SATURDAY 8th & SUNDAY 9th
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Rod on Maui, August 2003.
Photo by John Scoggins.
©2003 by Stanyan Entertainment.
A Thought for Today
Kindness is the link between earth and heaven.
THE WEEKEND WATCH
PLANS
Plan One
Celebrations of the heart do not come easy. Yet they abound and sound around us, waiting
only for the merrymakers to enter and start the revelry.
Rather than confound a new love with confetti or take one unaware by putting on the kind
of mask that puts one off, open up. Let go. The worst you'll come away with is a tin horn
blaring in your ear, a firecracker burn, or someone's hastily scribbled address wadded in
your pocket.
Pinatas and Christmas crackers abound in celebrations small and large, needing only to be
broken open. Go then with a cane and wave it in the air. The festival begins when you are
ready - not a moment sooner.
Plan Two
Starts and stops are everything. They are in themselves a beginning and an end. But more,
within them lies the only pleasure life affords. I regret no love affair however small or
temporary. I do not blame those who promised fidelity for always, then tired and went
away. I rejoice that I have known the company of giants, even for a small time.
If I have regrets or feel inadequate, it comes from quarrels of my own making. Blindness
to apology... sonnets made from sincerity that later proved untrue.
I regret that I was not born with a mind as winning as some I wooed and won.
But I believe that there will always be a second chance, an opportunity for correction.
Plan Three
Walk out into the darkness and look up. What you see is not a single star but many. Too
few to fill so vast a sky but more than enough for God to jingle in his pockets.
Looking at stars becomes for some an avocation (a simple step to rhyme that word with
emulation). But if you stargaze long enough you learn that no two fire balls or
constellations are alike. And the star that shines the brightest is the one most
different. Conclusion: Resolve to be more different and unique. No. Be unique by being
you. No one else can lay claim to you smile or the odd assorted ticks and twitches that
jerk the muscles of your brain and body.
Plan Four
It rained today. All day. Everything was the sound of rain. Children laughing in the
streets, police whistles, cars splashing mud at one another - even the music on the radio
sounded like the rain.
Tonight the storm's fatigued enough to stop. Or it's resting only long enough to catch a
second breath. Earlier I walked down past the railway station. Sometimes on rainy nights I
forgot I'm in a foreign country.
It's about twelve-thirty now, nearly everybody's gone to bed. The rain's a barrier. A good
excuse for going out, a better one for staying home.
How odd it is that we need make excuses to ourselves for odd behavior, like staying home
and in one room. Or walking straight ahead into the storm's most inner eye.
Often I think rooms are the only safe places left. Garret rooms, changing rooms and
bedrooms as opposed to ballrooms and waiting rooms and auditoriums. Rooms to climb into,
change in and finally rooms where sleep comes easy. A room within a room would be the
safest place of all. An interior hiding place where only those with proper maps and charts
could find you.
Loving sunshine, I have lately been as satisfied beneath skylights as I have beneath
stars. Only the rain worries me. I worry that it won't come. I worry that it will.
I am not a rainmaker. For shaping rain or making it, I have no plan. But I promise you
that silent rooms are much preferred to those that jog and jostle you to boredom and to
death.
Plan Five
We are the hunters, not the hunted. In the bars or on the jousting field, we are the
seekers.
Not lost, we are only between findings. Looking up from silence into noon and noise.
Staring past tomorrow. Willing we are to try any new way if it will lead us from the old.
Plan Six
The war is over now or just beginning. Peace, however hard an interval to made do with,
will have to be made do with. I am speaking here of inner wars, childhood meeting age,
despair overtaking hope, hope vanishing despair. The no man's land between what we see and
what we think we see, that must be crossed.
For me the war is over, this week. I have stopped the pendulum of thought that swings so
widely and made it come to rest on but a single subject. Going back. A final, thoughtful
look at that terrain and those last outposts of my not so filled up childhood.
The earth is not our dwelling place, we're meant to rattle here suspended. All the while
birth watches us till dying. Some of us cheat death by living our childhood twice, three,
four times over.
I cannot remember ever having been a sapling. Nor am I yet a tree. When I was younger I
was older and now I'm more a child than I should be. Still as I observe my friends and
those men not so friendly I find the ones I trust and do believe a Belcher Landing of
their own that they retreat / return to. It may be a lean-to cabin lived in at the age of
nine, a dog at Christmas, half eleven. Kane's rosebud sled, Jim Kirkwood's pony. A swing
within a field within a young girl's mind only. A swing within a Summer that was or wasn't
but returns and is.
The mind should have a safe place it can go to ramble. Yours might be in Saint Johns Wood
or Blissville, Indiana. I have a friend whose mind vacation is nearly always spent
barefoot in Tyler, Texas, another half his age who still plays bells in Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band.
You can go home again, despite your Thomas Wolfe. Never do so on the train, but on the
train of thought.
Plan Seven
Move ahead.
Plan Eight
Pull the covers closer. Add another blanket if you need to. Winter can't be trusted. And
yet your policy should be: In everything I trust.
- from "Celebrations of the
Heart", 1975
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