Close, no matter how far

“Living might mean taking chances but they're worth taking, Loving might be a mistake but it's worth making.” (Leanne Womack)

People worry about other people and help one another while they are close. I mean, it's normal, the others are our friends and after all it's in our own little egoistic interest that the ones around us are happy. It also makes us happy and contributes to the overall well-being of the Universe. Only to name a few of the benefits.

But... what do you do with people who need you, but are away? In what way can you help them? There are relationships which stay remarkably close, in spite of the distance. People telling you about things that happened in their lives and made them sad, and you really picking up on what they are saying and feeling for them. Making plans to go see them and be close to them and sustain them with good humor and optimism in their endeavor to get past unpleasant situations. I can remember a conversation with my mum, a long time ago. She was sick and I was several hundred kilometers away and I told her how sorry I was could do nothing for her. Whereas she said "Yes you can. Just talk to me, keep my spirits up, and then you'll come home and everything will be alright". Which I did, eventually, still feeling odd about not being able to get a pair of magical gloves and help her from the distance.

Anyway, some recent events have led me to believe that being close to somebody is less a question of distance than a question of will. You can be away from somebody and still care for her and do little things that you know would make her happy (such as sending a CD with your favourite music - or hers, for that matter). Or you can be far and say to yourself anything you might do would be in vain anyway, because physical distance also separates the souls. From my own experience, this is the most hurtful thing you can do to somebody reaching out for you. It is little things that act as magical gloves and keep friends close at a distance, without leaving them alone facing life's asperities: a lunch together from time to time, a few moments on the telephone, meeting in some place in the middle of the distance, a postcard saying nothing more than "Hey, I thought of you enough to send you these few lines"... Things that keep people warm at heart. Things that may seem pathetic for some, but which do make a difference.

If I stand all alone, will the shadow hide the color of my heart;
blue for the tears, black for the night's fears.
The star in the sky don't mean nothin' to you, they're a mirror.
I don't want to talk about it, how you broke my heart.
(Rod Stewart, I Don't Wanna Talk About It)

Let us go then, you and I...

This is one of my favourite poems ever... at some point I knew almost all of it by heart.

Thought I'd share :)

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

(T S Eliot, Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock)

Do the things you don't want to

I hate doing things I don't want to do. You know, the ones that make you find all kinds of excuses for not doing. Relating to either school or work or friendships or whatever. First you start by setting them up in the calendar, on your to-do list or even on a sheet of paper which you pin over the kitchen table or the entrance door and mark red, so you can permanently see it and get reminded of what you should be doing. Then you start postponing. It was not so important for today, so we can do it tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Oh, look! I got another task, and this one is far more important (like watching an episode of my favourite series). Or damn! there is a fly in the room. And so I spend another half an hour hunting it down. Then you blog about it. Or chat with friends. Or do some groundbreaking research about the Zerg market. And that really important thing you ought to be doing, but don't, gets shoved under the rug.

One sweet day you find how much had depended on doing that small thing, and you are either sorry and that's it, or you are doing something to tie the ends together. The resulting feeling is, in most cases, that of relief that it is finally done. Apart from this, there is no benefit. So if you can hear me - and I know most of you can - don't procrastinate. Procrastination really is the best way to miss out on important moments in your life, and it's a pity. There is so much beauty left to discover.

I think I'm drowning
Asphyxiated
I wanna break this spell
That you've created
(Muse, Time is Running Out)

Between the pain and the pleasure

I feel like I’m leaving
Like I’m leaving home
Like the clouds are parting, and I’m not alone
(Beth Hart, Learning to Live)

Snapshots of my Dalloway-ism

Tonight I put some order in my stuff and found an old notebook from my university years. There are two fragments below from Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', which I remember having read many times over, because I found it so enthralling.

"What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was."

"He had not said 'I love you'; but he held her hand, Happiness is this, is this, he thought."

I feel like I have lived them out myself :)

Eureka!

Ladies and gents, and all other kind people randomly reading this blog – the truth is out in the open now and resistance is futile: Men cannot read your mind. Period. They can’t! Among their several other great qualities, this one does not stand out. Hell, it’s not even on the list! Be it your dad, your boyfriend, brother, colleague, friend etc – they can’t read thoughts, much less act on the thoughts they should have read and interpreted and thus get brilliant ideas of how to get you (or themselves) out of trouble.

Bob had actually tried to tell me this at some point, and I laughed myself dead at the tone she used, but she was so right. Of course, this epochal breakthrough will not make anybody’s life any big lot easier – or harder, for that matter, the knowledge of it might however help in understanding some happenings. Until recently, I was very pissed with my dad, as he was visiting me at the time my illness had begun – and although he could have, he didn’t drive me to the doctor when I had my appointment. When we talked about this later, he said he’d always been so convinced I can handle most things on my own, that he thought he’d also let me handle this one. As it turned out later, the little cold was more than it seemed, and that is when he apologised and asked me to tell him next time when I need help -- literally. (As in: "Dad, I need you to drive me to the doctor's at 4 PM today".)

Coming back to the topic of the post: if you feel like somebody in your life doesn’t get the message (happens mostly to men, but it can also hit women) – then he or she really didn’t. You need to find a way to communicate it directly to them, instead of sitting home by yourself, making scenarios and killing off precious little gray cells.

Have you found wisdom yet?

There is often more wisdom to be found at the edges of life than in its middle. A life-threatening illness, for instance, may shuffle our values like a deck of cards. Sometimes a card that has been on the bottom of the deck for most of our lives turns out to be the top card, the thing that really matters. Having watched people sort their cards and play their hands in the presence of death for many years, I would say that most often the top card is love.

From an email sent a long time ago to some friends. Source unknown.

I strongly suspect Bob of getting close to some of that wisdom :)