Still Sundays
May 29th.
Differences that don’t make a difference. Memory is a fog on the glasses of now. Art flows to the surface of some medium from an undersoul.
If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the first three paragraphs. Thanks.
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Memorial Day weekend.
Thank you to all those who served to protect. I am sorry I don’t feel safe but I appreciate the effort. I really do. Maybe you didn’t know there would be another war, and another, and another.
A weekend dedicated to shopping, barbecuing, first trips to the beach, family gatherings, national media events. I hope you feel honored.
Monday is a holiday where we celebrate the brevity of the upcoming week where we have so much to do because Monday was a holiday.
Do we really need someone to die to understand busy is not always productive, money can’t buy time, stillness is available beyond a long weekend?
Maybe.
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I met a stranger yesterday (one of the many) while walking around the City. We had a brief exchange. At the end of the exchange he said his name wasn’t Matt as he had told me in the beginning. I replied, “Oh.” He said, “A city of 8 million people, a random run-in, and you would have never even known the difference.” I told him that his name didn’t per se make a difference anyway given I am not good with names.
Then what makes a difference?
I thought quickly and replied, “That you commented I had long fingers so I must be an artist. I have never thought my fingers as lengthy. Perhaps because I have always thought of my sister’s, brother’s, and father’s fingers as such and mine never appeared long comparatively. More like my mother’s. That you noticed this while I was signing the receipt for my tea. That it made me miss my sister’s hands and how it annoys her when I touch her fingers just to annoy her. All of those thoughts stuffed in a minute to be forgotten too soon makes a difference. To me. For now.”
I smiled and as I was about to walk out the store he said, “My name really is Matt.”
“Probably. Not that my knowing that would have made any difference.”
What we think makes a difference hardly makes a difference sometimes. Often.
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A palm reader saw me from a distance two weeks ago. I know my hands very well, thank you. Could he tell me something about the lines on my feet? They are the ones I wear out walking in circles of decisions. Not many pay attention to their feet except a pedicure. I want a pedicure for the soul. Massage and polish and all.
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Before there was e-mail I had, now an almost obsolete term, a “pen-pal”.
I was in a small desert village in the Middle East and she was somewhere in New Hampshire. We were very young. She had placed an advertisement in a literary children’s magazine, one of its kind, that my parents too subscribed for me. Her address was not disclosed of course. I would send a letter to the magazine addressed to her and they would forward her my letter and if she decided to reply then we could have one another’s addresses and continue the communication. Her note in the magazine had said something about writing letters to a friend, a girl, in a far away place. I didn’t know where New Hampshire was other than it was in the United States and I had always felt far away anyway. I think the desert does that to you. You are and you are not here.
We were not even ten then. We exchanged long hand-written letters and then photos. I didn’t understand how she had two mothers and two fathers. My mother said not to worry about it, sometimes it happens. She didn’t understand how there weren’t many schools near where I lived. We were too young to judge anything and were not interested in much other than the idea of our stories flying across oceans through some magic known as mail.
Then to both of our surprise my family moved to the United States. We still kept in touch, now quicker. She was beautiful and was going to model in high school. This lead to anorexia and the recovery from it. Our letters continued and although we saw our paths diverging we just couldn’t let go of keeping in touch.
Now if we don’t know the meaning of something right away we must let go immediately. Now we want something even more instant than instant gratification, we simply desire instant, regardless if it is gratifying or not.
Then we had email. Finally. We emailed one another from AOL accounts that neither one of us has now. Our last exchange was how her husband—she got married very young—had been deployed to Iraq. She was also a mother. I didn’t even have a boyfriend so it was hard to relate.
“Annie, the desert he describes is nothing like I remember.”
What she remembered were my memories. My tiny words made of run-on stars and dust storms and a boy that only existed in my eight year old imagination.
Memory is a fog on the glasses of now.
I have tried searching for her through other people’s facebook accounts given I don’t have facebook. She did change her last name after she was married which I can’t recall. I am sure if I dug through her letters, buried somewhere in a box of belongings at my parents’ barn in California, I will have her mother’s address.
