Dialogue

This is my response to Jeques’s poem My Epitaph: His Heart.

This is very moving and makes me feel very sad. I had to give my two beautiful dogs away to new homes nearly two months ago. Yogurt, the labrador puppy who turned up at our doorstep the day we arrived in this new city, and kept me company for 18 months. Jessica, the strong bull terrier who we adopted after she was rescued from a farm where she was mistreated. I was heartsore to say goodbye to them, especially Yogurt who I raised as though she were my child.

I will write more about them and their lives with me in future. Right now its still too painful to dwell on. I have posted some pictures of them on my blog.

Your poem is amazing – almost like a psalm in its intensity, and because of the sense of helpless supplication that dogs express, which you portray so beautifully.

Bill Howdle’s blog has a lovely post today, about his birthday wishes. He asks for 2 presents – first, that everyone perform an act of kindness, and second, that everyone donate food to feed hungry children. I would add a third – that everyone who has pets takes extra special care of them. Both my dogs came from abused backgrounds and were scarred emotionally as a result. So many people with pets ignore them or abuse them. I believe strongly in what Mahatma Gahndi said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
– Gandhi

I found a great list of quotes in this vein, on http://www.actionforanimalsnetwork.org/quotes.htm.

Live & Appreciate your life – it is always going to be too short

This is my comment response to Bill Howdle, an amazing man sharing his experiences of living and dying with the world – Dying mans daily journal.

Wow. I am stunned by your sharing and giving back so much to every person who writes to you with their experience. I aspire to the kind of amazingly positive impact on people that you have. It is your deep integrity, honesty, compassion and wisdom wrought in your struggle that shines through. You stand out in the blogging world and in the world at large as someone to be admired and listened to.

Your blog communicates the most important truth that a human can ever know. Life is precious above all, and too short (one year or a hundred years is too short). Every day I’m alive I am grateful for it, far more so since I nearly died after a motorcycle accident about 6 years ago. I am doubly grateful for the lives of my friends and family – my girlfriend was on the motorbike at the time, and miraculously escaped unharmed. Sadly we recently separated, but we remain friends.

It is so important to acknowledge one’s loved ones, to let them know how much you love them. I never know if I’m going to be killed by an out-of-control truck on my long drive home after work, or if the violent crime in South Africa will one day catch up with me or my loved ones. So many people die senselessly all the time, let alone those with diseases. Recently, my father’s half brother died and I was so priviledged to spend a few hours with him a month before he died. I didn’t know him closely, but spending some time with him meant the world to him and to me.

Similarly, I was priviledged to know for a brief time the man close to my girlfriend’s mother. They had been together for 3 years when this true gentleman was diagnosed with a form of lung cancer. He fought it for 2 more years, and only in the final 2 months was he forced to stop his passion, golf, because of the extreme tiredness. The impression he made in the few days I spent with him will always remain with me.

I have a deep fear of dying. Actually, the fear is of pain. The much greater fear is of Endings. I’m afraid of everything coming to an abrupt end – all the opportunity to live life, to love, to experience, to share, to be loved – my greatest fear is the loss of that, of all that is human. I do not have a clear or strong sense of an afterlife, which I imagine must give some measure of relief to fear of the ultimate ending.

So, without an afterlife to comfort me, I rely on the intense experience of life. Life is magnified by the knowledge that everything can change or vanish in an instant. This is such a powerful realisation and it empowers me enormously. I pay such better attention to friends and family, and to what I do, and to my health, being acutely aware of how thin the thread of life is.

Comment in response to Jeque’s poem But I [just] ain’t

This is a very lovely piece. Its power lies in its simplicity. If I may, I would like to suggest that you try writing it using the conditional. I think it may attain an even better flow that way.

“If I were….
I would…

…soon you would find…”

Do you see what I mean? Its just a suggestion, feel free to ignore it.

I’m very interested in your phrase “…I [just] ain’t…”

The square brackets suggest some kind of isolation, as well as the insertion of a foreign element into the context. Then by isolating the word ‘just’, you seem to be knocking down the sense of isolation, because it is a word that can imply ‘nearness’ or ‘closeness’, as well as distance (in South Africa we use ‘just’ in the phrase, ‘just now’ to mean ‘almost now’, whereas in the UK, ‘just now’ means ‘in a while’). It can also suggest commonness “that is just an apple” – you wouldn’t say “she is just my girlfriend”.

So, its very interesting that you’ve isolated this everyday term that signifies the Normal. I think this makes the poem quite ‘deconstructionist’ (probably the wrong use of the word here, but I don’t know much about deconstruction, although I find it an interesting way of thinking).

