eight

this was from art

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.
The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves
Into my heart and upon my skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,
"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved's Divine
Game,

O, in the Beloved's
Wonderful Game."
--
"A Suspended Blue Ocean," Hafiz

 

 

(Andree here.) Today marks eight years since Erik flew away to be a bigger part of the Wonderful Game.  (Someday I plan to ask him what happened when David Bowie and Prince showed up.)

While I was thinking about those eight years, and all the directions the world has spun in the meantime, I was reminded that the number eight on its side is the infinity symbol - right, right. How many infinities?  All the ways we have each missed him, all the depths and colors of our sorrows; all the things that have changed in each of us as a result; all the hopes, plans, joys we've each cautiously built in the wake, knowing now (if we didn't before) how very precious it is to have them. 

It still seems to me as though E left yesterday, and I won't lie to you: I'm not over that, nor do I expect to be in this lifetime.  But I know E, and I know he was all about the plans, the fun of good work, the joy. 

So today I'm going to ask you about your own joys, and I look forward to the happiness of hearing about your own glimpses of the Wonderful Game - glimpses that bring you closer to E.

xox



fifty

(Andrée here.)
That's Sean and Erik as tykes up there, Erik being the blond on the right.  Did you know his hair had ever been that color?  As he grew up it settled more toward the darker color most of you knew best.
He would have been fifty today.  There would have been some grey in there.  Runs in the family.

I wish E had had the time to come up with a few more grey hairs, but often I wonder if perhaps there was something so big waiting for him that he couldn't stay.  I found this in "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount.

***

Happy birthday, brother.

Someday I'll get past the first stair.