Another Airport Visit...

Another Airport Visit..., a photo by jo.mei on Flickr.

My mom and I took my dad to the airport on the second day of 2012. He
has to go to China for a month because my grandmother, my dad's mom,
is in the hospital with pneumonia. If you come from an immigrant
family, you're always being taken or taking someone to the airport.
You're always saying goodbye, or hello, but with the knowlege that
goodbye is coming.
The last time my mother and I put my dad on a plane by himself, I was
five years old.

A New Year...

A New Year..., a photo by jo.mei on Flickr.

A good beginning...
I crossed into the new year in with my parents. And the first thing I did on the first day of this year is to go for a run around the little peninsula we live on. Good job Jo (giving myself a little pat on the back)!
Somehow, Jack Gilbert has been on my mind a lot in the last 24 hours. I don't know why. I have never met the man but I did try to call his house once because his number seems to be in the phone book. I just wanted to tell him what an important artist he is, to me, and I hope he remains healthy, and I hope to meet him one day. I think he would be amused by that.
Jack Gilbert is a poet. He is an artist I admire so deeply that I am unable to explain why. Look him up. Buy a book of his. There's only three. Perhaps he'll speak to you the way he does to me.

FALLING AND FLYING
By Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.