We had a midday downpour Friday, a thunderous drumming on the cabin roof. It lasted an hour, give or take, and then the sun came out, but everything remained damp Saturday morning.
What I really wanted was a gentler, steadier rain that’d go on for a while. My wish was granted yesterday around 10:30am, right after Smudge and I came in from a business trip.
We parked on the bed and listened to the random rhythm on the steel panels over our heads. The soothing sound inspired me to visit — of all things — poetry.
Last season’s fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
Those lines are drawn from “Little Gidding” by T.S. Eliot, the final poem of “Four Quartets,” published in 1942.
“Little Gidding” is especially dense, heady and heavy, and I won’t subject you to my analysis (or anyone else’s) of what the poet was wrestling with at the time. But if you have the patience and the stamina to get through it, you’ll reap a reader’s reward.
That is, your own experience will shape its meaning.
From my perspective, and considering my current situation — this is, after all and at last, Divorce Week — certain of Eliot’s words resonate with me. I hadn’t expected that.
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life…
Regular readers of Ubi Libertas Blog, which demands its own measures of patience and stamina, will understand the relevance of that passage to me.
What happens on Thursday, whatever happens on Thursday, will serve to define the circumstances of my life for the foreseeable future. What it hasn’t the power to do, however, is define the man that I am.
And that, ultimately, is all that matters. Self is what each of us carries wherever we go, regardless of physical location, material possessions, financial means or the company we keep.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
I trust that by the time the sun sets on Thursday, I’ll have closed a chapter of my life for good — and by that I mean for the better. I’ll begin writing the next chapter at that very moment.
As it ends, so it begins.
I live every day with an attitude of gratitude, as the saying goes, but last night I was reminded just how truly fortunate I am.
My phone rang — a video call was coming in from a childhood friend and high-school classmate. She was attending our 50th reunion, and she wanted me to “be there” with everyone.
For the next 45 minutes, that phone got passed around among dozens of my oldest friends. These are the people I grew up with, the irreplaceable men and women in my life, and to be able to hear their voices and see their beaming smiles last night meant the world to me.
Blessed. Grateful. Loved. My spirits soared and my disappointment at not being with them in person vanished.
Life is good.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable