Words

Playing with words. Feelings. Sequences. Cold. Heat. Shorn. Warmth: glimpsed, untouched, locked. Bare. Bereft. Frigid. Untouchable in the end.

Nine High Cs

There's something about the finality of death which tends to leave me either relieved and/or immeasurably sad.
Beverly Sills died in July. And now, Luciano Pavarotti's just died of cancer. His career began long before I was born and I've listened to him my whole life. The beauty and sheer power of his voice has brought me to tears more times than I've kept count of although what I most love about him is that he singlehandedly did more than anyone else has done in recent times to make operatic arias accessible to the general public, and I can hardly believe that he'll never sing again.
Last week his voice was apparently a whisper; a comment on the BBC site says, "We are able to let go because Mr Pavarotti deserves respite from his suffering, and because we have his music to remember him by." I couldn't agree more.

Healing

One question. When something unpleasant happens, how long is an acceptable amount of time to grieve? Does such a timeframe exist at all? Or is it something you simply create for yourself because, intellectually, you see no reason why you shouldn't be able to get over whatever's bothering you and simply move on?You try to remind yourself that, as Catherine Britton put it, "Courage is reclaiming your life after a devastating event robs you of your confidence and self-esteem. It is facing tomorrow with a firm resolve to reach deep within yourself to find another strength, another talent. It is taking yourself to another level of your own existence where you are once again whole, productive, special…"The hardest thing to deal with though is that you're never entirely certain whether you have reason to complain, whether you somehow caused whatever's bothering you. You invariably somehow manage to convince yourself that it is your own fault and, once you manage to do that, it seems as though nothing you do can ameliorate your condition.You see others' concern for you but you hear nothing they say. You feel their arms around you but you find no comfort in them. Nothing exists for you but your own guilt-induced misery. And you ask yourself how long it'll take you to recover?