Comments on: Onward

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 09:01:06 +0000

@ Aubrey > “I don’t get metaphor as well as I would like to, I guess.”

you don’t need metaphors when you make poetry out of the real thing —

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 22:03:20 +0000

I’m approaching seventy-eight. When one is in this age group and still has, mostly, his health, and in my wife’s case, her health, there is a constant, low-level of surprise when an age-mate acquaintance or friend passes. That, I expected as my age increased.
What I missed was the number of people who aren’t as capable as they might have been. A neighbor with mobility challenges needs help here and there, in addition to her housekeeper. When retrieving her mail, the cars coming from the blind curve on her left give her four seconds to clear the lane and she can’t do it. So, others fetch her mail. Or help her shovel snow or something.
And on and on. Somebody’s husband is in ICU, can you walk the dog? Sally’s in ER with a stroke, can you go to the waiting room? Sylvia fell down the dune, her husband gets around with a cane and weighs 300 pounds, can you get her up? The church’s prayer chain and Meal Train app are always busy and it’s almost always the elderly who need a hand.
Mrs. Jones needs a ride to four different medical appointments in the next two weeks, her family’s eight hundred miles away. But make sure the staff at assisted living give you a full oxygen tank. Not like the last time….
When the phone rings for my wife, I’m always reaching for my shoes or keys or something until I hear I don’t need to.
Not that we are heroes. We are healthy and….retired. What is the big deal is the cumulative amount of help a relatively small number of people, our acquaintances or co-congregants need.
Miriam’s husband died. She gets by okay but when passing look to see if there’s anything amiss.

As to the poetry provided by our hostess and the commenters…I don’t get metaphor as well as I would like to, I guess.

By: RockMeAle

RockMeAle — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 19:18:38 +0000

Not poetic, but I’ve always found this passage from “Marley and Me” poignant.

“A person can learn a few things from an old dog. As the months slipped by and his infirmities mounted, Marley taught us mostly about life’s uncompromising finiteness.

Jenny and I were not quite middle-aged. Our children were young, our health good, and our retirement years still an unfathomable distance off on the horizon. It would have been easy to deny the inevitable creep of age, to pretend it might somehow pass us by. Marley would not afford us the luxury of such denial. As we watched him grow gray and deaf and creaky, there was no ignoring his mortality—or ours.

Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and sobering. In the brief span of twelve years, Marley had gone from bubbly puppy to awkward adolescent to muscular adult to doddering senior citizen.”

One lesson I’m learning from my old Lab, take it a day at a time and enjoy good food and good friends.

By: Snow on Pine

Snow on Pine — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 19:08:52 +0000

Oh, by the way, add people’s—especially many young people’s—“work ethic” to the values/behaviors that have been reduced, sometimes completely, as a consequence of the decline of the Judeo-Christian teachings/background of our society.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 18:02:42 +0000

A good friend of my elementary school years died of cancer when we were high school sophomores. I mourned for him, but I am grateful for all the years and experiences I have been granted.

I trust the Lord will receive me when it’s time, and forgive me my failings. Very few of us have notice of when our own endings will be.

By: Mike K

Mike K — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 17:20:04 +0000

I am no poet but last spring we held the 56th reunion of my medical school class The 50th reunion was in 2016, when I still lived in California. We had plans for a 60th but the organizers were concerned about how many would be able to attend. So, we had it early and about 12 or 13 classmates showed up with wives. Several others planned to come but health issues prevented. Our class was 66 members and 1966 was when we graduated. Much has changed since then.

By: Snow on Pine

Snow on Pine — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 17:15:39 +0000

It seems to me that when the traditional Judeo-Christian morality which was omnipresent, taught in many direct and indirect ways, and woven into the fabric of life was, first, slowly subverted and has now greatly diminished, its decline has and is taking a great number of things down with it—a whole worldview, moral structure, expectations and code of behaviors, and way of life.

The spreading decadence and attendant decline of our culture and of cities merely one of many such declines in all too many areas of life here in the West.

By: huxley

huxley — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 16:49:22 +0000

I mostly don’t get poetry, never have, but I do know that time and gravity take their toll.

windbag:

I sympathize. I sure didn’t get poetry when I started. I was intrigued by the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, so I went to poems and it was tough.

The trick was to find poems I did get and work with those because there are poems just about everyone gets. Ogden Nash, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman’s “O Captain!” etc.

Of course you may not be interested in poetry and that’s fine too.

Here’s a modern poem on mortality I found in a big anthology by someone I had never heard of, but I caught it on the first bounce. It remains one of my favorites:
___________________________

Question

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

–May Swenson (1913-1989)
___________________________

Chills.

By: Snow on Pine

Snow on Pine — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 16:43:23 +0000

P.S.—In the course of my genealogical research I’ve read how many of the major East coast cities started from very small settlements and how—over the course of many generations of struggle, dedicated hard work, ingenuity, and solid business acumen—the cities rose to become major economic engines and prosperous population centers.

Now, it appears, all of that human effort is to be squandered in an epidemic of ignorance, stupidity, and fecklessness, leaving all of these cities in decline.

By: Snow on Pine

Snow on Pine — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 16:05:40 +0000

It is not just people who age and die, it’s sometimes cities; a case in point, Baltimore.

We used to stop by the Inner Harbor on trips, to eat at the waterfront restaurants, to wander around—window shop the two harbor side malls, check out the large Barnes & Noble, and enjoy things like the Aquarium.

But, as time went on, the crowd there was getting younger, was often less well dressed, and more rowdy, and I started to detect a subtle air of menace.

Then, more and more stories started to appear about rising crime in Baltimore and, in particular, at the Inner Harbor, with tourists being attacked and robbed.

So, we stopped going there.

Recently YouTube has videos showing both of the Inner Harbor malls being deserted and mostly boarded up, and one mall was closed last month. The large Barnes & Noble has also pulled out.

Most major cities (all run for many decades by
Democrats) are declining, with things like rising taxes, rising crime, and homeless encampments making them increasingly unlivable.

Meanwhile, it is said that many people are “voting with their feet,” and moving to the suburbs, or to more hospitable states.

Factor in, as well, more and more people working remotely.

At the same time, though, we see stories about how small towns— especially in the middle of the country—are also declining, becoming depopulated, and dying.

What, then, will the new emerging landscape and settlement patterns look like?