Posts Tagged ‘love’
Thinking on Death and What One Leaves Behind
My grandmother passed away recently. She was a great woman who helped raise me and my cousins when we were children, and she has continued to touch my life even after I grew up and didn’t have as much interaction with her as I did then. After a five year battle with cancer, she passed away having seen all her sisters, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. She leaves behind a legacy that will continue on for a long time to come.
When she planned her funeral, she made it very traditional. She knew exactly what she wanted and had the services carried out in the way that she saw fit. So she went out on her own terms even as she planned them. We even had a laugh at the graveside when we realized that she was late to her own funeral as she and we had said that she would be. She was buried like many people are, and now, there will be a grave that we will visit every year like we do the rest of my grandparents and relatives that have gone on.
However, I find this problematic on so many levels as this sets up a shrine that many will go to to remember her. This is the notion that always makes me a little antsy and causes me to have scruples about what I want when I ultimately go through that process that we all have to. I will tell you that I don’t want people to feel obligated to go to a place and visit me. I don’t want anything like this. I want people to remember me in the small things: a kiss we shared, a laugh, a song we sang too loudly in the car, a judgmental look, whatever it may be. I want it to creep up on them and for them to find themselves suddenly taken with it. Now, this doesn’t mean that I want people to cry (although I know that some might… I’m pretty sure that one of my sisters would if she read this right now), but if that’s the way one reacts, then, they should do it then.
But why I’m writing this now, other than trying to find some catharsis in my grandmother’s loss, is that a student video from Dorian Lebherz & Daniel Titz, two film students, came across my Facebook feed. It is a student directed advertisement for Johnnie Walker Whisky, but it is a beautiful thing. The sentiment is beautiful and is captured in the direction and acting within it. However, the most beautiful part might be the poem voiced-over the entire piece, a poem written by Dorian Lebherz & Daniel Titz and John Reilly:
“Walking the roads of our youth
through the land of our childhood, our home and our truth
Be near me, guide me
always stay beside me so i can be free, free
Lets roam this place
familiar and vast
our playground of green frames, our past
We were wanderers
never lost, always home
When every place was fenceless
and time was endless
our ways were always the same
Cool my demons and walk with me brother
until our roads lead us away from each other
and if your heart’s full of sorrow, keep walking, don’t rest
and promise me from heart to chest
to never let your memories die, never
I will always be alive and by your side,
in your mind
I’m free”
As I write this now, I find myself crying a little, which is big if you know me. There is just something here that touches on everything that I’m thinking and feeling right now. So I hope this doesn’t bum you out too much, but this is just lovely.
Happy V-D
So, this Valentine’s Day, just like many in the past, I am not with someone to celebrate. However, I am perfectly okay with that. Now, many people may wonder how a person could be okay with being alone on this day of commercialistic love. It’s simple; I am okay with being alone as of right now.
It may seem a little odd that someone is okay with being alone. Yet, I have a good group of friends that I will probably be hanging out with to watch some television or something like that. It’s actually quite nice to be alone on some of these “holidays” (and I use the term loosely when talking about V-D) because you have no worries about who you have to please or if you have to do something big to make them know that you care about them. I think that it’s all a bunch of crock anyway simply because why do we as a culture have to agree that there is one particular day to tell that one special someone you love that you love them. Honestly, I don’t know that I agree with celebrating V-D simply because it is a ploy to get you to buy your sweet heart (significant other, big momma, sweet daddy, whatever…I could go on with these terms of endearment) a gift to show them that you care.
I mean seriously folks…Does V-D really, truly mean anything beyond the cutesy cherub on the card shooting his arrow into two hearts (which is really gruesome imagery if you really think about it)? I think that it began as a commercial venue to get people to spend money (and yes, I know about St. Valentine…yet, really people don’t know a lot about him because historically, we don’t know that much), and now, we as parts of the world economy feel as though we have to purchase things to be good “lovers” of the world and of those around us. Additionally, I’m not completely blameless on this front. Matter-of- factly, I bought several of my friends presents for V-D because all of us are going to be hanging out with each other on this holiest of holy love days…eh…I’m not as bitter as I sound in the post…I just wish that people would show each other the love year round instead of having to wait for a special day to do so.
