This Just In...
4.6.12
Dear Ms. Metaphor,
Do the poets have any soothing words for parents who lost a child and miss them so much each holiday season? Sometimes it feels like a big matzo ball in the stomach that won't digest.
—Still Hurting
Dear Still,
Yes, the poets have much to say about love and grief. It seems the two are often wedded, and death does not us part. The only way out is through. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross enumerates five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
All must be paid respect.
Perhaps you could invite your departed loved one back into the family by simply asking. By that I mean rather than not mentioning their name or trying to forget the past, evoke it, celebrate it! Set a place at the table for your Dear Departed, and recall funny stories and remember times together. Jack Kerouac wrote, “Accept loss forever.”
Let the healing rain fall.
Kübler-Ross notes that depression comes before acceptance. Only you can know when the time is right to do this. However if you can bring a little light to a dark corner of your life, the illumination may be a relief to everyone sitting at the table.
“. . .In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
‘in the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
—W.H. Auden, from “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”
❊
And Previously...
4.2.12
Dear Ms. Metaphor,
I really like this guy and he knows it. We have a specific texting every night at 9 p.m. I text him "Good Night, Silly" even if we don't text that night. He would reply like-wise. But lately he doesn’t respond back. Sometimes he doesn’t text me back in the middle of a conversation and leaves me hanging. I want to ask him if I did something wrong. Tonight I’m not going to text him "good night." But I don’t know what to say if he asks why. I was thinking that giving him a metaphor in response will be an easier way to tell him why. Do you have one for me?
Dear Ms. Texter,
Ms. Metaphor agrees that you should not text the inattentive fellow tonight. In fact, you might want to give the whole thing a rest. It appears your tender feelings are not reciprocated, my dear. But cheer up—it also sounds like you didn’t get much beyond, well, Beyond Banal (which would be an excellent name for a new poetry series).
Since, apparently, this is a modern affair, I surmise that your face-to-face has only been a close as Facebook. No need to be testy or terse to your Texter. Let levity enlighten the situation. Certainly a great metaphor can brighten the way; let’s send in e.e. cummings. His style is particularly apropos since he invented the lowercase pronoun “i” in his poetry-texts back in the 1920s.
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
—e. e. cummings, from “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”
Your Mr. Texter will either be intrigued, baffled or bored. Depending on his response (if you still like him), why not suggest coffee at the Coffee Roasters or tea at Bohemia? See if you can get beyond banal to something more like scintillating conversation. Or even mutual silence for a charming change.
❊
3. 27.12
Dear Ms. Metaphor,
I’m starting a business in Ventura County called The Refill Shoppe that is an eco bath store and I am wanting to craft an awesome mission statement. I’ve got really good ideas, but need help getting started. Any suggestions?
Sincerely,
Ms. Eco-Refill
Dear Ms. Eco,
Congratulations on finding your passion and launching your dream! Obviously you’ve thought it through and have a few ideas about how to go about it. For this new journey I suggest you take notes. Write down what you know; find the answers to what you don’t. If you currently keep a journal, you may have already written your mission statement and just need to recognize it.
Crafting a business mission statement is a lot like a thesis statement in an essay—it lets the reader know your intention. It is also a required part of a business plan, which is a necessary part of interplay between your business and the bank. My advice is to keep it simple and durable—it should be true for your business today and years hence.
(It might be a good idea to write also your own personal mission statement as well, so you can define for yourself what you intend to do and how you want to get there from here. Remember though, your personal statement should be kept to yourself, not used as an overlong motto on a business card.)
“I play it cool
I dig all jive
That's the reason
I stay alive
My motto
As I live and learn
Is dig and be dug in return”
—Langston Hughes, from “motto”
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3.25.12
Dear Ms. Metaphor,
I need your help. I am a 75-year-old woman who is in love with an 80-year-old man. He only wants to see me one day a week, so I feel left out and unloved, 'tho I know he is very busy. We have gone out many times over the past year and he has never even held my hand, but he comes and makes my garden a thing of beauty. He also takes me out to lunch and to paint with him outdoors.
No Lady Chatterley's Lover references, please. Can you help me? Shall I stop seeing him or just love him as he is?
—Between the Dark & the Daylight
Dear Ms. Dark & Daylight,
Darling, you have a beau who takes you to lunch once a week, gardens for you, and apparently enjoys your company en plein air? Why then should you feel “left out” or “unloved”? All indications are this gentleman dotes on you. Why on earth would you want to stop seeing him? Because he won’t hold your hand? Pull yourself together, Ducks, and put away that pout for something you DON’T have.
Your 80-year-old gent obviously is not in a hurry. Most likely he would not care for a woman who brazenly took the upper hand. Ms. Metaphor’s advice is to “love him as he is.” Be happy for this moment. And the next. Then, should your gentleman offer his hand, you may take it with confidence and grace.
“. . . left hand, right hand
like an open eye, an eye closed:
one hand flat against the trapdoor,
the other hand knocking, knocking”
Aracells Girmay, from “Consider the Hands that Write This Letter”
As for seeing you just once a week, be glad for the respite from overused company.
Love and gardens do best when there’s room to grow.
❊
3/23/12
Ms. Metaphor,
In the vast tundra between friendship and nodding acquaintance, I have accumulated innumerable members through the years, male and female. It turns out that the old saw about actual friends in life, when viewed objectively in memory, are surprisingly few, although social acquaintances abound.
As I've aged, I've found that overuse of the term 'friend' offends me, whether on Facebook or in conversation. People who do so do not value quality above number, but I've also felt that I've become ridiculously possessive about word meanings, and hypocritically have judged things I myself would have done in the Pleistocene of my youth.
It upsets me they left town or merely moved to another part of it where I don't see them. It upsets me and I don't know why it upsets me. But they were matter correctly in place, and it is wrong they aren't there. I sometimes
don't even miss them as people, because I didn't know them, but I miss them as personalities or facial presence I somehow feel necessary to that part of my world, whether a store clerk or bank teller or street performer or beggar, with none of whom I exchange more than a nod.
I fear it is age, (but I'm immune to the deficiencies of other people so that can't be it.) So what is it? And make it stop.
Sincerely,
Thoughts—Inquire Within
Dear Sincere Thoughts,
My dear sir, you have illuminated your situation quite precisely in your long thoughtful letter. Perhaps if I play it back for you, you can see your own answer. To summarize: from the promontory of your Modern Dotage (as opposed to your Pleistocene Youth) you see the arc of age, and are noticing missing persons along the path. And although you are not attached to the particular (face, voice, nod) you appreciate their part in your own passion play. If the players miss their cue, how can the show go on? More to the point, you have not been consulted about the replacements.
So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say. Certainly, having reached that Rock of Age you are practiced at the art of losing.
“ . . .Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster: . . .”
—Elizabeth Bishop , from “One Art”
Let this be your counsel, O Thoughtful One: whenever you remember someone, recall a voice, bring to mind a face, then that person lives on in your memory. It is in this way that the dearly departed continue to be a prescence, despite the inevitability of way of all flesh.
❊