new year's eve, 2013

Andree here.  Happy New Year's Eve, everybody.  I hope wherever you are it is warm and dry and you're with people who make you smile.  Maybe you're thinking of E and your memories are making you smile (Dean did that for me on Facebook today when he posted a funny Xerox of Erik's face that he found).
About the picture:  long story short, I took a leap of faith in the fall by leaving a job which, though destructive and humiliating, was utterly stable. I haven't found its replacement yet.  But a few weeks back, when I was deep in angst over my future or rather my perceived lack thereof, I woke up to find two things:  one, somebody had grabbed my special pink pumpkin I'd bought at my favorite farm stand, and smashed it on the sidewalk;  two, someone else had left this Buddha yard statue front and center on the porch to greet me when I opened the front door.  They did this deep in the night, as I'd been up till ten and was up before six.  I have still not got any clue of his source.
Clearly, I thought, it was time to have a little more faith in the random possibilities of the universe now.

So that happened.  

But I miss Erik still, in ways I don't understand until they have manifested (and then I have to explain).

And then I found this year's Rumi poem, which I keep hearing in E's voice:

The Body is Too Slow for Me

Toward the gardens,
Toward the orchards,
I am going.
If you want to stay here,
Stay here -
I am going!
My day is dark without His Face,
Toward that bright flame
I am going.

My soul is racing ahead of me.
It says, The body is too slow for me -
I am going.

The smell of apples arises
from the orchard of my soul.
One whiff and I am gone -
Toward a feast of apples
I am going.

A sudden wind won't blow me over.
Toward Him, like a mountain of iron,
I am going.

My shirt is ripped open
with the pain of loss.
Searching for a new life,
with my head held high,
I am going.

I am fire, though I seem like oil -
Seeking to be the fuel of His fire,
I am going.

I appear as a steady mountain
Yet bit by bit,
Toward that tiny opening
I am going.

From: A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi
Ode 1668 Version by Jonathan Star
from a translation by Shahram Shiva
- See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumi2.html#sthash.UyUP63Zx.dpuf

five

Is five years enough to make any sense out of losing E?  I want to feel that he walked away into something finer where all the answers are found and then don't matter any more.  As it happens someone far more gifted than me already told us that was true, years ago.

Figures it would be George Harrison and "All Things Must Pass."  But why did it take me till early this year to stop and listen to this song for the first time?
* * *
Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away

Sunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up and must be leaving
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass

None of life's strings can last
So, I must be on my way
And face another day

Now the darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.
* * *

Why must they pass?  Because something new must evolve in turn.  As Erik has.  As we must hope and strive to do.  Close your eyes for a moment, feel joy and generosity and freedom - you are reaching for the door of Erik's new house.

-- Andree

new year 2013

(Andree here) The photo above was taken on Vashon Island this past summer.  Why am I trotting it out now?  Because I love that almost every single smile is gone, except for one - nobody on the island wanted to take the last one, I guess, in case somebody really needed it.

When I run into generous-hearted stuff like this, that's when I find Erik.  He would have been 47 today.  He was grown up, successful, sophisticated, professional.  But unlike most such people he had a glowing core of sensibility that would have appreciated a Smile Dispenser with one smile left.  (I don't know, maybe he'd have made one and snuck it up on the post when no one was looking?)
So this smile goes out to E over there, and to everyone we love over there with him, and to every single one of you here with me today in this world.  There's one left.  Help yourself.  Happy birthday, E.