Day by Day Forever

Essence of Eternal Spirit
Always there to speak or hear it
How to frame what never ceases?
Show the whole by showing pieces.

Endless, everlasting ocean
Inexhaustible commotion
How to frame what never stops?
Show the whole by showing drops.

What I Didn't Say

I will be wrapping up this blog tomorrow with post #108, echoing the 108 sonnets in Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, which was the subject of my opening post. Last night I went flipping through my notebook to see if there was anything I had jotted in the course of these months that I wanted to put into the blog, and I was surprised to find a dozen written and not posted. Here are their titles (and the reasons I refrained):

Entertainment Value (too self-effacing)
Cute Cute Cute (might hurt someone's feelings)
The Life Everlasting (two points I couldn't quite connect)
Yearning With Gratitude (possibly misleading)
Avalanche (is there really a place for haiku in this blog?)
Tomorrowland (theme essentially covered elsewhere)
Having Their Love (identifies a problem without offering a solution)
Glass-Jar Butterfly (image too heartbreaking)
Modern Martha and Mary (enough Biblical reference already)
Alice Roosevelt's Pearls (couldn't quite get it to gel as a post)
To E.C.F. (too personal)
Involvement (decided to send it as an email to a friend instead)

There are also three stray titles in the notebook (and the reason they weren't posted):

Kissing the Indian (not written)
Duration (no words to go with it)
Cherished Into Form (completely lacked content)

Plastic Generals

The catalog ad for the tub of plastic generals said: "Plastic Generals Will Publically Deny the Existence of Plastic Aliens."

Oh, we already had plenty of plastic army men - plenty - but we had to get those. We had plenty of plastic aliens too, and were ready for the ultimate existence-debate showdown.

Petal-Soft

When the pressure was on and I was getting crushed, I saw that I was going to become diamond-hard, adamant, impenetrable, unbreakable, and I assumed that this was it for me: I was never going to be able to be petal-soft again.

But yes I can.

Houston, We Have a Solution

Memory scarcely discerns between dreams, daydreams, and reality; intensity is what renders events memorable. When something is brought to my attention that strikes me as distasteful, unjust, or wrong in any way, I get busy re-imagining it along more attractive, comforting lines. This is why history and the world look so much better to me than the other reports you may have been getting.

Fairy Godmother-in-Law

I'm an appreciative person and I know how to thank.

Yet there is someone in my life who I have never been able to adequately thank because my appreciation is so immense it stymies me.

I Like Life

When my younger son was eight years old he drew a portrait of a pirate relaxing in his home. It's filled with great little touches, like a vase of flowers set on the dresser, a mouse-hole under the bed, and fancy buckles on the pirate's shoes. The pirate himself is seated on a chair in an attitude of battered dignity, displaying a hook hand, wearing an eyepatch, and with a bloody gash across his forehead. The title is I Like Life.

My favorite thing about it is the living wound, that bloody gash on the forehead. It's one thing to like life after you've sustained your hook-handed, eye-patched permanent damage, another to like it while you're still bleeding.

Spendthrift

The best lesson I ever got in emotional economics was when I was told that we are not here to earn God's love, we're here to spend it.

Peacock's Proposal

In 1810 the comic novelist Thomas Love Peacock visited Wales, where he met and hit it off with Jane Gryffydh. After his return to England the two saw no more of each other and had no communication whatsoever for the next eight years, at which time Peacock wrote her a letter proposing marriage. She accepted.

Usually, by the time a proposal of marriage is made, it's on a pretty obvious "you can see it coming" type of basis. I have to hand it to Peacock for giving Jane Gryffydh a day like few women can have ever known.

The Inner Crone

In my senior year of high school we staged the musical Li'l Abner. I was seventeen years old and wanted to play the ingenue, but got the role of Mammy Yokum instead. Initial disappointment aside, the part was worlds more interesting than the ingenue, and - more significantly - I had to find and get to know myself as an old woman while still a teenager. This experience proved an incredible boon that has given me lasting peace and eliminated all fret surrounding the issue of age. Been there, liked that.

It was also frankly quite a thrill to repeatedly go through the process of unmasking my theatrical oldness and being a seventeen year old girl again.