Better Than Dead
Sep. 18th, 2004 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompson[This post refers to the name of my non-defunct Livejournal blog.]
I've been unhappy with the old name of my journal for a long time now: A Bump On A Blog. Blech. It was one of those spur of the moment things you regret long after. But I couldn't think of what else I wanted to call it and was mostly too distracted to worry about it. I'm not sure the new name is any better. I wanted to avoid pretentious if I could, but I may have reduced the concept to absurdity. I'll have to let it settle and see, but it is something I like to remind myself of now and then when I need to bring myself back to center. It's sort of a breathing exercise for the mind.
Making the change this week was inspired by a poem that I love muchas by Marie Howe called "What the Living Do." She wrote it to her brother who had died of AIDS. It always brings me back to center when the day-to-day irritants get to be too much. It reminds me that each moment of life is important. Not just the rhapsodic moments when the prose flows like warm honey; not just the pulse-thrumming moments of love; not just the day you get the prize and the whole world seems to breathe a big, "Huzzah!" Every moment is luminous with possibility, even the ones that irritate and enrage, because they're all what the living do, all part of the pulse of life, the collective experience of a life. That for which the dead yearn and can't have.
My journal is rarely that high-falutin, but it's still good to have that reminder. And yes, I am mindful of the fact that there are people right now living lives of quiet desperation who would be hard pressed to find luminosity in any moment of their lives. But the possibility for change and transformation is there in every moment of every life—that I firmly believe.
Oh, and I'm keeping the pink-on-pink design. [Didn't] I love color. It also reminds me that I'm alive.
If you want to read the full text of Ms. Howe's poem, it's here with a couple of others from her book, What the Living Do:
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~kece/Personal/Poems/howe.html
In the meantime, here's a highly excerpted version to show you what I mean:
What the Living Do
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil
probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty
dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we
spoke of....
****
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in
the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a
cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm
speechless:
I am living, I remember you.
I've been unhappy with the old name of my journal for a long time now: A Bump On A Blog. Blech. It was one of those spur of the moment things you regret long after. But I couldn't think of what else I wanted to call it and was mostly too distracted to worry about it. I'm not sure the new name is any better. I wanted to avoid pretentious if I could, but I may have reduced the concept to absurdity. I'll have to let it settle and see, but it is something I like to remind myself of now and then when I need to bring myself back to center. It's sort of a breathing exercise for the mind.
Making the change this week was inspired by a poem that I love muchas by Marie Howe called "What the Living Do." She wrote it to her brother who had died of AIDS. It always brings me back to center when the day-to-day irritants get to be too much. It reminds me that each moment of life is important. Not just the rhapsodic moments when the prose flows like warm honey; not just the pulse-thrumming moments of love; not just the day you get the prize and the whole world seems to breathe a big, "Huzzah!" Every moment is luminous with possibility, even the ones that irritate and enrage, because they're all what the living do, all part of the pulse of life, the collective experience of a life. That for which the dead yearn and can't have.
My journal is rarely that high-falutin, but it's still good to have that reminder. And yes, I am mindful of the fact that there are people right now living lives of quiet desperation who would be hard pressed to find luminosity in any moment of their lives. But the possibility for change and transformation is there in every moment of every life—that I firmly believe.
Oh, and I'm keeping the pink-on-pink design. [Didn't] I love color. It also reminds me that I'm alive.
If you want to read the full text of Ms. Howe's poem, it's here with a couple of others from her book, What the Living Do:
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~kece/Personal/Poems/howe.html
In the meantime, here's a highly excerpted version to show you what I mean:
What the Living Do
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil
probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty
dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we
spoke of....
****
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in
the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a
cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm
speechless:
I am living, I remember you.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 10:23 pm (UTC)And I changed my LJ subtitle in the past couple of days too. Great minds? Or are we both just copying Kevin?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 04:19 am (UTC)Thanks. It's an important one to me.
Great minds? Or are we both just copying Kevin?
Great minds, obviously. And reading only from the Friends page, I hadn't noticed (since the name didn't change on the bookmark).
no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 11:51 am (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 07:03 pm (UTC)