Mr. Joyce Takes on the World

Draper's Mourning for Icarus  Part of me is embarrassed by how I've felt in the past two months. Every insecurity I have has come to the surface. My greatest fear is that I'll drive people away with them. They are my imperfections that usually have caused relationships to end. Though, truth be told, the people who couldn't accept that I'm not perfect aren't the sort of people I should have been around anyway. Part of me is reminded of what Samuel Beckett once wrote, "I suffer, but cannot remain silent." Another part of me wishes I'd just kept my mouth shut, and stayed calm. Like I should have known better by this stage in life. It wasn't just my mother's death, but everything else that has followed it. The uncertainty has caused me to shift from my usual, rational self, to being somewhat irrational. I don't want people to see that side of me, ever. Sometimes I can't help it. I think I've experienced so much ...

Fairness Sometimes I'm not fair. For as selfless and giving as I am, I can also be selfish at times. For example, I know a young woman that I care for deeply. She's currently in a phase in her life where demands on her time are many, and free time is scarce. So scarce in fact, that she's living a semi-cloistered life as she takes up her studies. At first, I felt snubbed. I thought, “What's taking her so long? Why doesn't she have five minutes to write to me? Did I do something wrong? Is it me?” I then realized that I wasn't being fair. I wasn't being sensitive to her needs, or her time frame. I also wasn't being fair to her struggles. Where she is now, I once was. Sometimes, I'm still there. Sometimes I forget what hurdles I've had to overcome just to function in daily life. Maybe that's a defense mechanism. If so, it's one that can distorted reality. I need to replace it with a mechanism of compassion, in...

The Yew Tree and The Viceroys I expected to have dreams about my mother after she died. While I haven't actually seen her this way, I have had one dream. I dreamed that I had gone to Ireland by boat, in order to plant her ashes into the ground. In this dream I dug a small hole into a field near the sea. With the sound of the waves in the background, I carefully placed her ashes into that hole, and then covered it with dirt. Within a matter of seconds a yew tree stood where her ashes had been buried. It was about as tall as me, and the branches were full, and sprouted berries. I took this as a sign of growth and rebirth. Just as the ancient Celts believed that life with return with every spring, I saw this dream as a similar promise. Currently, my sisters and I are in disagreement on what to do with mother's ashes. She had wanted to be buried, but we couldn't afford it. So, eldest sister suggested either burying them, or placing them in a ma...

Meditations on Westminster Abbey I'd first read of this place when I was a teenager. I used to confuse one of my high school classmates by having him guess who was buried there. He never guessed right, not once. Whereas I'd memorized a large portion of those who claimed it as a final resting place. Not to sound ghoulish, but I'd wanted to visit this former cathedral/burial place for some time. It was a key location on my recent visit to England, and I was glad I took the time and effort to walk to it. It was the highlight of the time I spent in London. It wasn't about spending time with the dead. No, it was about what the place can teach us about life. Westminster Abbey was built some 1056 years ago. It's probably the oldest building I'd entered during my U.K. Holiday. On this trip I'd visited Leamington Spa, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Oxford, and London. All of which I'll talk about in later entries. Westminster Abbey is one of those plac...

Just say "Yes."  I'm reminded of something my uncle Tom told me after his brother died. It was the winter of 2002, and on Christmas Eve, he shared with the family the last conversation he had with his brother, James. He said, “As Jim was dying, we started talking about regrets. He told me that the one big regret he had was not marrying this girl he dated back in the 60's. He wanted to marry her, but we were Protestant, and she was Catholic. Our parents wouldn't have stood for that.” He fell silent after that, and didn't say more. I could see by the look on his face that he was disappointed for his brother, but not at him. James died without ever marrying, or having children. He lived alone, and worked as a environmental scientist. He once wrote a scholarly work on the history and uses of the soybean. For vegetarians that might be considered pornography. For the rest of us it's far from Fifty Shades of Tofu. James was...