Once again today I am overwhelmed with good feelings for my friendships and what they mean in my life. I have a small number of really, really good friends and a much larger number of those I count as the family of my friends. I am struck again by how often it has been those very friendships that have pulled me out of a hole of my own making. It is my friends who reassure me that I am ok and life will go on and things always change. Sometimes it is those same friends who say nothing and just listen or offer to cook me dinner or just come and hang out when life gets overwhelming.
During the past few months of my father's increasingly fragile staate of health I have experienced many different feelings. I believe that on many levels both my brother and I have accepted that my father is aging and becoming increasing mentally and physically unstable. On another level I am still screaming inside. The uncertainty of my dad's health and the distanse between us makes this so hard. My brother and sister-in-law have had to carry the responsibility of daily hospital visits and bedside vigils when they should be celebrating the oncoming marriage of their son. There nothing I can do to change the fact that I live far away, but I am sick at heart over this state of affairs. The state of 'should I go, should I stay' made me three-quarters crazy and the only time I genuinely relaxed over the past few weeks was when the cloud of volcanic ash took that decision away from me.
Right now I am in a permanent state of hyper-alert. I'm not even sure what this is for. I speak to my brother most days. I don't feel that any catastrophe is imminent and yet... it's hard to let go of this state.
The arrival of Spring and the explosion of blossom and trees has added to my state of expectancy. The whole world is pregnant with life and I feel like I am waiting.
As Starbucks is getting hot and noisy, I will end with a long and wonderful poem I discovered when I was 15, and sums up an awful lot.
I Am Waiting
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting
for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I anxiously waiting
For the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
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