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VIVIENNE TUFFNELL has written an evocative post:
https://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/a-vessel-of-ashes/
Please go and pay her a visit, will you?
This is the comment I wrote her which I thought some of you out there might need to read as well:
"Robert Frost was once asked what he had learned about life. He said: “Three words. It goes on.”
You have power over the moment in which you live.
The last choice is still yours:
the choice in how to respond to these troubling times. No one can take that choice from you.
You are a vessel of ashes only if you see yourself as such. I prefer to see you as a vessel of seeds being poured out onto each new day.
Grow where you are. Flower when you can. Endure under the blue skies over which politicians have no power.
You will be in my thoughts. I have faith in you, Roland"
Oddly enough today is the day in 1793 that the British poet, John Clare, was born.
Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced.
No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self."
Of course, he was mocked and shunned during his lifetime,
spending the last 25 years of his life in an asylum, High Beach,
when his poverty and depression brought on delusions he was Lord Byron or a prize fighter.
Here is his famous "I am."
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
You have power over the moment in which you live.
The last choice is still yours:
the choice in how to respond to these troubling times. No one can take that choice from you.
You are a vessel of ashes only if you see yourself as such. I prefer to see you as a vessel of seeds being poured out onto each new day.
Grow where you are. Flower when you can. Endure under the blue skies over which politicians have no power.
You will be in my thoughts. I have faith in you, Roland"
Oddly enough today is the day in 1793 that the British poet, John Clare, was born.
Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced.
No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self."
Of course, he was mocked and shunned during his lifetime,
spending the last 25 years of his life in an asylum, High Beach,
when his poverty and depression brought on delusions he was Lord Byron or a prize fighter.
Here is his famous "I am."
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
Exceptional comment you left for Viviene. Would that the world embrace those thoughts; allowing those that wither to flourish in their rightful light.
ReplyDeleteI just cringe thinking of how John Clare "was placed" in an asylum, rather than someone reaching out to help and encourage.
John Clare was lured into the asylum with the promise of a fast remedy. He died there a quarter of a century later. :-(
DeleteThanks, Diedre, for your comment it made my weary evening! :-)
I am amazed how he expressed himself despite this hell-hole of life. I am. Robert frost...it goes on. Me: you're right, God.
ReplyDeleteSusan, obviously his mind still was discerning in spite of his situation. I quote David a lot: My times are in Your Hand. :-)
DeleteMost of us experience dark times at some point in our lives - I certainly have. I always say to myself 'it will pass' because however bad I feel I know that it will not be forever and it gives me comfort to know this.
ReplyDeleteSusan at
Travel, Fiction and Photos
Some things do not pass, or if they do, we pass along with them. But you are right: the transitory nature of most ills make enduring them easier if thought upon. :-)
Delete