A reason to get out of bed.

September, 2009

I know a Karen and I know a Bruce who work together at times. Her comment once about work and the way I have noticed his outlook on life subtly shift resulted in this:

[Ministering Angels]

You get cynical in this job she told him and he said he could see that but even if you get to where you saw abusive people around every turn that meant that behind them were people who needed to know the whole world was bigger and more beautiful than their personal experience and that made for a powerful reason to get up every morning.
SPM

Writing on the wall

The Mantle for our fireplace had been stolen long before we ever saw what was to become our house and we know it may be a while before we can afford (or find) the right replacement. So I decided to do what I love to do: I wrote on the wall and the quote is a favorite of mine that seemed appropriate to a house that had been empty a while.

“But there was no prayer in Joel’s mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved…and in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.”
Truman Capote

Lost Things; A St. Jude kind of day.

Why would anyone cut down a tree that has lived a hundred years?

Why does a temporarily empty building seem to equal a useless building?

Who would steal a dog?

Why are wanted children miscarried before they can recieve a first caress when so many unwanted children live to understand not being wanted?

Why would a vibrant child pass from living and laughing last weekend to being silent forever?

I don't know. I cannot begin to understand. I can only think that such things make old trees more remarkable, ruins more romantic, puppies more magical, families more precious and heaven more lovely. But who can really tell at then end of the day?


"Benjamin, we're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?"
(Mrs. Maple, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

Life is....

Dr. Gregory House: "They're out there, doctors, lawyers postal workers some of them doing great some of them doing lousy. Are you going to base your whole life on who you got stuck in a room with?"

Eve: "I'm going to base this moment on who I'm stuck in a room with. It's what life is. It's a series of rooms and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are."

(From a 2007 episode of House MD)

Innocents and Opalescent Sea Urchins

He was tall, broad-shouldered and had dark shaggy hair above puzzled eyes. He moved a little differently than others and spoke a little louder. He brought his own cup – an opalescent punch glass with nubs in rows that reminded me of the shell of an sea urchin. Cookies and cups of coffee were priced at a dollar each and he wasn’t sure that his $3 would cover him.

He got his cookie and coffee, sat near Hailey and I, chatted pleasantly for a few minutes in his sweet way about nothing particular and everything at once, and then he was gone.

The kids I went to grade school with would possibly – no, certainly – have called him “retarded.” (Hell, they called me that.) As he walked away with his magic cup in his bag and his smile (always just hinted at the corners of his mouth), I had to wonder: What’s wrong with moving slower than every one else? He may not get concepts like anger, bitterness or revenge, but – then – he notices every pretty thing in his way and will fall asleep one day not knowing what old is.
SPM

A Thought

“A purely natural landscape is one which has never been occupied by man. An area which is unified upon the basis of the way in which man has used and transformed the natural landscape is a cultural landscape.”

(Edna Scofield in a 1936 article.)

Wonderful Book. Interesting Topic. (Yes, and lots of pictures.)

Richard Sexton assembled a phenominal collection of photographs of buildings on the edge of existance and his text was every bit as interesting. Here's a passage that I found locally relevant:

“Architecture is as undeniably mortal as the humans who build it. The role of the preservationist is merely to thwart an untimely demise. We deny our own mortality by going to extraordinary lengths to prolong human longevity, but we tend to be far more ambivalent with our architecture. In fact, the willingness to tear down almost anything we have built has been a hallmark of American culture – a predilection that has only recently been subjected to serious reevaluation.

America is about progress and migrations, entrepreneurship and the economic exploitation of fertile landscapes. It is also about invention and innovation, hybridization and assimilation. Perhaps most significantly, however, America is about freedom, including the freedom to do whatever on wants with one’s property. America is, therefore, less occupied with tradition, heritage, stewardship, and civic duty than other cultures, including those from which we have directly descended. Though America is a world power economically and militarily, culturally it is merely postcolonial. America is still finding itself, gradually and sometimes painfully; is becoming a more mature and stable place of human habitation – the cultural equivalent of an adolescent, a brash and prodigal one at that.

Along Louisiana’s River Road are scattered some of the most compelling vestiges of our exotic past. Though today we recognize the significance of this architecture, we are somewhat baffled by what to do with it. In far too many cases, there is no longer a logical economic reason for this architecture to exist…”

(Richard Sexton, Vestiges of Grandeur, The Plantations of Louisiana’s River Road, 1999, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, http://www.chroniclebooks.com/)