From an Upper Floor

This weekend the grandparents of Emma E. came to visit and brought with them a book.  This book is a creative endeavor of the artist Claudia who has graciously illustrated so much of my work.  This time the grandfather of this child has charmingly caught both granddaughter and grandmother reading.

When Emma E. comes to their home ten minutes away they go through an entrance ritual.  Touching, looking, identifying, naming all the favorite things Emma E. loves.

Emma has cupboards in every place she visits it seems.  She knows these are hers with safe things to bang and wallop.  Books are favorites and bookcases are treasure troves she frequents and positions herself as her grandparents do with the morning paper.

This book  is one Claudia put together for Emma with her favorite things at the grandparents’ that have meaning and delight.  It is an awesome endeavor and seeing the artwork and portraits of Emma embracing these events at their home has me wanting all children righteously entitled.

In a more perfect world it would be so and I wish it were.  That circumstances endow all involved with  talents honed making the arrival of each child a welcome addition but also a promise.   Not only would the body be fed but also the mind and play would be the obvious joy in learning.

Years ago friends visited and in discussing my latest manuscript that they liked, the visiting husband  said, it took courage to public autopsy oneself while still breathing.  He then said the unforgettable  and that was ‘it was easier to be philosophical on a full stomach.’

It applies to all endeavors and connects all, you see.   In an equitable world as children we would be born and welcomed with a promise to be fed mind, body and spirit.  Our talents would multiply and all worlds would benefit because our abundance of good would spill over.

The large animals like elephants and the wild jungle friends would not be lost in time and bees and butterflies would be profuse.

On a full stomach the mind can stretch to cover esoteric lives we may not touch but hunger for knowledge we would about all life.  It is difficult to feign interest when hunger pains beg for sleep.  The friend’s comment was apt.

If Emma E. needs art for her development, she made a good choice in parents.  And we needed some laughter and joy in our lives.   Hats and slurping pasta are such fun things to do!  And we the appreciative audience.

Ahhh. . .  you see and we know. . . .there is balance when there is patience.  It is just that the mills grind slowly.

A hyacinth for her soul. . .

When I first started blogging,  8 years ago in 3 months, I was given a voice.  I had just had my 80^th birthday and hoped to crowd the ethers with a particular view.  I was told I was ‘many dimensional in kaleidoscopic perspective.’  Come again?

In the vernacular the complaint was ‘ not everybody sees what you see.’  But a grandnephew, in clarity and wisdom, with a many dimensional demeanor says, ‘everybody sees but not everyone is clearly focused.’  Thank you, Benjamin.

This attempt is to answer what I see when I sit in silence.   I endow my world, simply with what I say and see.

I am the girl in the mid east all boys’ school whose father thought she would be a smart lady and I am the monk carrying the cross on my back up the cinder street in the French Revolution.  I am also the girl sitting on her haunches with the clay pot in front of her and reaching for the Pewabic tile to the back of her.

I am also a carpenter with tools of my trade who sands and saws and bleaches the woods to a faretheewell.  I am the farmer who plows the field to feed the bodies of bloated children with grain I literally pull from the parched earth.

These things I know and endow my world and have written about them with dates from carefully kept journals.  From the farm woman looking through the window to see her love with swinging pails coming to her because he has been too long hours away.

I step over boundaries separating worlds stumbling over one another and  with worry that thoughts contaminate and are contagious.

Some are of my choosing and some choose me, penetrating my world of sight, smell and touch.  I have seen other hands over mine on the steering wheel of the vehicle I drove when conditions proved hazardous.

There are starving children sleeping too much and too ill to stay awake.  There are broken windows , broken spirits and broken bodies.  I would like blue skies and green grass and happy children.

There are sharp edged people arguing their argues, slicing hearts yet whose eyes with tears fastened on the horizon do not see the pictures they are painting and pushing into the memory vaults.

We bring to the world who we are and what we see.  All of us do with disclaimers to be sure.  And we say not mine, not mine.  But we say your name is on them.  Not me, not me.  We endow our world with who we are, what we say and do but do not see our input.

So today I photographed a hyacinth.  It has been dormant and because cleared away was debris, it breathed and blossomed.  Today I endow my weary world with a hyacinth for her soul.  Do likewise.

I guess it all is a matter of how you look at life because it will determine your path and your prejudices .  And you will ultimately determine how you go about your life.  My glaring fault according to my sister and my mother who no doubt discussed this failing in detail was that I alibied everybody.

I made excuses for everyone.  I always found a reason why they did not do what they were supposed to.

I  was attributing positive action to someone and my mate said that was not what the man intended at all.  A young friend was our dinner guest and watched this exchange.

I said that was what I heard him say and do.   And the argument again was, that was not the intent.  Then I elevated the man’s intentions to be better than he is?  There was silence at the table.  Well, I said, that is not such a bad thing to do, is it?  To see the good even in the not so good?

I have to because in my thinking it is the underlying rule in this universe that the good supersedes all else otherwise we would long have decimated ourselves along with all worlds.  We have gone down the tube before and managed to rise.

Good has Intelligence as its basis and whether it is called God or Father or Life, that primary factor is central to all Universes. This Intelligence explains to me man’s struggle in life.  It explains his belief that because of others or circumstances he has not succeeded.

Seldom does he take the log out of his own eye because to do that means he has to evolve to be able to take that step and own the responsibility.   Because at the center of the smallest particle which unites and grows to participate fully in life, Intelligence is innate.

Learning has always been the key to evolution.  How to survive was difficult for man without rudimentary knowledge.

I was aghast when someone did a something and my gasp was followed by how could he?????  It was a matter with a family and pointed out eventually in thought was the fact that even today there are persons with no ties, or ties which do not bind even with mates or even with their children.

That function within some persons has not yet been born.  It is a matter of evolution also.  Footwork must be done.

When we acknowledge that we teach with our every action, every thought, we will know we are accountable.  And then we take our presence on Earth, in this classroom seriously.

Then, as the bard said, it follows as the night, the day.

(photo by Joshua Hallissey)