Wednesday, October 9, 2013

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

Yosemite, 2009


I appreciate all your kind comments, your emails, your words of support and, yes, empathy. My light posts of late mask a sort of paralysis I'm feeling elsewhere, and I'm afraid that I have to take a break from the pretense. I'll be sitting here a while, just sitting here, on the dock of the bay.

Naked

The reason you so often in literature have a naked woman
walk out of her house that way, usually older, in her front garden
or on the sidewalk, oblivious, is because of exactly how I feel right
   now.

You tend to hear about how it felt to come upon such a mythical
   beast,
the naked woman on the street, the naked man in the tree, and that 
   makes
sense because it is wonderful to take the naked woman by the 
   hand

And know that you will remember that moment for the rest of
   your life
because of what it means, the desperation, the cataclysm of what
   it takes
to leave your house naked or to take off your clothes in the tree.

It feels good to get the naked man to come down from there by a 
   series
of gentle commands and take him by the elbow or her by the hand
   and
lead him to his home like you would care for a bird or a human
   heart.
Still if you want instead, for once, to hear about how the person
   came to be
standing there, naked, outside, you should talk to me right now,
   quickly,
before I forget the details of this way that I feel. I feel like walking
   out.

Jennifer Michael Hecht


17 comments:

  1. I've had you on my mind so much lately, hope you're feeling the love coming your way, there, in your naked state.

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  2. You are loved. I am here, even if it doesn't seem so and even if being alongside is all I can offer. May your burdens be light, if only for a brief moment , if only for the hope of something other than

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  3. Peel it all off and go naked, I say. Bare it all and bathe yourself in the knowledge that you are loved and surrounded by a nimbus of light.

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  4. Keeping you in my mind and heart. Sweet Jo

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  5. Wow. There may be desperation in that nakedness, but maybe a bizarre freedom, too.

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  6. My comment on a previous post seems to have been eaten. Please know that you are enough. Please do not despair, if it is at all possible not to. It is important to be kind to yourself right now. Speak gently to yourself. If possible, sit in the sun. I'm sending my love to all of you.

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  7. Love and definitely empathy to you, Elizabeth.

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  8. I'm around if you feel like chatting.

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  9. "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." -- Abraham Joshua Heschel
    You are enough, just being, sitting, breathing. You are beloved, you are blessed, you are holy.

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  10. i am feeling this as well. for some unacknowledged and some ignored reasons. this poem helped me though. so thank you. and love to you.

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  11. Wish I lived in LA, would like to come over and visit. Stay with Sophie, help with cupcakes, listen.

    Sometimes the burdens are too heavy and you have to just let go of everything for a while.

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  12. Uh oh, you're having an Anne Tyler, Ladder of Years moment, aren't you? I wish I lived closer. I would shuffle over and offer you a sip -no make that a gulp- of my cocktail.

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  13. Wow. If I leave my house naked and climb up a tree, I'm gonna nail that poem to the trunk first.

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