Simply put, I wish that we didn’t have to feel so inclined by the media, by the displays as local chain stores, by the goading of people who don’t really matter (I’m talking about the people who rag on you if you don’t buy someone something on V-D), by the materialistic world that we live in to go out and spend money to show individuals that we love them. Why not say it with a good deed? A smile at the person who is sitting alone? A hug for your friends? So, that would be my idea for the rest of the year, try to make V-D a part of everyday life instead of the extraordinary day of the year.
Living
Daily, I battle
The tempest trying to
Blow my spirit into
Submission.
It takes me by
Surprise and sucks the
Wind out of my chilled
Lungs.
Drowning on the land, it’s
Harder to breathe
Sleeping in a bed of
Squalor.
Slowly hands touch,
Lips meet, a run of electricity
Up my spine
Shooting.
Emptiness cannot be
Voided by this
Illusion playing…
Lying.
Elizabeth
A dream of a woman in white.
The pearls against her breast
Cascading from elegant hair.
She is a modern goddess.
My fate lies in the palm of her
Loathful hand, but I speak too soon.
She seems to love me
Takes me to her chamber.
Wishes to see every part of me…
Before she lets the executioner’s axe
Fall where hours before her rose lips
Suckled.
Flecks
A shudder in the dark
Feeling for the warmth
That left hours before.
One night of connection
Before heartache reawakens
To a new degree.
Touching another person
Allows us to touch god
Again…again.
Nirvana
For years, I dreamt of a land.
Far away from this one,
Where people live forever
An immortal land beyond the stars.
But a cold chill came to my consciousness
And told me that my ideas were flawed.
No place existed where we can be free
From sorrow and death.
A queen’s ransom is paid to assuage
My supple longing to feel flesh,
To feel the warm sun upon my hair,
To be wrapped in the wind.
Piteous blackness waits for me
Writhing against my temporal existence
Pulling me into the nothingness
That waits for me beyond the pale
Waltz
What is a waltz?
Is it a dance of love?
A dance of intricacy?
Or one of monotony?
Each step is like the
beat of an infatuated heart.
Pitter, pitter, pat.
Pitter, pitter, pat.
To a steady three-four.
Gracefulness is a virtue.
But with two left appendages,
One can make the journey
Far more treacherous and full of
gall. Alleviating Cupid’s spark with
A single mistaken misstep.
“The Road Not Taken”
“The Road Not Taken”
By Robert Frost
| Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | 5 |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | 10 |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. | 20 |
Each person in their life has a path that lies before them. And I am well aware of that as I continue to plow my way through this world in which we live. I have no clue where I’m going, but I try to make the best of the journey that I’m on. I meet new people along the way; some of which I think of as good friends. And I will be hurt whenever I part from them because I am a person who doesn’t make good connections with people very regularly…it is really a depressing time when I have to lose the camaraderie that I had with a person. It’s a fact that I discovered a long time ago.
While Frost’s poem is good in theory, he thinks of his traveler as one person, but this idea of one person on a road is absurd because we never really travel together(and don’t get me wrong, I do get the message of the poem, but go with me here). Each of us is on this road with our friends and family and have to make a decision whether to keep traveling with the group or whether to break up the fellowship as it were into smaller groups. Each of which goes down each of the multiple paths. Some traveling down the less traveled road, and others will trudge down the well traveled path to avoid disturbing their universe.
Each of us has a destiny in my opinion. We have fellow travelers with us on our own roads. Each of them is looking for something out of the world. It’s nice to have the companionship, but sooner or later, it is a possibility that ways will have to be parted. However, I think the musical Wicked had the right idea about friendship. In the song “For Good”, Glinda and Elphaba sing about changing each other for the better because they have been friends.
“Because I knew you…
I have been changed for good…”
I guess I got on this topic of thought because I was thinking about my next step of going to Graduate School and getting my Master’s Degree. It’s kind of bitter sweet almost because I know that my path will once again be diverging from people that I love and have become attached to…but C ‘est la vie…just like in The Lord of the Rings, the fellowship may be broken, but we’ll still be rooting for the others to get to their own personal Mt. Doom.
God, I hope I didn’t come off sounding like an emo kid…because if I did, I would be rather disappointed in myself…however, I don’t think my writing is angsty enough (hey, had to put a touch of humor at the end.)
Machete
Machete
The blade warbles
Through the air.
Beating out a symphony
Of scarlet and pink.
The cries will not
Stop the arms of man.
The jungles will not
Conceal our bodies.
Our souls will sing
From the earth.
Our heart and cause
Will go on.
