A Shared Life
An article I read last week began with a poem, in Arabic. It looked beautiful; Art even before I knew what it said. Having it translated added to its beauty, a piece about fear and love in this man’s life. The more he loved, the more he feared losing that which he loved. That was what his poem was about.
The author of the poem died in the floods in Libya two days after he posted his work.
I don’t know what to feel about this right now. Death. Love. Fear. Life. It’s all a mystery to me much of the time, the way they all involve factors that I don’t understand never mind have any control over. I think that might be where art comes from – us reaching to understand something, to have some say so over what it all means and maybe what is going to happen.
I recently went to a Celebration of Life of the mother of my best friend. It was a warm and loving tribute to a woman who had affected the lives of many people and then she lived so long that most of her cohort had already passed on. The gathering was small, maybe 30 people, made smaller by the fact that half of her family chose not to attend but rather they held their own celebration. A rift in the family was exacerbated by the matriarch’s death concerning who was going to be in charge and how was it going to go. Heartache was compounded by this conflict, as is so often the case when someone dies. It is unclear how this will resolve.
My heart aches for all of them but, to be honest, it hurts mostly for my friend and all I can do is try to comfort her and remind her of what is important. That she loved her mother, that her nuclear family loved her mother. That they were all kind and generous with her and all of their lives were enriched by that.
And I told her to write about it. To paint about it. To draw about it. To walk about it and call me about it and share it every way she can possibly find because that is how we heal not only ourselves but the rest of the world. That poets words have remained with me and I shared their essence with her. And now I’ve shared that with you. I think that’s what we can do, share our own personal truth with each other as a pathway to connecting the best of us with others.
After I read the poem and the article about this poet, I felt something open in me, an urgency to use my writing to share about things that matter to me. This is my first effort in that direction other than a cheesy poem I sent to my pen pal that I won’t bother you with. But I do want to invite you to hop on in if there is anything you feel moved to write about. We’ve got this blog and you’re invited to contribute.