there is a Yes

"Now don't be stupid over this. I don't require you to fall in love with my boy, but I do think you might try and understand him. You are nearer his age, and if you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. You might help me. He has known so few women, and you have the time. You stop here several weeks, I suppose? But let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be good for both of you."

To this extraordinary speech Lucy found no answer.

"I only know what it is that's wrong with him; not why it is."

"And what is it?" asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.

"The old trouble; things won't fit."

"What things?"

"The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don't."

"Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?"

In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said:

  "'From far, from eve and morning,
   And yon twelve-winded sky,
   The stuff of life to knit me
   Blew hither: here am I'

George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world sorrow."

Miss Honeychurch assented.

"Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes."

(From A Room with a View by E.M. Forster)

the wonder of it

Life isn't long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!

Tasha Tudor

Friday:

DON'T GET ME WRONG
IF I SPLIT LIKE LIGHT REFRACTED

Moving

This move I have made hasn't been easy. It was a change purely for the sake of change. You have to start somewhere, right? But all of the minutia involved in managing a 'home' is making my brain explode - furniture, sheets, towels, rugs, lights, electricity, cleaning, sorting, organizing, checking mail, opening mail, doing something with opened mail, & etc. Finding and buying a sofa almost caused a nervous breakdown and now that I have one I never sit on it because I don't want it to get dirty. And I still don't have internet. All the steps involved in getting it and having it and paying for it and then canceling it someday is hard for me to deal with. How do other adult humans do it?! 

Maybe I should have taken that ADD medication after all.

But music is a balm. This is some of what I've been listening to lately:

guard well our human chain.

“Once upon a time, wasn’t singing a part of everyday life as much as talking, physical exercise, and religion? Our distant ancestors, wherever they were in this world, sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes, or walking long journeys. Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece? Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to start. And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.” - Pete Seeger

TO MY OLD BROWN EARTH

To my old brown earth
And to my old blue sky
I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."

And you who sing,
And you who stand nearby,
I do charge you not to cry.

Guard well our human chain,
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun will shine.

And this our home,
Keep pure and sweet and green,
For now I'm yours 
And you are also mine.

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1958)