The snow is melting, almost clear this morning after heavy rain, and there’s a mirror-image process in myself.
A break from work usually means travel, so the diversion of a new, or at least less familiar, place stops me plunging deep into the realisation of my own aimlessness and loneliness. This time, I didn’t go away, spent two weeks alone at home – needed the rest, but struggled with the void.
It’s taken a while to see a way out of the resultant fog, but I am, helped no doubt by a rested body. At the centre of the void, at the bottom of the hole, there isn’t nothing, but whatever’s rooted in the heart and survives on its own camel-hump: dreams, beauty, words and the astonishingly determined life-force that close-to-atheists like me cannot explain, but still experience.
The life-force is never stronger than in the face of death, and the death of a friend this week – not less raw and unbelievable for being long expected – makes me feel very sad, but very alive.
So, I guess it’s 'Onward!', as a buddhist monk I know is wont to say with alarming ferocity.
11 comments:
My sympathies for the loss of your friend.
Lovely photo.
Thanks Zhoen. I wish I could write more about her, but not my story to tell.
Thinking of you.
Like Kurt, I am thinking of you! Grief, loneliness, that sudden glimpse of the void, as you said, are all strange kindling for the life force, aren't' they?
Oh dear. I hope you're continuing to feel better.
That photo's like a Turner painting. Well, with traffic cones.
(Yes, I did sort of tell the student. I said something about BP being a Jes-you-it.)
Bless you and good courage, Jean; so sorry for your loss.
I'm sorry about your friend. My thoughts are with you.
Onward, indeed, Jean, but I'm very sorry about your friend.
Yes, Jean - onward - always onward. We don't really have any other choice, do we?
Smiles and hugs from across the seas. So thankful for our friendship.
Hugs. Thinking of you.
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