Wednesday 25 May 2011

The Jersey

Is truth really the child of time, Will a day arrive when the truth will set me free, or have I sacrificed it to many times of the alter of my vanity? Have I modeled and shaped today’s truth to please you? Like a gift with elaborate wrapping, ribbons and bows to distract us all from this hard implacable thing with sharp edges.
There is a jersey with a small hole in the sleeve, on the days that I am the wearer I twist the tread that is coming undone, make a small knot and tuck it back in on itself. On those days I am warm, the hole is there of course it is, it will always be there. Other days I watch the mantle falls to someone else and they wear the imperfect jersey, my friend worried at the loose thread and soon there was nothing but a great tangle of wool – I wondered at them looking at the wool and calling it the truth as they stood there cold and I wondered at myself for preserving this imperfect broken thing that was not whole and never would be. Was it less of jersey for having a hole in it? Did they think that I to did not know it was only wool cleverly held together?
Jersey or wool? Whose thruth, mine or yours?

Thursday 12 May 2011

Absent

My blogging absence has been due to a sudden and ferocious iphone scrabble addiction. Being of addictive proclivity I do all new things to the extreme with total absorption at the expense of all other activities.
So I have been absent not just from blogging but have had to edge out time from elsewhere as well.
Thankfully my obsessive scrabble playing is easing into hobby phase so I am able to raise my head and notice the world from which I have been absent.
And to consider what absence means to me and others –

Obama has effectively killed Osama – the coincidence of the one letter difference their names struck me as being positively Nostradamus, I have never been much of a fan (of Nostradamus) all to bleak and with a complete absence of hope.
Osama’s son of course has been amusing to say the very least – I extend compassion to anyone who looses a parent – however questioning the legality of the assassination of his father left me dumb founded. In a perfect world (my perfect world) all the rules apply to all the people except of course me. I can do what I like, how I like and when I like but the rest of the universe must comply with the rules, it would seem that Osama’s son thinks the same thing! Demonstrating a complete absence of logic, lets hope his career path is not politics or terrorism.
My maternal grandmother who was about as uplifting as Nostradamus, was fond of saying absence makes the heart grow fonder, chased very quickly with absence makes the faint heart wonder, we all knew of course that she believed the hearts of men where faint coupled with wondering eyes add a dash of absence and nothing good was coming your way.
Absence of hope I rather think is a blessing – of all the cruel motivators hope must be the very worst, hope keeps you from facing the truth, of seeing that which is real. Hope is the thing that can stand against your rational mind and say but it might change, maybe tomorrow it will be better. Hope is the thing that keeps you where you are instead of walking towards where real happiness might be. The flip side is the very same hope keeps you alive when you think you may just die, the hoping for a better day enables you to live through your very worst ones. For me the jury is still out on hope and whether or not it is a blessing or a curse.
And lastly a toast to absent friends – which is in fact my favorite wedding toast, gives me a moment to think of the dead with whom I shared life wile they were part of the living, in my minds eye I run through the faces of my friends, in this mental rolodex of pictures they are laughing or smiling – I remember the living and the shared laughs not the dying and in some small way feel I have taken a moment to honor them and for a moment acknowledge their absence but have real gratitude for having known them. Which brings me almost full circle to quote my grandmother yet again better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
So I raise my glass this week to absent hearts and friends lost fathers, mothers the bitter wisdom of grandmothers and hope….

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. “– John Donne