When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.
Susan Sarandon
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I once knew a teenage girl who said that she felt the moon belonged to her, that it was her moon. I understood what she meant. She was a sensitive, creative person. She wasn't a lunatic. Nor did she have a fantasy about holding the deed to a piece of heavenly real estate. It was that she related to the moon and the moonlight on a very personal basis, embracing it and being embraced by it.
Sometimes, rarely, I will look up to a window in an apartment building and I will know who lives there, I've never met them, I don't know their names and I've never been in the apartment, but somehow I feel like I am one of them. They are my family.
There is a painting by Henri Matisse called "The Piano Lesson." It resides at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I know that picture. I know the little boy sitting at the piano. I know what he is thinking and how he feels and I know the patient concern of the woman sitting behind him. It is my painting. I joke that someday I'm gong to steal it. Which I would never do even if I could.
There is a tree growing out of the side of a cliff at the top of a hiking trail in Conway, New Hampshire. I had to get dangerously close to the edge of the cliff in order to look at it. It flourishes, It bends upward to catch the sun. Birds come and visit it. Every year it pulls back it's sap and sleeps and in the Spring it puts forth buds and grows. If it were to push away some of the rock on the cliff and send it falling, it would still thrive because it has purchased its life from the solid, vibrant earth behind the rocks.
I will never see that tree again. But I know it's there and I know it lives. It's my tree.
DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Given the resources and opportunity, what one thing do you want to do in 2010 that you've never done before.
You have all Winter to answer. Answers will be posted on the first day of Spring.
13 responses so far.
DB - The Vagabond
6 comments:
Oh how I love this entry DB. It made me feel warm and maybe not so crazy as I thought. I know exactly what you are talking about. Today was a horrible weather day here. Strong storms and some hail...just dark and dreary all day. I was sitting in my recliner this afternoon (with Gizmo in my lap) and I glanced out the window to see the most vibrant rainbow I've ever seen. It didn't last long but it was so bright and beautiful and I thought to myself "God put that there just for me". It was my rainbow.
Hugs, Joyce
When we were just married, we rented a duplex on a small one way road. Across the street there was a huge, beautiful maple tree that took up almost the entire view of our picture window. I watched that tree through every season, the bare limbs of winter, the tiny bright yellow green of spring buds, the full canopy of summer, and the amazing flames of color in autumn.
I came home from work one day and the tree was GONE. I have no idea why they cut it down, but I was desolate. My husband came home and found me in tears. "They cut down MY tree". I still mourn for it, 33 years later.
Sue, I'm so sorry about your tree. That's a real heartbreaker.
D
George Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.
Mary: I'll take it. Then what?
George Bailey: Well, then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve, see... and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair... am I talking too much?
I love the girl saying it was her moon. At that moment in time, I'm sure it was.
I think we all experience special times and things, and we find a symbol of that to remember and cherrish. I think that is such a cool part of being a passionate human being.
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