Saturday, July 10, 2010

Ducks on the Run



The jailer man and sailor sam are still looking for the band on the run, but I'm more interested in the ducks that cut a swath outside my back door a few days ago. I don't know what got into them--whether it was fear of a hot wok or the rumor of good birdseed down the block--but those avians were covering some territory. They were young ones, too, hadn't mastered flying yet, were still at the bobbing up and down in the water, rump up phase. But they moved fast on land. I hope they found what they were looking for, those ducks on the run.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Disappointment




Disappointment matures when anger and sadness come to sit side by side, in silence, instead of each scampering off to make its case heard and maybe even won. What disappointment knows is that there is no winning, no forced fading of the bruise, no taking back of the wince.

Sadness and anger typically take turns on a seesaw, sadness focusing on the loss to the self, anger concentrating its attack on the guilty other, both getting out of breath and sweaty, even tearful if too tired. Disappointment can empathize, casts no stones, sometimes even would prefer to indulge itself like them, but latterly prefers the calm of taking in the situation as a whole, melancholy and tart, to one-sided and premature venting.

Not long ago someone disappointed me. This is a person to whom I have given my trust and of whom I asked a small consideration, a consideration that I found was the next day denied. There was no practical negative consequence, though I thought that there could have been, which was the reason for my asking.

I think of William Blake, who wrote, "I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow." I will tell my friend my disappointment. In the necessary meantime I seem to learn a certain silence.

Some days later. . . I broke that silence when I talked to my friend. "My wrath did end," and our bond continues, strengthened.