Holding the Rope
From How Beautiful The Beloved by Gregory Orr
Grief will come to you. You will lose
The beloved. Grip and cling
All you want, it makes no difference.
Catastrophe? - it's just waiting to happen.
Loss? - you can be certain of it.
Flow and swirl of the world.
Carried along as if by dark current.
All you can do is keep swimming;
All you can do is keep singing.
That single line: a rope
The poem tossed out
Into the dark,
Into the river's swirl.
You're holding one end;
The beloved, the other.
Rescue is imminent.
Too soon to say whose.
Comments and faves
p2wy (64 months ago | reply)
bizarre!
--
Seen in my contacts' photos. (?)
sheryl stephen / WaveOfModulation (64 months ago | reply)
so hopeful and optimistic: "Rescue is imminent."
so true: "Too soon to say whose."
ThatDustyTrail.com (64 months ago | reply)
Wow, love that photo! Those trees are almost mirror images.
rajue (64 months ago | reply)
Fantastic!
torbakhopper added this photo to their favorites. (64 months ago)
torbakhopper (64 months ago | reply)
the difference btwn
fengschwing (64 months ago | reply)
Those trees aren't talking to each other anymore...
fengschwing added this photo to his favorites. (64 months ago)
bootpainter (64 months ago | reply)
The bleak truth, alas.
Egon van Engelen and tatoloop added this photo to their favorites.
tatoloop (64 months ago | reply)
automatic fave!
SpaceCadet37 (64 months ago | reply)
Mistery itself...nice work M !!
pallamaio added this photo to their favorites. (64 months ago)
Robert Loerzel (64 months ago | reply)
I love pictures of oddly shaped trees... and this is a great one.
S'Murf (64 months ago | reply)
Great tones and atmosphere. From pair of robots to pair of trees...is there an underlying message somewhere? :)
Oldvidhead (64 months ago | reply)
I love your thought train now. Wonderful works both photographic and literary.
kirstiecat (64 months ago | reply)
I want to put those trees together and make the world whole again.
Dalmatica (64 months ago | reply)
it's 'space oddity'...
hard not to wish to fix the world... and sometimes it seems that it's easier to move those trees than to affect (positive) change. and yet, change is the only thing we can count on.
igaj12 (64 months ago | reply)
nice...really nice...
Jumpin'Jack (64 months ago | reply)
Love the near symmetry of the trees.
And that poem doesn't leave much space for hope. But when hope is gone, there's really nothing left...
Dalmatica (64 months ago | reply)
what is hope, Jack?
isn't it something that is projected into the future? and if we concentrate on that - we are missing the now.
it is really complicated for us humans.
we need to plan for tomorrow, but we need to live in today.
how to reconcile the two? takes a lot of work, and constant wakefulness.
also, if we are focusing on the problems, rather than the outcomes that we want to have in life, problems is all we manifest.
i know that i'm guility of that too, but here i am , trying to remind myself that i should know better.
Jumpin'Jack (64 months ago | reply)
Good question.
Hope is one of those hard-to-define elusive subjective things, like honour you mentioned at your other photo.
But if "hope" is something we project in the future as you said (and I agree with that), then "honour" is an image of ourselves we've built in the past and tend to cling to now (hence actually making us to cling to the past).
I agree that present is more important than either the future or past. But the future is IMHO definitely much more important than past.
While it's possible to forget about the future and live just for the moment (something I never really completely learned how to, though I do try to advance in that direction), that's extremely hard to do when the hardest of times befall you. When the present becomes way too hard to bear, all that remains is the hope of better future. If not for yourself, then for your children or whomever will come after you (even if it's only the Nature itself). That's how some people survived thru trials that literally killed other people (who lost their hope) in the same situation.
You asked whether one would die for hir honour (and mentioned family as one form of the honour).
I read that yesterday, but didn't want to comment on it, since I was tired and I just don't think so clear in the evening. I hope I can state it better today: honour is a very good thing to have - as long you don't confuse it with pride. Pride OTOH is of very dubious quality. Good in some circumstances, but a burden - even a foolishness in other.
Though honour, by my book, has its limits too. Defend it too hard, and it soon becomes a matter of pride or even spite. (I'm sure you know the proverb "Od inata nema goreg' zanata".)
And I'm not speaking of culturally-conditioned honour (like patriotism or even religious beliefs - such honour gets much closer to pride than most people would be prepared to admit and I don't care much for any of such - wouldn't even call it honour), but personal honour (like "I stand behind what I - not anybody else - think is important" or like "I gave you my word-of-honour").
However, I certainly don't equal my personal honour with my family. While the later is certainly worth dying for, the former is not. Better to live to fight (for it) another day.
I would much rather equal the family with hope. Projected in the future of course - that's the whole point.
Acceptance of "Life, Universe and Everything" [TM by Douglas Adams ;) ] as it is, is great to achieve the inner peace - and may be the path to Nirvana (at least as I understand it - though I don't understand all the details of Eastern philosophies), but once you really accept "everything", there's not much point in living anymore, is it?
Well, just the fact that I wrote the previous sentence proves that I'm still very far from moving to Nirvana myself... ;-)
As I said, I agree it's best to live in the present. But take away all the hope and present doesn't make much sense either. So, for the moment, I'd rather bet on hope than on honour or on absolute acceptance.
But, who knows, maybe next few incarnations will balance and enlighten me to accept (or ignore?) it all...
Dalmatica (64 months ago | reply)
once you accept everything there is a lot to live for, and to live better for.
life in itself is amazing. what i think accepting means is not attaching myself to the outcome of any situation.i know it is easier said than done, i struggle with it all the time.
honor and hope are loaded words, and perhaps we should just strike them out of the dictionary! pride too!
i like the word humble.
it is better to be overly humble than overly proud, says the I Ching.
i think it's right.
what makes this present moment better - always - is sharing. sharing it with someone.
ArtisteInconnu added this photo to his favorites. (62 months ago)