Fragile things

Sorry for the absence; a mixture of dark days and heavy reading. I suffer from a sense of disquiet and, much like Claudette worrying an object on the desk until it falls to the floor,  I will fidget until I discover its source,  likely a lost insight,  something to do with aesthetics.

It has been a simply gorgeous fall here at the lake and up in the mountains.  I can now see more water from my loft window than for some years. I miss the vegetation, victim of neighbors obsession with "view,"  but now with a full lake I can appreciate the unique quality of silence that nearness to water seems to bring.  May these things never change.

Francine,  a friend most dear to me,  died this past Monday evening.  For slightly over two years she tried so hard and so bravely to survive lymphoma. In those too few years of living she was a vibrant presence in so many lives.  She was among a very few I have known that can be described as truly liberated.  And I simply have never known one as talented and creative as the joyful Francine.  One finds it dissonant to believe her body succumbed to the assaults of illness.

This rich verdant North Georgia brings awe at the great capacities of the earth to provide and to repair itself. Then brother David's photographs of the far west mountains and Snake and Columbia River canyons and valleys, and also recent discussions of the Dust Bowl, remind me that the greater sections of the country are fragile.

Yes. The sacred places where our most cherished capacities are nourished are so very vulnerable.