Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ~ Mary Oliver
Bring me all of your dreams
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
Life radically changed when I began grieving. One change for me was the home Babe and I shared. I still lived at the same address. The difference now, my home became a house. Here is an excerpt from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again that talks about this change:
“My house was empty. It was no longer a home. A home was what Babe made it. It was now as empty as I was. I wandered from room to room. I didn’t know where to begin. Everywhere I turned, a memory stared back at me. I stared momentarily at a photo of us together and cried. I turned and saw the flowers she loved and the tears continued to flow. I walked into the bedroom and gazed at her side of the bed. I turned and walked into the study, my eyes staring at Babe’s empty seat with her unopened computer sitting on her desk. I quickly walked to my desk, got my computer, and closed the double doors to the study. It was too painful for me to work in there. Pain was everywhere. I couldn’t avoid it.”
Ordering information for the paperback or ebook version of Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again may be found here.
Excerpt From: Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again by Ray Calabrese. This material is protected by copyright
Given the initial talent … writing is largely a matter of application and hard work, of writing and rewriting endlessly, until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me, that usually means many, many revisions. ~ Rachel Carson
Write the poem only can write. ~ Billy Collins
Bee: I’m expecting you
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due –
The Frogs got Home last Week –
Are settled and at work
Birds, mostly back
The Clover warm and thick
You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth, Reply
Or better, be with me
Yours, Fly.
Willie Nelson sang, “It’s not something you get over, but it’s something you get through.” His words clearly describe grieving. When grieving hits, it leaves a permanent scar. The wound heals, but the scar remains. It’s the way it is. Here is a an excerpt from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again:
“Grief hits like a lightning bolt. My world crashed on top of me after Babe’s death. I functioned, but I don’t remember anything I did. Tears flowed and flowed and flowed. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers couldn’t even turn my tears off. . . . I knew the meaning of grief. And, at the same time, I never knew grief in the way I now know it. Now I am learning, and I am learning the hard way—through experience.”
Ordering information for the paperback or ebook version of Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again may be found here.
Excerpt From: Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again by Ray Calabrese. This material is protected by copyright
Excerpt From
Dancing Alone
Raymond Calabrese
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read, read, read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window. ~ William Faulkner
A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.
A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.
Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.
(No light, no gold, no name, no color
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)
A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.
By Thomas Merton
“Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” – Kahlil Gibran
