Is it Really True?
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.
Edwin Way Teale, “Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist’s Year”
The time will come when, with elation
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the others welcome,
And say, sit here.
Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
By Derek Walcott
My friend Sally sent me this poem several month ago. I take it as a message to make peace with oneself. Before we forgive others, we must forgive ourselves.
Another version of this theme is found in a jingle my mom taught to me when I left her house one day. It goes like this:
I’ve gone out to look for myself, if I should return before I get back, keep me here.
And finally a quote by David Bowie:
Aging is an extraordinary process whereby
You become the person you always should have been.”
I like David’s quote because we race through life trying to figure out what we want to be and do when we grow up, only to realize that our true selves were within us all the time. I like to relive the idyllic aspects of my childhood and re-create them whenever I can. Things like chasing butterflies and collecting crickets for that much loathed science project you had to do at the beginning of every school year. I hated jabbing those pins into the thoraces of those poor insects and sticking them on cardboard poster board. Egads! then you had to label them. I went back to chasing butterflies instead and looking at wildflowers in the field, and consequently failed the school assignment. I’m happy I failed, because to this day I can come back to myself and the child that lives within, and say:
This is who I was, this is who I am. GRB
Before it goes out like a lamb, it’s time to talk about the month of March. Looking back in history we’ll remember this month, in 2020, as the time when the Coronavirus grew exponentially in the U.S.A. Not that we weren’t forewarned, by the explosion taking place in Europe, preceded by China, and Iran, etc., etc.. in previous weeks. Covid-19’s here to stay for a long time; forty five days until we see a peak, eighteen months before life goes back to normal, if it ever does. In the long haul a positive outcome to this situation can be found within ourselves; find ways to beat it psychologically, remain optimistic, and use it to be more creative and productive in our personal lives. Take up painting, the piano, reading novels, writing as much as we can. How can we reach out, and help others, and bring them into our lives? What special talents do we have that we can share? There are certainly people living in a more precarious habitat, in which I’m living. Selfishly I hope I don’t catch the virus, or be a carrier and less selfishly, pass it on to someone else. So, where do we go from here? The answer seems to be nowhere, nothing versus something, and now being never. What is true is we are all vulnerable. No-one is exempt.
Back to March. What do we know about this third month of the calendar year, which during Roman Times was the first, and not the third of the year? A month named after the god of war, called Mars. Special days in particular yearn to be celebrated. Such as St. Patrick’s day, on the 17th, especially by the Irish, but even if you haven’t an ounce of Irish in your blood, you’re always welcome to partake in Irish generosity.
On the 15th of March, back in Roman Times, an old woman warned Julius Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March.” Against his wife’s best wishes Caesar ignored the oracle and ventured out into the Roman forum only to be assassinated, and find moments before he fell to his death that his best friend had betrayed him; thus the famous quote “Et tu Brutus?” The circumstance is a reminder to follow the wisdom of Shakespeare spoken in one of his plays “Love all, trust a few, and do wrong to no-one.” And, in the wake of the Corona19, to listen to the oracle; Stay home, protect yourselves, and others.
Since I am a curious person, who seeks novelty in all things possible to brush away the the sins of idleness, and boredom, I have a trivia fact for March. Does anyone know what September, October, November and December stand for? I found this out the other day through a post by the Farmer’s Almanac. The meaning of the prefixes of these months in latin follow suit with March being the first month of the year, for Sept means seven, Octo, eight, Nove, nine, and Dece, ten. So whatever happened to January and February? There is an answer, but at this moment, I can only say; “I do not know it.” Just like there are answers surrounding the mysteries of the Coronavirus, but for now uncertainty reigns, and only time will tell.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
Shelly
I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a person of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, do you get that? Because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in sideshows.
Ralph Ellison “The Invisible Man” 1947
On Tiffany Creek 