The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell
~ John Milton
what do we do when the mind can no longer revise the whiplash and scars and tears shed in Ramah. when the scourge of evil must for a time still remain and the body itself bear witness as a canvas for pain. like men who plunge forward with their amulets and swords enraged by the reaper dancing before them or like daughters who mourn as they watch funeral pyres burn to ashes.
Don’t we all live in contradiction
I knew a widower once who dressed himself in his wedding suit
each night
cane in hand
hat on head
he would walk along the moon-lit Charles
Stopping only to stare at his own reflection
and don’t we all live like this
looking at the mirrors of our lives incessantly
knowing that our souls can’t change without change
that the tenuous candlelight that flickers in the grand abyss that searches but is unable to see what lies ahead is a sort of Eden. And that whenever we refuse to see ourselves as the children that we are that we begin again a sort of fall