It wasn't just the Cove closing, the buildings being torn down, the bookstores and bodegas eaten alive by boutiques and expensive lattes that even tested my love of coffee.
It wasn't just the bees dying, the glaciers melting, the trees that allow us to breathe being cut down.
It wasn't just the feeling of futility noting words that demanded change, only to be outshouted by the actions of greed.
It was all of it and more. That more that didn't come in details, but in finality.
It was the slow loss of hope that everyone could, as they came to that moment, die in a world that was just and kind, loving and respectful. Moving through the seasons with respect.
I don't know what made me pick up my camera that day and take a picture of Florence and me holding hands as we sang Buddhist sutras together.
I wasn't willing to admit it then, but that day marked the beginning of losing hope that what I saw wasn't really happening.
That picture, oh that picture.
Years later I would look at it and be reminded that she and I went through the loss of hope, holding each others' hands and singing words that soothed our souls and opened our hearts so we could fully face what was not just or fair or kind or loving.
Looking for Her New York as it literally turns to dust and then rises into expensive glass has become that picture. A drink at a bar, a conversation with a neighbor, a longing for a roll, the painting in the museum's hallway, a transistor radio. Art scrawled on a box and left in the middle of a sidewalk. They all become that picture, defying assumptions and speaking loud and clear. Facing loss of hope, continuing on.
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Sunday Memories: Last Call
Sunday Memories: On the Road
Sunday Memories and Encore: Brief Peace In Late Night
Prayer
Just A Song And A Prayer
Sunday Memories Encore: God Of My Understanding
Summer Reruns During Brutal Writing Blocks: A Labor Of Love
1 comment:
An email from a family member:
Just read the blog and thought about something I recently read in a book on Marxism (Karl, that is, not the Bros.). I am reading about Marxism to try understand capitalism better as Marxism seems to be a critique of capitalism and to see what an alternative could be. This is the quote I thought of (from "Why Marx Was Right," by Terry Eagleton):
"Capitalism has given birth to extraordinary powers and possibilities which it simultaneously stymies; and this is why Marx can be hopeful without being a bright-eyed champion of Progress, and brutally realistic without being cynical or defeatist. It belongs to the tragic vision to stare at the worst steadily in the face, but to rise above it through the very act of doing so. Marx, as we have seen, is in some ways a tragic thinker, which is not to say a pessimistic one."
I want to be hopeful, and I don't want to be pessimistic or cynical. I would like to think of myself as a tragic thinker, too. That is more fitting for this child of Wednesday woe. Perhaps you are a tragic thinker. Like Beckett: "you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
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