Alive

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
~ Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

OK, interesting point. What am I free to do now? Travel, read in bed at 3AM, move my painting studio up from the basement and into the kitchen, shift the furniture all around, turn The Amazing Bob’s study into a spare bedroom….and some other stuff. What??? I was free to do just about anything when TAB was here with me. My self-imposed travel restriction was, more than anything, about wanting to be here at home to care of him to be with him. I was greedy for him. I wanted all I could get.

I’d trade all this new freedom away forever, if I could have just one more day with my wonderful man.
~~~~~
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Yeah? Gosh, gee whillikers, thanks mister! Sheesh. It’s not like grief is a bloody choice, mon ami. Gee, I think I’ll be an ocean of sad today over TAB’s death. Yup, and tomorrow I’ll do laundry. Cool. Dude, lovely, bloody sentiment but shit don’t work like that!

Also too, FUCK YOU!
~~~~~
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Yeah, what she said!

~~~~~
At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.
~ Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

By the by, I loved this book. Yeah, it rankled a bit that this was a white man writing about a young Japanese woman’s experience but still, I enjoyed the hell out of it.
An interesting bit:

In the book, the U.S. author mentions the assistance of former geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who later received death threats and criticism for breaking the code of silence about her community. Iwasaki sued Golden for breaking their alleged agreement to maintain her anonymity but they later reached a settlement out of court. (source)

Though Golden’s writing was sensitive, thoughtful, considerate and well researched, he missed one big thing – this is a real world with real dangers and consequences. Even though it may seem like one to us, in our far away country, this ain't no fairy tale. In publicly thanking her, Golden was NOT trying to dox her. No, he was saying thank you but in using her real name, the custom in Western book acknowledgments, he risked her life.

Cultural appropriation – watch out for the backwash!
~~~~~
Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
~ W.S. Merwin
~~~~~
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.
~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Paraphrasing my old buddy, Descartes, I’m alive therefore I feel.