Monday, December 28, 2009

Magnificently Failing

Ah, my dears, Winter has arrived at last, and with it comes the return of light to those of us in Northern latitudes. I hope you have weathered this year's darkness with fortitude and resolve. It's not been an easy year for many of us, I know.

For my part, I can say only that despite my being blanketed by blessings over the past year, I could not have imagined it possible to shed so many tears. It has been a heart-rending, heart-mending time, graced by serendipity and circumstance, progress and setbacks. Lately it seems that the latter have overrun my senses, and I am aching with failure--to paint the kitchen, to bring my camera, to furnish my home, to speak my mind, to keep up with my work, to care for my family, to treat myself with kindness, to make the time, to listen, to love.

I am reading again, another beautiful story by Martin Prechtel.
From it these words, among so many companions, have caught my heart in a whispering net of spiders' webs, smoke and flowering vines: that there may be nothing quite so beautiful as to be (as we so often are) magnificently failing in our attempts to live and to love each other. That the tears we shed will make their way, eventually, to the sea and the sky and back onto our cheeks as summer rain, or perfect snowflakes. Thus I can but hope to fail, again and again and again.

I don't typically go in for New Year's nostalgia or resolutions, but as tumultuous as the past year has been, and as harried as the past week has, and having spent the evening of the Solstice moving all of my belongings into the basement in anticipation of having my floors re-finished (and not in any act of conscious recognition of the annual or metaphorical transformation from dark to light), I feel compelled to spend at least a few hours in meditation in the coming days. The moon will be full--and blue, depending on one's feelings on that matter--on New Year's Eve. A moment, perhaps, then... I will be thinking of you. Peace.

3 comments:

fremenine said...

(so tonight I read on, and the storyteller writes my tale: "Not one thing held back, and nothing was exempted, but all the world ceased to try, weeping beyond limits." Next he tells of a "string net bag whose knots were made of stars" and of the Moon, "speaking through her heart-rending sobs". It is coincidence, surely, but not merely...and no, I'm not calling you Shirley, surely.)

JB aka JayBee said...

I am so happy to see you writing here again. I miss your words and I miss your presence. I'd like to see you in the first week of the New year if that is possible.

fremenine said...

I'm glad to be back. I have to admit that the day I got my modem hooked up I was (rather unexpectedly) giddy as a little girl...

I've been thinking of you often, and fondly, and I would love to see you any day next week. Or, for that matter, any day at all!