Wednesday, January 23, 2008
This.
(my wee family on the shores of lake taupo)
***
Happy New Year, 2008.
Welcome back - as you can see, I reverted to my original blog name ‘stripy sock studio’ and given the site another little dust up and face lift. Lemme know what you think.
I am so delighted to be in January 2008, because November and December 2007 sucked - to be frank. So far 2008 has been lovely to me and I am currently working hard to put changes and routines in practice in order to look after myself through the year. I have a feeling 2008 is going to be rich, eventful and happy.
Among other crappy things, I lost a darling friend in December last year - and I am still at the stage where I think about him every day. I’ve been tidying up my studio, too, and keep stumbling across little traces of him - poems he wrote, notes, photos...it’s interesting the debris we scatter through one another’s lives…
Anyway. I meant for my first post to be a happy, hopeful one and it’s turning out a little melancholy.
I discovered this poem on the weekend, and it resonated with me both in terms of loss and of living. I intend to go back to this poem often through the year just to remind myself...THIS is what it’s all about. I hope you enjoy it, too:
THE GATE
by Marie Howe
I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made . He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself, by then
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse
under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for,
he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This- holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.
***
