What You See, What You Get

A sunny day, but very busy with things that are not what I'd rather do; and at the back of my mind, a seed of panic: the realization we are halfway through November, already. My small window of opportunity (for an intensive studio week) was shattered by a hurricane.

All around, fallen forests remind me, every day, of lives still not recovered, homes and families, uprooted, exposed. There are scores upon scores of us waking to ask ourselves, "Now, where was I?"

November, 2012, Rosemont, New Jersey

This Life is full of numbness and of balk,
Of haltingness and baffled shortcoming,
Of promise unfulfilled, of everything
That is puffed vanity and empty talk:
Its very bud hangs cankered on the stalk,
Its very song-bird trails a broken wing,
Its very Spring is not indeed like Spring,
But sighs like Autumn round an aimless walk.
This Life we live is dead for all its breath;
Death's self it is, set off on pilgrimage,
Travelling with tottering steps the first short stage:
The second stage is one mere desert dust
Where Death sits veiled amid creation's rust:--
Unveil thy face, O Death who art not Death.

~ Christina Rossetti