Wednesday 11 March 2020

saying goodbye

I am trying to bring some order to a few shelves in our library and to sort through papers and half-filled notebooks.

Of course, this becomes simply an excuse to look through piles of notes carefully tucked into file folders marked "save".

It is also a time to utter "OH, that's where it is", although the purpose of finding it is long forgotten.

For a short while, when vacationing in Sedona, my friend Nancy and I met to spend a couple of hours together writing.

We followed Natalie Goldberg's model from her 1986 book, Writing Down the Bones. We would choose a word or two as a prompt and then say"Go!", generally spending between 5 and 10  minutes on each exercise.




Keeping the pen moving.  No crossing out.

Then we read our short pieces to each other.

Today I found one of my notebooks from that time.

Warning!  This writing burst from 2001 is entirely unedited!


  * a photograph from 1998

"saying goodbye

The cycle of life - beginnings and endings hellos goodbyes
birth. youth, adulthood, old age and then death.

Holding on doesn't help, really
time is stronger than my fingers,
grasping, tugging.

The hours, the days and the years,
the calendar from 2000 replaced by 2001
to be replaced in a week, it seems, with 2002.

Here I am at a crossroads again
preparing to say goodbye to our life in Sedona.
12 years wintering here among the Red Rocks.

It is time.

It is time to say goodbye with grace, with love, with understanding.

Understanding that my body is old-
older that it was in 2000
My limbs more fragile, more complaining.

Understanding my life is less adaptable
to the coming back and forth into 2 different cities,
two very different existences.

Goodbye, not only to Sedona,
but to my more youthful self, my stronger body.

Saying goodbye to one thing is really an opportunity to welcome a new beginning.

If there is no void, there can be nothing new appearing to fill the space.

Goodbye and Welcome!"


                                        old in 2001?   old at 58?   no way!

Here I am in 2020, having traveled four times this past year to Havana where I gathered images for my 2019 solo photography show, Fragments.

Here I am in 2020, still working hard in the garden while continuing to do small acts of kindness in our community

                yes, "My limbs more fragile, more complaining." but still not old!












1 comment:

  1. I read your whole blog dating way back. I love your photos so just kept reading your musings on and on and on ..

    ReplyDelete