Poison

Sometimes I believe that love is the most bitter poison of all. Something you cannot run from, cannot kill, cannot drown out. It promises all the power to heal. Yes, it has that. But will it make good on its word?

Hope. The bitter thorn in the flesh.

Love is unforgiving. No amount of reason can dismiss it. No logic can sway it. No record of the pain it has caused can dissuade it. No. It stands. Brutal. Cold. Absolute.

In rejection it will not let go. And in death it is only hardened, more resolute than ever it was in life.

Undone

And there you were, at the corner table of the bar, watching. Maybe that was the writer in you, clinging to the outskirts, lurking in the shadows. And you watched me.

“If it is possible, let this cup be taken from me.”

You watched and you danced and you asked me to dance, but you never asked me into your life.

“Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

And yet how could you know that even your gaze was more than I could bear? Even just your presence enough to shatter me.

“Let this cup pass from me.”

And there I was undone by only the look in your eyes. And nothing in me is the same. Nothing in me can ever be the same. I am undone.

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

And there you are still, in the shadows, at that corner table, watching.

“Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

Matthew 26
Psalm 22
1 Samuel 3

Grief

And this is what is killing me: that I cannot share love with the one I love. That the love I have can only cause hurt. That grief can kill affection. That grief can kill you while you are still alive.

Alice and Myra Frances

Fireplace Musings

“You can never find a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”  C. S. Lewis

I find myself beside a fire sipping a cup of tea on this dismal afternoon. It has finally turned cold and I enjoy the feel of sweaters and the smell of wood smoke. I have interchangeably enjoyed coffee, tea, and hot chocolate today, while studying upon the hearth. Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquary and a chemistry book have taken up the majority of my doings, as well as a large dictionary and reading journal containing several lists of vocabulary words. They seem to never end. I have finally given up on the dictionary in favor of the broader ranging one online that I access by my mother’s Ipad. Unfortunately the iPad is proving horrendously difficult for writing, incorrectly spelling the words I had so precisely typed, and not letting my highlight those I wish to correct. It continuously sticks on one line and obstinately refuses to let me highlight any other line. I obviously am not much used to writing on iPads. After my initial post of this I will have to go to a desktop and correct “unfortunately” which I is obstinately misspelled.

Aha! I have at last reached a desktop and found the editing button.

 

Every piece of life is a piece of art.

 

Once Upon a December – From Anastasia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpEoMe4a0IE&feature=player_embedded

This song has always produced a feeling of nostalgia in me. As a lover of things past I cannot hear this song without emotion. To spite the fact that I think Anastasia’s story is too dark for a mere children’s Fairytale film, I find this song breath-takingly beautiful.

The Shoe

I didn’t think about why it was called “The Shoe” for a very long time. I just took it in and accepted it as a weird thing. Someone would name their house? Ok. Then I was thinking about it one day when I visited. They had seven children. Wait, the shoe… that meant… Oh yes.

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do. . .”

Right. That was why it was called “The Shoe”

I still forget from time to time and have to think a minute before it all comes back.

It’s like another grandparent’s home in some far off nostalgic way. They aren’t old enough to be my grandparents. They are more than twenty years too young. But they are far enough removed from me to feel old and wise. Not that I think of them as decrepit or crazy, the way that the term “old” usually means. I mean old in the way that you think of an old book. There are definitely things that were once in a little better condition, but nothing about a new book can compare at all.

There was some kind of deja vu in that house. It reminded me of my grandparents house. I would stand in the staircase and look over all the pictures. They were photos of the family, people I knew, some of them I didn’t. It was funny, to see how they reminded me of my parents, and yet some of their children reminded me of my parents. Their grandchildren were the ones I felt were most like me.

It was odd. I felt like they were my grandparents, but they weren’t. They were Tucker’s grandparents. Of course, they had plenty of grandchildren besides Tucker, but they were all children. Something about Tucker stood apart from all the others. Maybe it was that he and I had some kind of bond. Perhaps it was simply that he was the oldest. But I could sense that he had passed the divide between child and adult. He wasn’t fully an adult, he was really just a young teen, but he was grown-up. He just felt like he belonged in a way that none of the other grandchildren did. He was one of those people that felt like family.

What was it that made us feel like family? What made me feel like they were my grandparents? What made me feel like I was at home in their house? Was it the odd collection of things and pictures all over the place, some gathering dust just like at my grandparents house? Was it the way they included me in their dinner table conversations as if the 50 years between our ages didn’t exist? Was it the way they were kind? Was it how they always extended a standing invitation? Was it that we could joke and be serious in the same sentence and not blink twice? Was it that our parents had known each other as long as I could remember? Or were we actually related in a way we didn’t know?

I doubt I will ever be able to answer, but I know I will always feel as if we are related.

Because at “The Shoe” I am home.