“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain..."

Loss: Last week I attended a funeral for a friend's child. I was her teacher once... twice. Her life ended early, deliberately, tragically. I do not want to fathom, or even try to fathom, any of the emotions that surrounded her last weeks, days, moments. Nor do I want to imagine the moments now replaying forever for those closest to her, and all that comes with trying to move forward—together I hope.

I do not know how to find meaning or purpose in such an end. I am not sure I am meant to, or that any of us are. I do know that the village came together after the end. It was not too late, despite the instinct to ask that question, "What did we do... could we have done?" It was. And we are. But we have lost one of our own. We hurt, and miss her, and come up longing... How we proceed is where we might succeed. Voices of healing arrived. Compassion trumped judgement and we proceed slowly forward... 

MoCA: I attended an art show this weekend. Student art covered the walls, telling stories and capturing my sense of amazement. How talented the young ones are! My student who is gone—my friend's daughter—won an award at this show once. She was a photographer, usually capturing the silly, but sometimes capturing the beautiful and the deep. She had a sense of the aesthetic, and there was a strong will in her. 

Painting after photograph after sculpture whispering, or shouting, or plainly speaking, of ideas, and emotions, and moments inexpressible in written words. Some of these artists are just finding their voices, while others are well rehearsed in expression and purpose.

And there was music, and crowds celebrating these voices and the stories they are trying to tell. Kids, each in their own mode, accompanied the art. Strutting about, quietly listening in, hanging on the periphery. What a scene...

Finale: I have mixed emotions in pairing T.S. Eliot's poem, Preludes, to this post. I have no subtle intentions or commentary. Don't read into my pairing too much. It just seems to fit somehow. I have moved through sadness this past week. I found myself avoiding my sorrow, and embracing it, each in turn, and am wishing to move beyond it. It has been a bitter/sweet, trying to pay respect and to continue to celebrate. This is the feeling I get when I think about T.S. Eliot, bitter and sweet. 

I like Eliot's poetry, especially Prelude. I found it in high school when I was trying to be an artist of sorts. I was struggling in so many ways to find my way, and found some measure of peace in guidance from Messrs. Bulkley and Schmick, teachers of creative writing and poetry. They supported students, no matter what. What a great lesson for me to try to embrace...

So Eliot seemed to belong in my post, and I offer up his words as a moment that just is... 

Preludes

I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.