On reading it again, I get the feeling that by isolating ‘just’, you’re also emphasising it – it almost gives the word a desperate tone, as if you had italicised it. As if you’re saying, ‘I’m not’ in a very frustrated voice. But you’re hiding your frustration, isolating it behind the wall of the square brackets. Very interesting technique.

Lastly, I find ‘ain’t’ a particularly interesting choice of word. Its not a form commonly used in South Africa, so I feel it makes the piece stand out strongly as an “all-American” work. This is great.

A great work.
Cheers.

Comment in a thread about the punishment of the Saudi rape victim:

That article you posted (article from Arabnews), youngMuslimah, makes the judgement much clearer, and harder to criticize. I agree with you – Islam does seem to promote an overly patriarchal society, in my opinion at least.

But I’ve heard from a young Muslim woman who is a friend of mine, that the positive aspects of Islam for woman, in the way they are treated well, far outweigh the problems that come from it. This probably isn’t true for all Muslim women, in all countries though.

Comment in response to BHODI DREAMING – Saturday Reflection

I was thinking the same thing as Leah when I read this. You’re very self-critical (so am I). You want to change the world. You’re an idealist and an optimist.

A psychologist once said to me ‘You consistently underestimate yourself’, which is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Its also one of the truest. I see this so much in people who are intuitive, thoughtful, and sensitive which you seem to be. So, stop underestimating yourself please (as I keep saying to myself too).

I also relate to your desire to be different to how you see yourself. You want to be vibrant, make a difference, be inspirational. Well, your blog certainly is all of those things, and I suspect that it reflects the reality of who you are. You don’t need to change at all, you need to look at yourself through kinder eyes. See yourself through the eyes of a lover, not a parent, teacher, abuser, punisher or judge.

Strength for your adventure.

Comment in response to BODHI DREAMING – The Girl I Was

Well, since you ask…

The short answer is, give the healing as much time as it needs, and never give up on yourself again. I don’t think you will though, having realised what you lost by giving up once before.

The long answer is right there in your writing – you’ve moved from the youthful exuberance of a 19 year old, survived an abusive marriage, and come out alive. Not just alive though, alive and kicking. That is the key – you’re obviously frustrated by the walls and chains you put up in defense. You’re desperate to escape them and feel the freedom you once felt. That shows that your soul knows what it wants, that you still have it all in you, waiting to be released.

Only you can release it, only with patience, effort and time, and above all, faith in yourself.

I wrote a poem on this yesterday. It could almost have been written for you, it fits so well. I wrote it about my own journey through pain and struggles, depression and slow recovery. You may see more in my poems that speaks to you, because I relate very much to what you’ve written here.

The poem is called Dreamer. I’ll keep visiting your site.

Comment in response to C.L. Mayredt’s Salt of the Earth?

Hi C.L.

While I appreciate that your motivation is of the highest order – caring about the souls of people – perhaps some of it could be phrased so that it shows more respect for (atheist) thinking people. This is a critique of your method of arguing, which certainly is provocative, not of your mission, which I with in principle.

I think there are basic prerequisites for any person to find God or even just lead a worthy life. The first is education. Without that there is usually no understanding, and no critical thought about the inner or outer world that is forced on us. Education in turn rests on financial stability, safety and security, housing and nutrition. For many these are unfulfilled fantasies.

Even having found God, the uneducated often succumb to abuses of power by churches or those masquerading as spiritual, because they can not think for themselves.

People across the world are typically uneducated, and the situation is worsening as populations grow. So providing spiritual guidance like this, in lieu of good education if necessary, is healthy if it can be taken to those who need it. Many ’successful’ people lack understanding.

However, I have a distrust of evangelism, because it presupposes that the Other is in a state of ignorance, sin or disgrace. If one is going to be an evangelist, this is very hard to avoid.

As a result, evangelism is anathema to critically thinking people who, like me, prefer to be presented with opinions, rather than being told what we are and how we must change. I have been at the recieving end of spiritual bullying on many occasions and all it does it drive one away.

So, to come back to my first point – if you want to reach the thinking ‘unconverted’ through your writing, rather than just the ignorant or fearful, perhaps you could engage more on the intellectual level, rather than starting off by judging. No ancient prophet, I think, would assume that he or she can judge others the way you appear to do.

If not, I fear that your opinions will mainly appeal to less critically minded people, which is fine if you’re happy with it. There are different types of intelligence after all, spiritual, intellectual and intuitive being equally valid. I think the Bible has the words, I will love God with all my mind, heart and soul. I feel that many religiously-minded people tend to forget the part about the mind.

I look forward to hearing your opinions.

Kind regards
Brightsilentthought

Thanks for reading my poem and commenting!