Note to Self

In anticipation of ouchies tomorrow, I note this poem as a not-so-subtle exhortation to buck up. I'm sure it's saying that suffering is all around us while we go about our mundane tasks, but I think that's what makes suffering so mundane. It's all around us while we go about our mundane tasks! Recognizing suffering is one step; acknowledging it publicly is another; addressing it, however simply, is yet another altogether. Let's do our part to really address suffering. And I don't mean the garden variety outpatient kind, though it's nice to be nice to the nice then, too. See you all soon!

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W.H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"

Comments

[David]

May I do anything to help you and db?

[ae]

David, you are so kind. Everything's going so well. I thank you for your good wishes, which are humbling enough.

[The Heretik]

Auden: one of my faves of old. And you one of my faves of new. Be wel. Or weller.

[ae]

Thanks, 'tik! xoxo