Sad news: A long-time and wonderful friend passed away yesterday. When we Zoomed together last week, our little circle of theatre friends, she was too weak to participate. Her husband joined us though and told us that she wanted desperately to hang on to see the outcome of the election. She was really into politics!
That’s all I could think about when I tuned in to see how the election was going. It was a sad, sad day. Karen was blisteringly smart. Discussions with her were always fabulous. And oh, how she loved to laugh! We’ve been friends for over forty years.
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Bad news: I was right. My fellow dog walkers think I’m prescient because my only comment about the election, when we walked on Monday morning, was that I had no faith in the polls and was concerned that Trump might win. They thought I was nuts on Monday; they couldn’t conceive of a nation re-electing a lying racist bigot.
No more. Now they wonder how I got so smart. Easy: The polls were so, so very wrong about Trump in 2016, I had no doubt they’d be wrong again. Why? Because I think a lot of voters lie about voting for the liar.
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I feel empty…purposeless. It’ll pass; our species seems to acclimate to everything. There will be another summer. I’ll feel sunshine on my skin and smell flowers forever. And I live where it’s easy to ignore what’s going on in the world. Karen will go on in the memories of me and my friends. And at least I don’t live in America. The US electoral system is broken.
I shall concentrate on the positive today. I will focus on the good. I am very: grateful that it’s so warm today. I have not lit the fire. At four in the morning, it was already twelve degrees, on its way to sixteen-to-eighteen today, so I’ll be in the studio working on the curtain for a good part of the day.
And tomorrow is another day. I will feel better.
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Spring and Fall
To a young child
One of my favourite poems
By my favourite poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins
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