This phrase just grabs me by the throat. I wish I had written it...hell, I wish I had thought of it. I heard it last night at a presentation given here at this conference I am attending in the northeastern United States. The presenter said it was a line from a poem by the poet Claudet. I have been thinking about it ever since, mesmerized by the felt sense of its logic...
another experience beckons me as well; it has been a compelling couple of days. I am at a reception following the above-mentioned presentation. I stand in a small group with three of my colleagues...two of whom I consider good friends. We are in lively conversation and I am quite caught by the flow if it, so much so that I am startled to notice a woman hovering at the edges of our conversation circle... I had not even seen her, and, embarrassed at how I had left her there, unnoticed, for so long, I try to catch her eye. I am unsuccessful; she meets no one's gaze, then backs up slightly and moves away. I am shaken by the depth of my indecision : she was as close to me as these words are to you...how is it that I did not walk around my friend and make the physical effort to draw this woman into our circle...she slips away... and as I leave the room I see her in/out on the edges of another conversation.
even now, I am going over this event's unfolding, wondering how it might have been different, how it was that I was so rooted for too long in that moment of noticing and not acting, wanting to repair the hurt of a few seconds worth of invisibility, the time it takes for someone to slip away into a crowd, a mist, a sea so blue that only blood is redder...
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It is hard to be all things to all people H. Them of red blood and blue hearts try more than most but even still it is a difficult thing to be God.
ReplyDeleteWM-- thanks for the sentiment. No delusions of godhood, believe me; just wanting to be present when it seems to be warranted.
ReplyDeleteAs TWM says - we cannot hold ourselves responsible for the insecurity of those around us - sad as it sometimes makes us to empathise. Blue, red - it's all a matter of light reflecting off the surface of that which surrounds us.
ReplyDeleteYou are a sensitive, kind human being, Harlequin. I suspect that had you reached out to draw her in, she would have reacted the same way. Sometimes people live on the fringes because they prefer it.
ReplyDelete:)
I know what you mean, sometimes these things happen, nice that you captured the moment. And you're right the line is tantalising.)
ReplyDeletehappy days lovely,
Sarah))
thanks,folks, for your thoughts and feelings.
ReplyDeletethe good thing was, the next night,at ( yet) another reception, I saw another woman just on the outskirts of the conversation and I said hello to her, and moved just a little bit in her direction, and then we were a bigger circle...
and all it took was noticing enough the night before