November, 2006
Voodoo
There’s a game I play once a week called Universal Charity Shop Roulette. I generally leave the house feeling out of shape, discombobulated, and I walk to the shop and buy a paper, tobacco – whatever it is a need – and then as I walk home I pass the magical charity shop and find myself pulled in. Standing in front of the bookshelves, filled with books standing three rows deep, I ask the universe to give me what I need, and without fail the books I need to read will be there. It’s uncanny how this works every time I do it. Today I found Essays in Love by Alain de Botton, Eclipse by John Banville, Instances of the Number 3 by Salley Vickers and The Fahrenheit Twins by Michel Faber; I sense there is something in each of these books I must absorb, especially the first one. I will miss this shop when I leave here… there’s definitely some freaky kind of voodoo going on in there.
Thank you for the kindness and support you have shown me during the last few days. It’s helped being able to pop over to this blog to see who’s said hello. Today’s poem for Poetry Thursday is by Sharon Olds, and I dedicate it to R.
Ecstasy
As we made love for the third day,
cloudy and dark, as we did not stop
but went into it and into it and
did not hesitate and did not hold back we
rose through the air, until we were up above
timber line. The lake lay
icy and silver, the surface shirred,
reflecting nothing. The black rocks
lifted around it into the grainy
sepia air, the patches of snow
brilliant white, and even though we
did not know where we were, we could not
speak the language, we could hardly see, we
did not stop, rising with the black
rocks to the black hills, the black
mountains rising from the hills. Resting
on the crest of the mountains, one huge
cloud with scalloped edges of blazing
evening light, we did not turn back,
we stayed with it, even though we were
far beyond what we knew, we rose
into the grain of the cloud, even though we were
frightened, the air hollow, even though
nothing grew there, even though it is a
place from which no one has ever come back.
~Sharon Olds, The Dead and the Living
November, 2006
Trying to remember
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up on all other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~ David Whyte, The House of Belonging
Words sent to me when I needed them, which I turn to again tonight as I try to find my way past the reflection to see what is really going on inside me. I need to be kinder to the woman I see there; I need to let her come out of her cage and join the world again… perhaps she is more ready than I think she is.
November, 2006
Poetry Thursday: Denise Levertov
The Change
For years the dead
were the terrible weight of their absence,
the weight of what one had not put in their hands.
Rarely a visitation – dream or vision -
lifted that load for a moment, like someone
standing behind one and briefly taking
the heft of a frameless pack.
But the straps remained, and the ache -
though you can learn not to feel it
except when malicious memory
pulls downward with sudden force.
Slowly there comes a sense
that for some time the burden
has been what you need anyway.
How flimsy to be without it, ungrounded, blown
hither and thither, colliding with stern solids.
And then they begin to return, the dead:
but not as visions. They’re not
separate now, not to be seen, no,
it’s they who see: they displace,
for seconds, for minutes, maybe longer,
the mourner’s gaze with their own. Just now,
that shift of light, arpeggio
on ocean’s harp -
not the accustomed bearer
of heavy absence saw it, it was perceived
by the long-dead, long absent, looking
out from within one’s wideopen eyes.
~ Denise Levertov, Selected Poems
The photograph is from a series taken by my bloggie friend Susanna – when I got back from Seattle this amazing image was waiting for me on my doorstep!
November, 2006
Stay
The universe brought me what I needed last night, without me even knowing I needed it. One of the DVDs I rented was Stay - I’d never heard of it before but I thought the cast, and the film’s premise, looked promising. The film had me guessing the whole way through and I got to the end feeling slightly altered, slightly more open. But it was in the special features that I found the gift. There were only two options: director’s commentary or “Departing Visions”. The latter turned out to be a 10-minute documentary featuring a handful of men and women talking to camera, and in a group, about their near-death experiences. All their stories had the same theme – the darkness, the light appearing and loved ones there to accompany them over to the other side. The message was, when we die we are not alone; when we die there is still more to come. I watched the documentary with my breath held and tears pouring down my face. I have no religious affiliations but there are spiritual ideas and intuitions I carry in my handbag of theories. To think that my love is up there or maybe even in the same room as me, albeit in another form, is to acknowledge that he is dead. This is very hard for me, but last night I felt another layer of acceptance descend; I’m chipping away at the mountain before me, and every tiny rock I move makes my path forward a little clearer. I felt him in the room with me last night. It’s strange to think that as I stood in the queue in the Spar I was holding in my hand another key from the universe.
