Abandon Hope. That's funny. We can't and we never really do. Give a person a piece of ground no bigger than his/her feet surrounded on all sides by the eternal void, naked, cold, without food or water, what would s/he do? Camus says stand there. That is Man's Fate, he suggests. The only philosophical question is suicide.
Yet we need not set our feet on such hostile ground. Yesterday--as the day before and the day before that on into a seemingly endless string of days, as today will be--was heartbreakingly gorgeous. And still. . . .
I had to make myself move. I thought to walk away my mood, three and a half miles to the gym, workout, and then back. I stopped at Country Club College, a private school resort on the lake by my home, and lay out on a dock to get some sun. Two coeds had beaten me there, lounging in bathing suits, eating a skinny lunch. I said hello, sorry for the intrusion, then lay down and closed my eyes. What a glorious thing to lay under that perfectly blue sky without humidity in the cool air, the sun warming my skin listening to the gentle, happy voices of girls with nothing but hope. I didn't follow much of what they said, only the lilting song of their voices, the new cadences and intonations they have learned from kid reality shows and Paris Hilton. They were, of course, quite aristocratic. It was lovely if you could keep from thinking that you were not that.
Saturated, I made my way home. I wanted something to happen, some event to make me new, to change my life. You see? Hope. False hope, maybe, but hope nonetheless. And as always, I realized that hope can give over in an instant to despair, and having had enough of that in a lifetime, I thought to put it away and to stay simply within the bounds of melancholy, that almost sweet state bordering on sadness, for you see, there is a melancholy smile.
After cleaning up and having lunch, I poured a glass of wine and took a book to the patio surrounded by gardens. I would expect nothing grand, I said, I would simply let this day wash over and around me, simply breathe it's beauty into me. So there was that, the quality of the light and the shadows and the textures I have surrounded myself with, rich and thick and deep. If you are to be melancholy, I said, then this is the beautiful way.
And as the sun went down, the full moon rose, that brightest and largest of moons, an old friend come visiting. The moon is always melancholy, a melancholy friend, but nothing more. I felt no madness pull at me, only the old, familiar longing and the old, faint pain of distance and time, the vision of how I was and how I am destined to be. 
The sun is up now. Nothing has changed as far as I can see. The early walkers are parading by as the sun rises above the trees. I have duties that I have avoided, things that must be done. And I will do them, tomorrow if not today, for with Man's Hope comes Man's Fate. As Hemingway probably said, there was that to do, then it was done. 
Drunk on sun. It's a marvelous feeling. When I make my annual trip to visit my Floridian relatives --I only want to do three things -- get drunk on sun, hike Fakahatchee Strand and play with my remarkable niece Grace while getting drunk on sun.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time I asked my brother to pull off the road to check out Fakahatchee --being married to a woman who screams at the sight of spiders, he doesn't get the outdoor adventures we grew up on. He had lived in Florida for about 5 years and hadn't even been to the Everglades which was where we were coming back from. Anyway, I was up for anything called a "Strand."
That first time I got to the end of the boardwalk and saw what I saw, I thought two things, the first was that I'd reached Eden and the second, after blinking back all that was in front of me, was that someone had "set this up."
Of course that wasn't the case, indeed the humongous mother alligator, in a glorious repose about 3 feet from my own legs, calling to her babies in that throaty way I'd always heard on National Geographic and the babies -answering back and making ess swerves in the water toward her after some toddler alligator adventuring and the two curled up cottonmouths in the bowl of treebark and the Audubon painting of water fowl -- fishing and flapping, opening their wings as if on hinges was all very real. It was Nature all Beauty and Danger. Quiet.
Where am I going I wonder, with this?
It could take the safe turn past the eagle nest or the slinky otters poking their bodies in and out of the muck of the swamp as if they were sewing it together or it could take the more dangerous route and recall the photograph I had my brother take as we were walking back to the car and found ourselves completely taken by surprise by the very large alligator that had made its way into the small pool of water next to our parked car ---
my son and I standing there- next to it within touching distance. WHAT KIND OF MOTHER AM I? For later we'd find out that April is a very dangerous month to be taking photos of yourself next to alligators... (probably anytime huh?)
No, I'll let this go the peaceful route -the way of that poem I wrote that night, about the giant Moon that followed us home that Egg Moon, full and pink.
It appeared like some type of spiritual offering. I wanted to melt it on my tongue -- dissolve it into my body there in the utter silence of the car -- three of us unable to really process into language our surprising plunge back into the swamp, our original homeland.
And how awful I felt migrating back to the gated community -- the perfectly shelved boobs of Naples....
Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.
Emily Dickinson
and my favorite hope quote:
Hope is the dream of the soul awake.
Peace, Love & Understanding, Cafe Selavy.
okay, okay...maybe I won't abandon hope!
ReplyDeleteLisa,
ReplyDeleteSun drunk. I like that. Sun drunk, moon drunk, sky drunk, wind drunk. Wine, then whiskey.
Rhonda,
I never believed you had. I say it, too, but it never lasts. We are too foolish for it to last.
I love this one - the photos are great and the writing as always.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you had a good day :)