Today I saw a panel from the Aids Quilt. I have seen a few around the town - they are out for the first AIDS conference in the U.S. since 1987. Today I had an opportunity to really look at one. In the center, in bright block letters , "Papa". On one side 1952 - 1993. He would have been 3 years older than my mom.
I wondered about the love and the anguish in each stitch of that thing, and what it meant to today touch that thing woven from love, and woven from anguish. My mother keeps a set of about 6 ornamental teaspoons bound by 40-year-old masking tape. Her passed-on mother bound them, and she refuses to unbind them. Some of her mother's love, she says, is in that strange arrangement.
I wondered about the magic of things. Their power to transport us back to them, and to transport them forward to us.
I wondered about the love and the anguish in each stitch of that thing, and what it meant to today touch that thing woven from love, and woven from anguish. My mother keeps a set of about 6 ornamental teaspoons bound by 40-year-old masking tape. Her passed-on mother bound them, and she refuses to unbind them. Some of her mother's love, she says, is in that strange arrangement.
I wondered about the magic of things. Their power to transport us back to them, and to transport them forward to us.
--Neruda
I love
all
things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don't know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine;
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms
glasses, knives and
scissors -
all bear
the trace
of someone's fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.
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