The Great Yes
I’ve been feeling familiar tugs that keep me in a kind of whirlpool or (as some might call it cesspool) frame of mind. I had a heart wrenching dream about V last night that has lingered in my thoughts all morning – oddly W was a grown up girl and the baby was a boy – it was very surreal.
At mid morning I pulled Blue over to stop a rampage of thoughts that appeared and were dominating my world view and yelled at myself while four guys in orange vests sat in a truck and watched the crazy lady. When I noticed them looking at me, I assured them I am nutsola – out of my mind – and not to mind me – and they found this amusing.
I drove home and cleaned off my desk and decided to face my life anew with conviction that recent past notwithstanding I will make the right decisions.
D called from Houston to catch up – her disciplined view of life is too rigid for me but it’s so familiar of her and I love her deeply. My other niece S is house shopping in Houston as we speak. So I guess I know where I and the Bean will be evacuating to this fall.
I saw a big monarch butterfly in pieces on the grass today and I flinched at the wings, so beautiful, torn from its body.
Che Fece . . . Il Gran Rifiuto
A day comes to some people when
they must pronounce the great Yes or the great No.
It is instantly clear who has the Yes within,
ready; and by uttering it, he crosses over to
his honor and conviction. The one who
refuses has no remorse. If asked again,
he’d say no again. And yet that No —
the right No — weighs him down to his life’s end.
[1901]
C. P. Cavafy – Translated with Willis Barnstone