poem

Well, Day 1 and Day 2 slipped by without much fan fare and now I am HOME! No more office job til January! :) It’s raining and I have a cold, but I am drunk with the freedom of the day! :) I’m going to go see Juno, which Ebert says is good and looked great when I saw the previews. Yay!

In the last few days, something about honesty, something about not fooling each other, and the line, “lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.” from this poem by William Stafford have been popping into my head: 

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

There is someone in my life who I feel like telling: Just come out with it! “the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe– should be clear.”

Where do you need to communicate more clearly in your life? I want to communicate more clearly. There is also the truth that “Freedom is the right not to have to lie.” (Camus) And I don’t expect anyone to tell the truth when it would be too damaging to them in some way. So, I also aknowlege my own part as a truth receiver and want to give people enough freedom that they can dare to tell me the truth.

I think that has been a big issue for me in relationships and maybe it would help if I let go of expectations and prepare myself to accept whatever they tell me. Ach lieben! I also want to be independent enough that I can dare to tell the truth. 

Writing about truth telling reminds me how grateful I am that when I had an existential crisis this summer, no one I talked to shrugged. No one gave me pat answers.  The people I talked to were honest and exquisitely real with me.  I am deeply grateful for that.

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