To Dear friend Helen,
Another birthday tellin’
That another year has passed
That we all last and last
Driven by the ache
To partake of the lake
That you can view
Each day anew.
The mask-less summer
Can’t come too soon
With all its loons
In five or six moons
Happy Happy Birthday!
The steady cold
The constant cloudy light
The seeming sameness that surrounds
What a perfect foil
For the folly and foolishness
Of those who would dance
On our toes.
Time to reflect and to recollect
Those moments of moment
That have shaped
The landscape of our lives
The topography of our travels
The places we persisted
The heights we’ve reached
And, yes, the depths of our descents.
Yet this is all too much
Better left as such
Better left not shared not said
One’s image not impaired.
Instead, ready and prepared
To meet one’s weighty foes
And step upon their toes!
I did not anticipate
That the moments of swearing in
Would be so moving
As to cause tears, involuntary sobs.
Was it relief from allayed fears
That had built
To just below the level of consciousness?
Was it a welling forth of thought and feelings
That had gradually been repressed?
Was it a sudden realization
That we as a nation
Came back into view
Or, even more, that I found part of myself
Again in view
As part of the wholeness of nationhood?
It was a moment of redefinition of self,
Of rediscovery of lost self
Whose absence had prevented
Identification with our larger national enterprise
But whose absence had also diminished
The extent and strength of my own being.
The self became more vulnerable
To worlds constructed by others
Worlds where
integrity
consistency
truth
morality
Were but dim shadows of the past.
I revel in the re-emergence
Of leaders in politics and art
Who in the light of these new days
Are finding ways to move ahead
With confidence and compassion.
I can only hope that so many in our society
Who seem embittered and disaffected
Will be enlightened by the brightness and the promise
That are now present.
Striking is the contrast
Between my here and now
And what’s there beyond.
My study
With its sleeping dog
In a noiseless house,
The quiet reminders of other places
From muted traffic, faint voices, and barking
Trees rustled by the breeze.
All while
There was an insurrection at the Capitol
Assaulting the structures society has built
To preserve our democracy.
The attack, not from the outside,
But from within
Causing each one of us
To question the innocence of our beliefs
And undermining our sense of stability.
Thousands of troops now in D.C.,
Some still being vetted for extremism,
Protecting our nation from further violence
Lesser numbers in other Capitols
For the same reasons.
Not lost is the irony
That the pandemic has reached a record peak
Of contagion and death
While the politics rage with the possibility
Of further turmoil
It is against this background
That one can take pride
In the emergence of a new national leadership
That promises to address the sources of disruption
And to introduce changes
That will benefit our entire society,
A leadership that seems to combine serenity
With the determination and acuity
To act morally.
It is perhaps not odd to wish to see the beyond. After all there is so much past that deserves further thought, deeper understanding. So, too, the present and speculations about the future. The beyond impinges upon us in concept, space and time, unknowable and impervious to careful scrutiny.
The beyond is not an alternative reality, and even though we cannot describe it or its exact relationship to us, it is part of the context within which we think and act. Can we learn about it, or aspects of it, that then become an active part of our conscious worlds? And if so, how? My journey will surely not be yours, neither my experience. But some ways of starting may be similar.
. A sense of incompleteness
. Unfulfilled desires
. Wishful thinking
. What-if exercises
. If-only exercises
. Story telling and fiction writing
. And, of course, exploration and travel.
But the beyond comprises only a part of what these ways might uncover. Because it has a more direct and operational connection to our experience than other things we might imagine, it can open vistas for our imaginations and thought, new dimensions of our experience, new directions to travel, and new reasons to do so.
Where do I look for the beyond? I start with the limits of any aspect of being:
. Place, time, circumstance
. Imagination, thought, skills
. One’s own history, knowledge
. Relationships…
Where do I not find it? Perhaps only in my most inward turning moments, self-absorbed in immediate experiences, pleasures, indulgences; but also not in the variety of experiences of others.
The beyond, oddly, lies very close by, tantalizingly just outside the limits of our awareness, just out of reach,
But not quite.
Light flat
Stubborn in its persistence
Its sameness
Its calm
Saying nothing about the place
Awaiting the smallest change
The smallest intrusion
To which it generously gives prominence
And identity
At the same time the intrusion gives identity
To those aspects of the place
That make the intrusion evident
And that, taken together,
Construct meaning
Mild movement of the trees
Now wind is evident
And the light snow
Articulating shapes and parts of the trees
Clarifying relationships among surfaces
Movement of people, vehicles
Making evident their paths of movement
Revealing their behavior
Through speed, direction, energy, noise, consistency
Now the evening submerges all
In darkening shades of grey.
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