I think it is easier to be pals if you use a pen, although heart-felt emails nowadays come close. It’s not the same. I am no different than others now: why are we keeping in touch? One is never enough, next, next, more, more…gone, gone.
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On June 6th it will be a year I have been sharing my writings from Sundays in this online medium.
A spring is any natural situation where water flows to the surface of the earth from underground. The groundwater then travels through a network of cracks and fissures—openings ranging from intergranular spaces to large caves. The water eventually emerges from below the surface, in the form of a spring.
The term seep refers to springs with small flow rates in which the source water has filtered into permeable earth. Fracture springs, discharge from faults, joints, or fissures in the earth, in which springs have followed a natural course of voids or weaknesses in the bedrock. Tubular springs are essentially water dissolved and created underground channels, basically cave systems.
Creating is a natural situation where art flows to the surface of some medium from an undersoul.
We never hit empty, we just hit deep. That’s where most of us quit. In yoga, in relationships, in art.
We seek inspiration because we think it is on the outside. Good God! Give me anything but what is inside…
“Rest if you need to, but quitting is not a good practice.” ~ Marco Rojas
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Twice a year, Manhattan and Mother Nature align for a splendid display known as “Manhattanhenge.” The biannual event marks the setting sun’s perfect alignment along Manhattan’s east-west cross-streets, when city streets are bathed in gorgeous light. This year it will take place on May 30 and July 12.
For about thirty minutes before sunset, both the south and north sides of Manhattan’s cross streets will be illuminated as the sun glides into its dead-center position relative to the grid.
Stillness continues…
…it just brings forth different minerals from the well within.
You have these pearls dropped here and there among your thoughts. Today it was “We seek inspiration because we think it is on the outside.” When I came across it, I had to stop a minute and wonder. In fact, I’ll be thinking about this one while I have some tea. I expect there’s a lot to consider about the nature of inspiration.
Dear Jack,
Thank you. I don’t know if they are pearls….besides it takes a patient fisherman to fish all day for shells that may or may not have pearls….so it must be your thoughts that carry you to my corner where words resonate… I appreciate.
Yes, I believe it’s all within…. of course sometimes certain people or things or anything ‘outside’ can ignite something withIN…but if you practice enough, you realize that too is within… patience, disciplined practice, and stillness… I think….
Letters… how we seem to have forgotten how to do them :~(
I have a drawer full of old letters from friends who moved away…
and from soldiers I never met.. who I wrote to through the first war in Iraq.. sorry if I don’t remember when that was.. I just remember his joy at having someone to write to.. we wrote alot.
a whole year of still sundays… wow time just flows when you aren’t paying attention to it
guess creativity is like that too.. it flows and it is only when we stop to think.. how the hell did I do that… that we loose the track..
so with that in mind… just let go.
enjoy the alignment of the sun in city
enjoy your week
Thank you for your words and sharing your energy here.
In a sociology class in high school we had to write letters to prisoners…and then the school canceled that idea…I thought it was a good idea.
I am sure that soldier or others really appreciated your efforts.
yes, i plan on enjoying some kind of alignment indeed. on and off the yoga mat.
It’s sort of embarrassing, but once when I was a kid I created a fictitious pen pal from Egypt and hid the letters detailing an elaborate escape plot for my Egyptian girlfriend and her uncle in the bushes around the neighborhood, hoping they’d be fooled, even if I never knew about it (I know, I know. Dishonest, but I was bored). They were discovered, alright, but that’s a story for another time. Oh, and I had real pen pals, too. 🙂
Hello Jamie…
Thanks for sharing your funny fictitious pen-pal story….and that you had real pen pals too…but of course you did. You are cool like that.
“Do we really need someone to die to understand busy is not always productive, money can’t buy time, stillness is available beyond a long weekend?”
Zing! Yeah, that said it. A cultural triumph of custom deviating from substance … a little like glorifying a tree after some obscure pagan custom to celebrate the birth of Jesus, which probably actually happened in the September-October timeframe anyway …
To finish my slightly self-righteous harangue, I’ll state that I actually will be attending a Memorial Day service in the morning tomorrow, where a close friend of the family lies buried. The tears will be real, and there will be no barbecued ribs or potato salad.
