For Friends in Mourning (a Rare Personal Post)

I'm in one of those periods of my life where it seems that a number of people who I care about deeply are in pain, for a variety of reasons. JJC has posted about his recent loss at ITM. Other people dear to me are mourning other losses, due to death or to the turnings of life. Some of them are folks I knew only tangetially nearly ten years ago. Others are close friends. Some of them have been grieving for some time now. Others are facing new pain. My thoughts are with all of them.

In the moments I need comfort most I turn to a place that seems odd to me, but still brings comfort: e e cummings, in his Introduction from New Poems. The sense of movement, of never-finished-ness, and more than anything else of possibility seems comforting somehow: as though even in endings, still many things are possible. Even, in a someday far or near in time, joy.

Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush "tie it to my hand"--

nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening,innocent spontaneaous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are amoung the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question