of our relationship, at eight months, not even the longevity of a birth, I was given some of the sweetest experiences with a man that I have ever encountered, and could not even have imagined possible.

When he swept me off to Rome…I do know that those were some of the happiest days of my life. Just filled with so many “oh’s”…of turning a corner after midnight and discovering the Pantheon (while he whistled “La Vie en Rose”), or swooning over buttered sage ravioli at his local spot Urbana 47 or singing Adele in our bed despite the fact that I don’t sing anymore, but I did for him. He orchestrated and offered it all, selflessly. And oh how we laughed, bells ringing, throughout.

Every day, every day, we laughed.

But what do you do when you are both a bit damaged by time to the point where establishing a real and mutual trust somehow does not slide into the easy quotidian? When the canyon of your languages and cultures yawns wide, despite the best intentions?

In our case, we truly tried to make it happen. He did so through gestures; frequently buying me simple but pitch-perfect gifts. Dresses that he had picked out on his own, guessing at the size. Tickets to plays and concerts, each delightful. He would arrive in Avignon with his suitcase full of such surprises along with his loving pup, Noumea at his side – an incredible balm after missing my dogs so much. Just as if it was nothing, this giving that I had never known.

I was forceful with my gratitude, I think, even though it was completely genuine. It was so new to me, such effusive generosity, that I wanted to be sure that it was practically burned into him. At times my “thank you’s” or “I’m sorry’s” when something didn’t quite come up to snuff, annoyed him. I understand why. And yet I am calm in the warmth of the love that I offered, as well. Arms wrapped around. Love in a steadfast gaze, the corner of my lips upturned, yet biting down my delight.

Recently, I had began to ask the “Where are we going questions?” to see if we were capable of making something lasting. This despite a clear stance that I was no longer willing to abandon all to move to Paris unless it was for a strong plan. I had already done that once and so am weary. And also, yes, I am dearly attached to this Provence. How I have fought to stay here. He seemed to understand and had never made much of a fuss about the commute although his responses were vague, I see that now.

Verbally, he expressed himself less and less expansively – it would throw me every time that he would end our phone conversations with a laconic “Ciao” as if he were speaking to a colleague and not his girl. And yet, declarations of love were made. Late in; seven months in. That is how long it took him for a clear, unapologetic, “Je t’aime.”

And throughout this time, nothing truly terrible happened, despite some rather dramatic disputes with hurt inflicted on both sides. There was no cheating on the other, no viciousness. We did our best to see each other every week and Christophe was great about largely paying for my train tickets as I could not. We enjoyed each other, from table to bed and the beeping camionette that he rented so that I could show him pieces of my Provence, including, finally, Arles.

So how do you explain it?

I dig for sustainable answers.

We drank quite a bit when we were together. There was something of the “Oh, hooray!” of celebration in the beginning when we were reunited, that fierce recognition, and then trying, or subtly forcing, to prolong that feeling later with occasionally problematic results. Prosecco as lighter fluid.

At one particular twenty past midnight, the Cinderella of our story vanished without a pumpkin coach. Stripped to the who of we are with nary a glass slipper in the alley left to make a fairytale.

But this is not everything.

There are so many deeply profound misunderstandings in our loves. It is not only roses that bloom. And for it all, well, finally…we can only do our best to hold them with forgiveness. There is no rancour. Only those haunting tsk-tsk whispers of regret. He still is the same exceptional man, this Christophe, who I kissed in return, deeply, on our first date at Le Train Bleu I found him to be so funny, intelligent, creative, handsome, interesting to the point of being a bit mysterious. All of this, even though he had been 45 minutes late.

Maybe we were 45 minutes late. Perpetually.

I will just leave you with something that my Mom said a while back (who, along with my Sister met him this past Spring and instantly appreciated him): “Heather, he can be the most wonderful man in the world…but that doesn’t mean that he is the right man for you.“

How I have cried. I can’t think that he imagines how much. Or that he would occupy himself to do so. Maybe he has cried too, although I have a hard time imagining it, as well. Perhaps he is relieved? Just that…the not really knowing is proof of our not having stayed aligned. We were often unreadable to each other beyond the no uncertain terms of happiness. And certainly of that fuzzy word “fun,” incorporated.

The older that I get, the more that I understand how incredibly important it is to have just that, empathy in all situations, communication. To imagine Cinderella (or any other icon you choose that applies) outside, alone, at twenty past midnight, stripped again of her parure, but also of her bright, bright hopes…deciding where from here she can possibly go again.

I will offer myself a hand up from the pavement, this sadness, and one to Christophe too, in Paris. If he needs it.

We lived a tiny lifetime together. Even if we were not on time for each other, it is still not too late to be on time for ourselves.