That Painfully Observed Void

Perfect, this Easter Friday, for a
walk in the woods with our 
aged and ageing little dogs.  A
smiling sun moderating the high 
wind clacking tree tops, moaning 
and thrashing the evergreen boughs, 
crows wide-winged, coasting
and cawing, their voices swept away.


From the neighbourhood around,
others too have ventured out,
those with rambunctious young dogs,
giddy with the freedom to roam and
run amok after squirrels searching
out cached peanuts.  And then,
those others too, seldom now seen, 
nostalgic for earlier times.


Taking pensive walks together,
quietly recalling all those years
of rambles, though not particularly
recently.  A prodding urgency has
brought them there, in recognition
of times past, with fondly recalled
companions whose passing has
left that painfully observed void.

The Chosen One

Unexpectedly, sensibilities are
being pricked and prodded, not
with the delicacy of a fine 
surgeon, reputation-aware,
but with the rugged brute force
of a day-labourer determined
to get the job done, swinging
his pick axe with a vengeance.


She, facing you directly,
insists on knowing what her
other friends have been saying
about her, and not to her.
Fully aware of your loyalty to
all those friends, she has chosen
you as the conduit to that gossip.


You bridle, reminding her
that you have never indulged in
back-handed drivel, have no
interest in what others may say 
even about you; tell her to ask them
directly for whatever it is she
is so eager to have knowledge of.


And you are led to the acute
discomfort of wondering
the value of such fraught
relationships, why one friend
is so willing to risk your
estrangement to satisfy her
egotistical journey toward
full and complete alienation.

Society is upset and mystified about the prevalence of suicides among the young. Those who commit suicide run the gamut, from young people who have received every benefit available in a wealthy society and from loving parents, to young people living on aboriginal reserves in squalid poverty and unrelieved boredom, finding no value in their lives. They are represented among those who are alter-gendered from what is considered the norm, confused and angry about themselves and society.

They are young people who have been savagely molested by their elders, young people who find no meaning in life and decide it has no value for them, and who find it difficult to communicate their emotions and their hopelessness to others. A multitude of reasons for misery and dissatisfaction, enough to decide to end it all. Sometimes they leave pensive notes behind, sometimes brief and bitter indications of the hell they have experienced, and sometimes no indication at all.

For the most part, after a young person has committed to taking their own life and leaving behind those who love them and will never be able to adjust to the fact that they could have done nothing to save that precious life, mostly because they had no idea that life that was so precious to them, was a travesty and a burden to the youngster. For those who cannot begin to contemplate such a step of desperation, there are no answers.

No one knows quite what it takes to push someone to the edge of existence, and then finally, beyond. But the grieving family would like to have a target for their anger over their loss. And if they are able to pinpoint an issue or another individual whom they can post blame on for their dreadful loss, perhaps it has the effect of easing their pain.

Which, if that is so, makes another young man, who behaved in a malicious and childish manner in videoing his roommate in a sex act and then posting it on the Internet, a target. He was targeted as a potential cause of causing such great embarrassment and anguish to his college room mate by posting his findings and Twitter comments, that he drove Tyler Clementi to his death.

"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry", was the message that Tyler Clementi left for those who loved him. Period, and that's final. Take from it what you will, he is dead and will never explain. Perhaps there is no explanation. He performed a final act because something within him urged him to. Something that might have had nothing whatever to do with Dharun Ravi's stupid acts.

Everyone takes their own meaning and messages from events experienced or witnessed. They are as individual as people are themselves individual and different from one another. The verdict reached, that Dharun Ravi's homophobic actions against his room mate constituted guilt, leading to his conviction of the charge of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness tampering and evidence tampering, is seen as due justice.

It could be overkill, on the other hand. It may bring 'closure' to those most intimately involved with the life and death of Tyler Clementi, but it may also be victimizing a young man whose behaviour while deplorable, did not necessarily send Tyler Clementi to his death.

The Odour of Spring Rain

A tinfoil sky clamped
tightly over the world,
has bestowed a cold, wet
blustery day, not a likely
candidate for a pleasant
ramble through the woods.
Rain descends, dimpling
the dark surface of the
clay-bottomed creek.


Heedless, from a nearby
ivory-green poplar trunk,
the rhythmic clacking of 
a woodpecker, its red cap
a fiery blaze on the spring
monotone.  The untidy
underbrush, piled with fall's
detritus wafts the delicate
odour of spring rain.

Ill Starred

A Cautionary Tale

Our relationship is flawed
and fraught, not at all one
of equals in perfect accord
and sweet harmony.  He has
the presentation of an angelic
countenance, the temper of a
demon.  Other women swoon
on beholding him and long
to indeed, to hold him fast.
Little can they know the
tyrant that he is, coercive,
demanding, brutal in response
when I fail to please him.
Ours is that classic, the
master-slave relationship.
He calls, I come and humbly
seek to serve his every whim.
To no avail; praise eludes,
his ill tempered growls
leave me shaken and forlorn.
A truly uncivil alliance.

Fundamental of Love

As formulas go, there is one

that comes straight from the

heart, without which that eternal

bond between male and female

will stretch no further than

that powerful, albeit transitory

urge to couple, then uncouple.

There is a fundamental need

to step outside the psyche, to

convince oneself of the need to

care deeply and intimately for

that other's welfare.  Not to demean

oneself by deferring authority or

condescending but by genuine grace.

To persuade oneself, not the other,

to become aware that their ease

and happiness holds a prior

rating to our own.  That emotion

we call love, and it will not defend

patronizing rancour bred of demands

but urges patience and the trials of

learning the expressions of love.

It is not that in another's

happiness we will discover our 

own, but that in a shared life,

trust that each is prepared to

surrender some portion of self for

the well-being of the other is a

given.  If generosity of spirit cannot

exist in that compact, where will it?

Regions Of The Mind

The sublime comfort
of books, stories told
courtesy of a stranger,
inviting other strangers
to share the pleasures
of travel to the regions
of a mind not their own.
A carefully detailed
recounting of a life
not their own yet wholly
consuming one's mind,
imagination, demanding
its rite of full attention
as though we are
mysteriously invested
in the final outcome.
Briefly, we are.
A confusion of reality
versus arcane otherness.
But perhaps not.