A day of contrasts

The news from Gaza is not good. I picture mothers trying to eek out a meal, but having no fuel to cook with even when they glean together rice and a vegetable or two. I see a family putting on extra sweaters when they have them because there’s no heat. I see them going to bed early because the electricity has been cut. Somewhere there’s a mother with a sick child, her hand on his fevered head, but there’s no way she can get medicine. The Israeli blockade is nearly complete. The Palestinians are suffering the same was the Warsaw Jews did in the early stages of WWII. The abusee has become the abuser.

At Davos Condi defends America. The country is the piano, the other countries the players, but she doesn’t say that most of the guts have been ripped from the inside leaving only a few discordant chords playable. She doesn’t talk about the damage the country has done, the millions dead or consigned to poverty all over the world through policies that support the few and sacrifice the many. When she blathers about democracy she doesn’t tell of it being destroyed at home with the suspension of habeas corpus, the spying, the media driven election.

Before dawn my housemate gently taps on my door and tells me I have to see the setting moon. She is right. It’s a huge circle occupying a good portion of the sky. Its reflection is a long silver ribbon crossing the lake. As the sun rises it turns the snow that yesterday looked like the thick white icing on an English fruit cake, Barbie-doll pink. Slowly the moon changes places with the sun.

When I settle in the winter garden to write the sky is brilliant blue. Words, that escaped me in the other eight drafts of Triple Decker, fly from my fingers. My blessed roommate is doing a final proofing, and still catches errors and weak points on this what I hope is the final final final draft.

On the Germanic broad carved desk in the living room, dark ruby red tulips promise spring.

From the kitchen comes the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking.

I don’t feel guilt but gratitude that I have been given so much, that I am not the mother in Gaza or Iraq. I am not dodging bullets and machetes in Africa.

I email with a buddy, another Swiss-American who cares as I do that the country we grew up in no longer exists. Although we exchange political news, I also tell him about my being woken to see the moon, and he tells me I live with people who have their priorities right. He is correct.

He sends me a poem. It summarizes the contrasts of my day.

The Answer
by Robinson Jeffers

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.