"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.'
I do not agree.
The wounds remain.
In time, the mind, protecting its sanity,
covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens.
But it is never gone."
~Rose Kennedy
I just love encountering wise quotes such as this one. I don't care where they come from; when they land into my life, I am grateful.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Invictus
From the movie "Invictus"
Wife of rugby captain: "Thinking about tomorrow?"
Husband, rugby captain: "No.
Tomorrow's taken care of, one way or another.
I was thinking about how you spend 30 years in a tiny cell... and come out ready to forgive the people who put you there."
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
Wife of rugby captain: "Thinking about tomorrow?"
Husband, rugby captain: "No.
Tomorrow's taken care of, one way or another.
I was thinking about how you spend 30 years in a tiny cell... and come out ready to forgive the people who put you there."
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
Monday, November 15, 2010
The curse of the darkness
It was already dark at 5pm tonight, thick and heavy, that inky blackness of Seattle in November after the time change for Daylight Savings. I felt squeezed by it, tightly, as though it had compressed all the air out of my lungs in the few minutes it took for the darkness to descend.
Living here in the Pacific Northwest is like that. It's a little like living inside a giant metaphorical bellows.
During the summer, the world opens up, expanding and inviting one to breathe deeply.
But I wasn't ready for the intake of life this year, still reeling and breathless from the blow to the solar plexus I'd been dealt earlier.
So I didn't expand my existential diaphragm to suck in a big breath to give my life's blood enough fuel and energy to take me through the airless months of winter's collapse.
It reminds me of that time at the church summer school program when I was ten, when someone shoved me from behind into the deep end of the swimming pool. I didn't have a chance to take a breath before I went under the water, and then as I was struggling to come up for air, another kid cannon-balled in on top of me, forcing me down again so that I was sure I was going to drown.
That's how I feel right now, as the darkness squeezes the air out of life again, as the days grow claustrophobic and short and the weather more miserable, as the holidays encroach. Even as I write this, the lights in the house have blinked a few times from the gusting winds outside, threatening to plunge me into blackness even in the safety of my little hovel home.
I used to say at this time of year that the darkness is like being a tiny person standing inside a giant pot, with the shadows growing quickly to darken every inch of space as a lid is lowered to cover the pot.
But the darkness this year has a different quality. This year I'm left fearing that I may never breathe again.
Living here in the Pacific Northwest is like that. It's a little like living inside a giant metaphorical bellows.
During the summer, the world opens up, expanding and inviting one to breathe deeply.
But I wasn't ready for the intake of life this year, still reeling and breathless from the blow to the solar plexus I'd been dealt earlier.
So I didn't expand my existential diaphragm to suck in a big breath to give my life's blood enough fuel and energy to take me through the airless months of winter's collapse.
It reminds me of that time at the church summer school program when I was ten, when someone shoved me from behind into the deep end of the swimming pool. I didn't have a chance to take a breath before I went under the water, and then as I was struggling to come up for air, another kid cannon-balled in on top of me, forcing me down again so that I was sure I was going to drown.
That's how I feel right now, as the darkness squeezes the air out of life again, as the days grow claustrophobic and short and the weather more miserable, as the holidays encroach. Even as I write this, the lights in the house have blinked a few times from the gusting winds outside, threatening to plunge me into blackness even in the safety of my little hovel home.
I used to say at this time of year that the darkness is like being a tiny person standing inside a giant pot, with the shadows growing quickly to darken every inch of space as a lid is lowered to cover the pot.
But the darkness this year has a different quality. This year I'm left fearing that I may never breathe again.
Very Grinchy
I've spent the last few months (or, more realistically, the last year) trying to figure out how I can avoid the holidays. Where can I go to opt out? I really just want nothing to do with them this year. Maybe never again, but I don't know that part yet.
I hate that it feels obligatory. I hate feeling like I have to participate. I hate that it's in our face in our culture, as just a given, it's what people DO, celebrate the holidays. Why can't November and December be just regular, normal months like all the rest? Why does there have to be all the fuss and hoopla, the expectation and big deal made?
I have zero desire this year to go shopping for gifts. Going to the mall. Trying to pick gifts for people I rarely even see, who already have everything they could possibly need or desire. It was a little easier when the nieces were children, but now that they are teens... and, like I said, they have everything they could ever need or want anyway.
And I don't really want to receive any gifts, either. There isn't anything I need, and nothing even that I really want right now. Not material things, anyway. A family, a home, those things that don't come in a box wrapped up under a tree. But I certainly don't need more trinkets or doodads to further clutter my already overfull and overcluttered little living space.
And then there's the whole other part, the going. The gifting and the going. It's been this way since I left home at seventeen. For twenty-five years, I have had to show up in someone else's life in order to celebrate. I have to go -- to someone else's home, into someone else's world -- in order to have anyone to celebrate with. And I am so beyond burned out on that.
The holidays as a single person suck, and I'm so weary of it. I just don't want to do it anymore. Let all the little families everywhere do their Norman Rockwell scenes and leave me alone; don't force me to participate.
Seriously -- where do I go to opt out?
I hate that it feels obligatory. I hate feeling like I have to participate. I hate that it's in our face in our culture, as just a given, it's what people DO, celebrate the holidays. Why can't November and December be just regular, normal months like all the rest? Why does there have to be all the fuss and hoopla, the expectation and big deal made?
I have zero desire this year to go shopping for gifts. Going to the mall. Trying to pick gifts for people I rarely even see, who already have everything they could possibly need or desire. It was a little easier when the nieces were children, but now that they are teens... and, like I said, they have everything they could ever need or want anyway.
And I don't really want to receive any gifts, either. There isn't anything I need, and nothing even that I really want right now. Not material things, anyway. A family, a home, those things that don't come in a box wrapped up under a tree. But I certainly don't need more trinkets or doodads to further clutter my already overfull and overcluttered little living space.
And then there's the whole other part, the going. The gifting and the going. It's been this way since I left home at seventeen. For twenty-five years, I have had to show up in someone else's life in order to celebrate. I have to go -- to someone else's home, into someone else's world -- in order to have anyone to celebrate with. And I am so beyond burned out on that.
The holidays as a single person suck, and I'm so weary of it. I just don't want to do it anymore. Let all the little families everywhere do their Norman Rockwell scenes and leave me alone; don't force me to participate.
Seriously -- where do I go to opt out?
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