I'm off on holidays today until next Saturday -- hopefully with no internet access as I could use, but will not willingly take, a break.
Since my last post, of course, the world lost the greatly talented and profoundly disturbed Michael Jackson. While his death - after years of drug addiction and mental illness - may not have been a tragedy, his fifty-year-long life certainly was. His abuse as a child himself can not and does not excuse his involvement with children as an adult (to whatever extent that involvement occurred), but it does go some way to explaining his shockingly evident self-hatred. The plastic surgeries, the eating disorders and the medical dependence seem more and more like desperate attempts to alter and ultimately eradicate himself. Like in that spooky, kooky "Thriller" video from long before I was born, the monster was inside him after all.
And meanwhile, innocent women and men are shot dead on the streets of Iran. Nothing is ever very simple for very long.
The following poem, however, is about as simple as they come. Enjoy, and take care.
*
We are leaving for a little while;
there is time for this, even
time for leaving and returning now.
We will wander like tourists
along the Left Bank and eat ice-cream
outside Notre Dam. I do not fear
this leaving, because I will take
you with me. I will keep you
like a secret in my mouth.
A well deserved holiday and a thoughtful post for us to keep while you are gone.
ReplyDeleteParis is great - I know, I spent a whole morning there once. :)
I've been avoiding all the Jacko fall-out because I was never a huge fan and the full-on media drivel about him is a bit terrifying. I like your little paragraph on him though...sounds about right. It's like he died years ago in a way.
ReplyDeleteGentle wee poem too.
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