IMPERMANENCE

The conversation around the household buzzes with anticipation or dread, depending on the hour, of the new school year. School starts Monday.  The weather, by some unexpected mercy of fate, cooperates with the theme of a new year, and is cooler at night, crisper at dawn, and gentler in the afternoons. While we sleep (sometimes. hopefully. on good nights, anyway.) the stars twinkle, fixed.  We rotate imperceptibly, as they move in and out of view.  Summer ends. 

"Impermanence is meeting and parting," I read in a book.  (Impermanence is also hard to spell.) "People have no respect for impermanence."  (ah, yes, the title reveals many things. a rather difficult book to not throw across the room enraged from time to time, with all its zen calmness. your life sucks? stare at the pain of your life and breathe in and out, calmly. and then go watch batman, shove cake into your mouth quickly, repeatedly, drown your sorrows in blue moon, REPEAT, run til you're sweating profusely....NOTE: that part, the part starting with "watch batman" is my addition, and is not found anywhere in the book...then read another chapter...repeat..etc. etc. etc. throw in a mantra to live by...like, for example, "one can be lonely and not be tossed away by it"--Roshi...then quickly toss it away...find it again later in the day, etc. repeat. repeat.)

Sometimes in those hours before sleep gently takes me away from a hell of a day, questions linger heavy in the quiet under the stars: How could I have loved him so much? No, really, how can something so donkey beaten dead now, have been so alive? Have seemed inspired by the stars themselves?

Pablo Neruda:Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: “La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.”

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche esta estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque este sea el ultimo dolor que ella me causa,
y estos sean los ultimos versos que yo le escribo.

~|~

Tonight I can write the saddest lines,

can write, for example: “The night is starry
and the stars in the distance are shivering and blue.”

The night wind wheels in the sky, singing.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this one I held her in my arms,
kissing her over and over beneath the endless sky.

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think I do not have her, to feel that I have lost her,

to hear the immense night immenser still without her.
The verse falls to the soul like dew to the grass.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her?
The night is starry and she is not with me.

That’s all. In the distance someone is singing, in the distance.
My soul is not at peace, having lost her.

My eyes search for her, as if to bring her closer.
My heart seeks her out, but she is not with me.

The same night is whitening the same trees,
but we are no longer the same people we were.

I no longer love her, true, but how I loved her!
My voice searched the wind that it might touch her ear.

Someone else’s, she’ll be someone else’s, as she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body, and her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true. Then again maybe I do.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this one I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace, having lost her,

even though this will be the last pain she gives me,
and these the last verses that I will write for her.

But, then, I think about a well prepared meal. The preparation, starting with a recipe, then assembling ingredients (hopefully some picked from your backyard, even if just basil. Is bermuda grass edible?)  All the chopping, twisting, spicing, rubbing, boiling, steaming, basting, stirring, heating, cooling, tossing...all ending in a dish, in front of me, you, us, to be greeted. hello delicious. tasted. heeeeelllooooooo deeeeeliciouuuuuuusssss. and devoured greedily to the very last bite.  Impermanence.  All the more reason to savour, cherish, relish the experience.

"When you fall in love, recognize it as impermanence, and let that intensify the preciousness." Hmmmm. Working on it. 

Starting the school year is precious.  Fall is precious. (Mascarpone is precious, with ginger snaps, sliced peaches, cinnamon, drizzled in honey.) Impermanence is precious?