kindnesses in my life this week:
a kind etsy conversation with someone in Massachusetts
a kind email from Hillary Rodham Awesome
a kind text from a friend in Calif who is sick at heart
a kind poem written by my daughter for her Dad
a kind game of scrabble on my bed to distract me from my tears
a kind laugh and smile from Kris when I keep forgetting her name and call her Lisa
a kind conversation on a park bench about the honeybees
*
Just reeling myself in ....
I totally understand your tears and fears...I share the fears, and also shed some tears. I feel as if everything I thought I knew about people was wrong...like people have been wearing masks to hide who they really are.
ReplyDeleteBut you're correct in that kindness and compassion are necessary and very much appreciated...now it's time for hard work so we are ready 4 years from last Tuesday.
Donetta
Thank you Donetta. You are right about doing the work. I intend to use my voice more than I have before. Too many of us had no say in this. I am in utter disbelief still.
DeleteI sit in one of the dives
ReplyDeleteOn Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Auden--September 1 1939
Thank you my dear Ms. I will print this and add it to treasure of important writings. It is good to stand together in grief and astonishment even if it spans decades or centuries.
DeleteThank you my dear Ms. I will print this and add it to treasure of important writings. It is good to stand together in grief and astonishment even if it spans decades or centuries.
DeleteI was thinking of kindness when I was about to leave for work this morning. I was thinking how despite a troubled week, I've seen, heard, and read about a lot of wonderful things people are doing for others, and how I'm trying to find more ways to be kind, too. It's amazing how during a tumultuous time we can find a way to reach out and help others, even with just a small, simple act.
ReplyDeleteThen I saw your blog today and was happy to see you were thinking of kindness too. And it moved me.
I am grateful for your kindness and the marking of it.
ReplyDeleteKindness, humanity, tolerance, acceptance, compassion ... that is what makes us great.
ReplyDelete