Forty-One/ Fifty-Two 10.8.10 - 10.14.10
October is all about death and dying for me. This year, that's a more poignant thought that it has been in years past. They say it comes in threes, and though two of my three weren't even during October, and one of them wasn't even really exactly mine, they've all touched my life more than death ever has in the past.
I've been working hard this week to just keep moving forward. I keep telling myself that I can make it; I can just keep putting on foot in front of the other, and eventually I'll get where I need to be. I'm worn out though. There's so much going on with work, theater, home life, friends, etc. that I'm starting to feel like I'm being stretched a bit thin. I love having so much to do, and I'm passionate about all the projects I've got going on, but I could use a couple days to just be lazy - sleep, read, take more photos... Even this photo was mostly an accident. I happened to catch it between two activities at the theater.
Forty/ Fifty-Two 10.1.10 - 10.7.10
This week, I lost a friend. She was someone I haven't talked with much for a long while, but with whom I was good friends in high school. We ate lunch together every day for a couple years, and even though it's been such a long time since we've seen each other, she has remained in my mind, a shining star, a soft wind, and a bit of sunlight. Her name was -is- Liz. It is odd to talk about her in the past tense. It's not that I can't conceive of her being gone, but more that I can't imagine than death is the end for her soul. She was such a bright spirit, and I have to keep believing that somehow, somewhere, there is still Liz-ness in the universe. Therefore, all that she was, she is, and I will speak of her with no tense at all, for it is her immortal part of which I speak.
Thirty-Nine / Fifty-two 9.24.10 - 9.30.10
I went home this weekend for a fairly major event. My father was playing a show at the Kent Stage with the band Two Worlds Collide as part of The Debacle, a two-day shindig consisting of 17 bands from the late 70's and early 80's Kent-Akron area music scene. Jen and I flew in for the event, because it was not an extended weekend. We stayed at my grandmother's house, which was nice, and we spent a good chunk of Saturday at Stan Hywet, which was awesome, because I got to take a good bunch of photos. The best part of the weekend was that no one knew that Jenny was in town, so when we pulled up in front of my parents' house and she got out of the car my father literally jumped up and down, because he was so happy to see her. It was super-cute, and I was so glad we were able to be there for him.
Thirty-eight/ Fifty-two 9.17.10 - 9.23.10 (Ignore the date on the board!)
This is the front of my classroom this year. I've tried to do a better job of making it visually appealing to my students, but also useful. I'm really rocking the blue tape this time around.
Let me be clear - Liz and I were never lovers. I never did kiss her. But I did love her, deeply, dearly, in the way that one loves the sun on your face, or the wind in the trees. Liz, to me, was a force of nature, an endless stream of possibilities, and I loved her in my own way. And so, I offer her, and those who also loved her, these lines from Pablo Neruda.
XX Tonight I Can Write...
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I help her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes, I loved her too.
How could one not love her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Ti think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. He infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
