"this isn't a bad place"

this was written for a friend, but i rambled, and so it's here...

File under: comments too long for here.

i read this at first feeling somewhat bitter, but then remembering that there is enough of that in this world, and in me. instead, and I don't know why, Kath, so don't yell at me or ask for cogent reasoning, I thought of the poet jorie graham.

She came into my head as I was thinking about the end of your post here. i'm sure now that you need to read her, and maybe hate her, but there are things there for you to find. things I have gone back to again and again, and things you should know about.

i picked up her book when we all worked in barnes & noble, back when things where somehow more simple, but profoundly less interesting. i was restocking, or reshelving, or whatever it was called, and i found her book left on a table in the cafe. 'the dream of the unified field', collected poems. This was all so long ago.

i had never heard of her before, and it makes me both grateful and sad that i will never know the person who pulled that book off the shelf and left it for me to find.

This is now turning into something that better belongs on my little page in the world, but keep it here if you like.

You wrote what you wrote at the end about good things existing in the midst of aggravation and uncertainty and this was what sat down at a table in my head and decided to stay. It's from a poem I nervously had to read in a staff meeting, but was better than I was nervous. I don't have line breaks with me, so it's just this:

"There are moments in our lives, which, threaded, give us heaven."

All this to say, don't put up with the bullshit the world and its people are often so good at, but also don't be afraid to thread together the good you find in them either. I'm shuddering as I type
this, but maybe it's as close as we get. and if so, maybe that's enough. it has to be.