22 October 1982

~ed abbey~
     "Once again we citizens of America confront the farce of another make believe election.  Tweedledum, tweedledee and tweedledoo - the bad, the worse, the ridiculous.  Once again we are supposed to try to figure out which is the lesser evil.  In truth there is no choice, all of the major candidates are financed by corporate money, all of them support and promote the industrial expansion and commercial greed which is gradually destroying this country. Politics has become a game for millionaires or the cronies of millionaires; no wonder that our quisling officials work for the interest of the rich and powerful.  As Will Rogers once said, 'We have the best politicians that money can buy.'
     To vote in such a rigged scheme amounts to tacit consent.  If it were not for the presence on the ballot of some propositions deserving our support (placed there by the citizens, of course, not by our cowardly politicians), one would be tempted to ignore the whole sick comedy.  But there is one more rule worth considering:  when in doubt, when there is little choice, always vote against the incumbent.  Keep the rascals rotating.  The one thing worse than a hack politician is a hack politician entrenched in power.  Power corrupts, and the longer in power, the more corrupt they become."

Gandhi

"True morality, consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the righteous path for ourselves and following it fearlessly."

einstein

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

ed abbey

"There is no land more kind than home.  Where you have found your happiness!"

ed abbey

"I've imagined that maybe at the moment of death, the mind experiences the glory of eternity in that very instant.  In that flash between life and death.  And then everything shuts off but doesn't know that it shuts off because the last conscious perception was the realization of eternity.  Then the body decays and its elements meld with other forms of matter."

beloved

tiny feet

wandering in

sand

the salt

of your smell

engulfing

my senses

unconditionally

unconditional love

figure eights

running through

my mind

in times
past
my tears
comforted by
your tiny kisses

now needed
more than
ever, but
unable to
grasp...

long hikes

long walks

long time

your beauty

overwhelms
me

my heart
still

swollen

with love

the gifts I 

gave

were less 

than I 

received

did i think

that i could

keep you alive

forever?

yes.

daughter

companion

friend

you held my 

secrets

chased my

demons

and found

my laugh

first true trust

first true promise

first true love

a part of me...

has gone with you.

innocence, naivety

the lost child in me

her heart stopped

with yours

I laid
her in the
ground

with you

entwined in

each other

an eternal embrace

for our eternal slumber

goodbye my love.

Fry

"Shall we live in mystery and yet conduct ourselves as though everything were known?"

Lindbergh

"it is as if the intensity of grief fused the distance between you and the dead.  or perhaps, in reality, part of one dies.  like orpheus, one tried to follow the dead on the beginning of their journey.  but one cannot, like orpheus, go all the way, and after a long journey one comes back.  if one is lucky, one is reborn."

marcel proust

"We are healed of suffering only by experiencing it to the full."

Charles Dickens

"And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of vast eternity can fill it up!"

Kafka

"A book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us."

Camus

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

on the mount

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Proverb

"He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it."

Hickman

"And in the holy distillations of this moment, how we are comforted by the blessing of warm sun, soft wind, the green earth."

Alfred Tennyson

"I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within."

proust

"there is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life.  such grief, felt in such a way, is always "present" and it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again."

martha hickman

"we were surprised and disappointed that people we thought were good friends became distant, uneasy, and seemed unable to help us.  others who were casual acquaintances became suddenly close, sustainers of life for us.  grief changes the rules, and sometimes rearranges the combinations."

steinbeck

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” 

Winterson

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?” 

Louis de Pointe du Lac

"But all my passion went with her golden hair."

a hole in the world

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night."
~St Vincent Millay~

Irving

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

monsoon

"If there was a love strong enough to make you stay...
You'd be here.

But you're not here, 
and with all my tears...
It feels like monsoon every day."

Strand

"Nothing could stop you.
Not the best day.  Not the quiet.  Not the ocean rocking.
You went on with your dying."

Joan Didion

"Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting aspect of it to me - how really tenuous our sanity is."

gone

"It is hard to forget, when there is such an empty space when you have gone."

Garden

"Grief can be the garden of compassion. 
If you keep your heart open through everything, 
your pain can become your greatest ally 
in your life's search for love and wisdom."

river runs through it...

"Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one in need and ask the same question: We are willing Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, that part we have to give... is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us... But we can still love them... We can love—completely—even without complete understanding..."

Grief

"Life's not a song. 

Life isn't bliss. 

Life is just this: it's living. 

You'll get along. The pain that you feel, it only can heal by living. 

You have to keep on living, so one of us is living."