getting ready to go north

We are in our last week here for a while…sad.  Never happy about the transition.  I never

do  transitions well….I am much more predictable that I ever wanted to 

admit.

We were introduced to a wonderful little Marina on a fabulous cove right near the

Ancient City.  It is a local’s place — almost Key West, or Caribbean like …  Just

a lovely little spot hidden from the traffic…

Roberta & Ted are coming and we look forward to seeing them, but it is our last week

here and there is so much that we want to do and have to do……

 

I guess May is a right

month to come North.  More and more, I would like to be here without having to

consider having to be someplace else….I will feel that way about Charlestown when I

get there, but I am afraid I will not feel that way about trucking into Providence…

 

We have done so much gardening…I feel I am in the dirt and the mud for hours.  But

the place is coming together…The work we did planting is going to give the house a grander

presence than it had with the previous owner….It was a nice house with a lawn….When we are

through I want it to be a smart house wonderfully landscaped….

 

I used a grand piano cover as the motif for the garden to the right of the entrance…We

have mulched, and planted many Florida native flowers and grasses and used large pots

to decorate with bright geraniums.  We planted winter hardy and heat tolerant plants

because we hear how often people lose their gardens to a vicious drought or to an unsuspected

freeze.  

It has been a lot of fun.  Today I laid out a stone patio so our hot-tub could have

a more permanent home.  I love the exercise of it all and the designing of these little

spots all over the house so that we can like it and enjoy it from many locations in

it and around it…..

Just wanted to check in and say we will most likely be back by next Sunday…Hope

all is well.

Love, As Ever, Al

 

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Meditation on a Tree

Meditation on a Tree

I love these trees, I love the brillo-wy texture and the color, the

nearly life-less gray.  And it hangs in the wind through rain and

storms.  The moss is old. It has to have been there for a while for it

to have descended from the scrap of seed that landed on that tree,

on that spot in the tree, at that minute–and it took:  it grew and

grew downward nearly touching the ground.  Heading for earth

like smoke heads for the sky.

I like these trees.  They remind me of home.  They remind me that

when life sucks, you still grow; and you keep growing until one day

you just stop, stop growing and the decay sets in immediately.  The

return to dust, the next to final resting place before the eternal boom

of time reaches its super-sonic speed and the whole thing turns into

a mess, decays on the spot, and dispenses so quickly that there will

be nothing to notice that it no longer exist.  It is no longer there, and

you are no longer there–and every one’s ancestors will be gone.  And

there will be no one to notice.

The Universe will not end with a whimper, Mr. Eliot, it will end

with a bang that smother all bangs that have ever come before it.

It is the moment when space and time merge into a darkness, a void,

a vastness of eternal nothing.  No memoires will be left behind, saints

and sinners alike will burn, at first hot and lava like, but eventually

to the flickers of embers. “and who for us will intercede when even

saint’s shall comfort need.”

Shenandoah Spring

spring in the hills when the snow is still melting and the sun is pulling at life and awakening it to another season

I do understand–

i know the loneliness that beats in the chest….trying to keep
what semblance of a face we have.

Who can get through this life without suffering the pain of loss…

loss dreams, lost people, lost souls. The one kindred
spirit, along with a beautiful face, a fabulous body and eyes as deep as the sea;
is he only around when we arrive at — we are him.

To have all that and delicious sex–well, we would have it all wouldn’t we.

You do have good instincts, except you have been so hurt that little, important
qualities like “hope” and “pardon” are too far suppressed to access. But they are there;
we all see them in you, those of us who have always loved you and will never stop, we will
see them before you do.

You see, hope is not just another feeling, like love, it is not a feeling at all.

Hope, Love, these are beliefs that we have to nurture, to practice, not in front
of anybody or even in front of a mirror, but in those moments when we know our loneliness and when we
are in a crowded room and it seems empty. That is a good time to look
for hope and love….because these words are not feelings, these words are actions
that we take upon the world to hang on by our finger nails when sadness
appears to be all that that we can see.

Believe in your genuine spirit. You do not have to believe in anything else,
just your perception. Do not fight your instincts…they emerge from a
moist and fertile ground, as sure as spring brings the sap to the maple and
the flowers bloom just because it is their time to color the world.

A whiff of the wind and it is gone, a new scent becomes the breath, and
slowly moves across the firmament like a fog of mist on a dewey April morning.

They do not lament the winter….spring does not look forward to summer….
All that we see when we look around our world–not just the people, but the
nature that supports all sentient life, it pushes forth only to the next moment
and when it is its time, it blooms……

I do understand and sometimes i have a very hard time allowing myself
to be here and free from all that I think should have been; and I embrace
the wind one more time, maybe less fervently than the time before; but
I keep a grip because that grip is life and without it I have no hope, but
with it clearly in view, there is a chance that something might change, that i
might change….