— Daniel
Dear Daniel,
Thank you for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. I wish you a meaningful day of remembrance for the Memorial Day service tomorrow.
Also, I appreciate your humor and accuracy in sharing the ‘cultural triumph of custom deviating from substance’ … but some would argue that is what makes culture: whatever we decide is the substance and customs.
Since the story of your correspondence with your pen-pal was one of appreciation and loss, it felt something like a memorial. We can mourn a lost link with someone, the unreachability of their life ongoing elsewhere. I hope you do find her, or she finds you again, when the time is right.
I had a pen-pal when I was 10, arranged for us with a 5th-grade class in Long Island. I remember my last long letter, complete with my crayon drawing of a horse, which somehow never got mailed and then it seemed too late. I don’t remember her name, I’m sad to say (was it Susan?) but I remember mentally turning over and over again the place names of her home (Massapequa Park) and vacation spot (Saranac Lake). For some reason, those places sounded strange and distant to me then, even in the same state. How little I knew.
Thanks for calling something up from the deep, for a lot of us, who sent handwritten words out on faith, for a time. It’s good to remember those people again, wherever they might be.
~lucy
Amazing that your pen-pal’s memories of the desert were formed through her contact with your words, your vision, which I am sure was powerful and vivid even then. She reached out and you were there during difficult times for her. ~lucy
yes, Lucy, isn’t that wild? the impressions that form our memories? The ‘image’ I have of New Hampshire is very much a childhood memory based on imagination of another young child! The colors of trees, the woods, the kind of people… hmm…that is a story in itself now that I think about it.
Hi Lucy,
Thank you for stopping by and your comment. I always appreciate your thoughts. For some reason the crayon drawing of a horse and names of places also leave a vivid imprint as I read your words. Perhaps that is how we associate other memories…not with the actual event or person but where they took us.
Kind thanks, always.
I think its very important to have ‘memory days’ or so called Memorial Day…for humans have very short memories, they very quickly forget things with passage of time. It’s strange that today on 29th may..is my mom’s 34th death anniversary. And every year I call my other siblings and remind /recall about our mother’s ‘memory day’….to acknowledge, appreciate and salute to all the sacrifices our mother made for us.That is why I believe in ‘memory day’ for all those people who are no longer with us, but left some impressions on our current lives and how we would be …leaving something better for future generations.The recycling of goodness on ‘memory day’ is a thing to keep remembering otherwise our memories have a very short life.
Dear Nayla,
It is always a pleasure when you stop by with your words and stories. I appreciate it very much. I really like this and am taking it with me for a long time: “The recycling of goodness on ‘memory day’ is a thing to keep remembering otherwise our memories have a very short life.”
Thank you.
Annie,
Thank you.
Dan
: )
Life is an endless learning.
I love your post “Still Sunday”, i start to read it few weeks ago, i feel very Connection to what u wrote here , and the Questions u ask.
Oh yes…the Questions, every things, every line, make me more to think and you Strengthens me maybe without even meaning, but you do.
More to think, more to do, more to live, now and then.
Thank you, kindly, Missy for such generous words. I appreciate you stopping by and sharing your thoughtful encouragement.
Came across this excellent article on writing letters.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/05/hieroglyphics-and-written-kisses-ghostbusters-and-champollion.html
Thank you for this wonderful post, Annie (even if I only now got the chance to comment though I’ve been meaning to for the past 4 days at least) 🙂
I absolutely love what you wrote about writing and creating. I think you’re right, when we hit deep that is when most quit instead of embracing it and keep going…
I also had penpals when I was young. For me it was a chance to imagine myself living somewhere else, a way to escape the everyday life. I love your sentence ‘We were too young to judge anything’ (just wrote you about this earlier today) and also ‘We seek inspiration because we think it is on the outside’. That reminds me how people are desperately seeking for happiness but don’t realize that you have to find it in yourself. You just wrote to me yesterday that ‘it takes a very confident spirit to encourage another’ and I think that when you know that inspiration and happiness are in yourself, it helps in being confident. Well, I do have my lapses, but you know.. in the ideal world… 🙂
oh, and I really hope to see Manhattanhenge some day!