Brilliant to intersect briefly with an old school friend today - we are spending time together this summer - and we are going to a gig at Nairn Jazz Festival - both families. Excellent. Good to have a wee blether and prepare for her and her family's trip North. It's thelittle things that count and I am excited to see her and her husband again - and meet their daughter.
A wonderful poem arrived today from a friend from my under-graduate days who now lives in the States. I have been blessed with attentiveness:
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Naomi Shihab Nye, from her book, The Words Under the Words
The sentiments expressed touched me deeply.
Less work achieved today than I would have hoped, but I enjoyed a trip to our local vet as it was a chance to touchbase with people who are important and precious to us as a family. Jessie, our Newfoundland is suffering with her skin and is to go and be shaved and shampooed. Vet's orders! I suppose she will look like a feminist dog after this - and take after her human mum in this respect! Maybe she should have a touch of purple hair dye too - and we can look like a related pair of Gremlins after the transformation!!! Jo - our rescue collie is older than expected we heard today - thought now to be about 8 instead of the 5 we have been taking him for! He has had blood tests. Mungo - our in your face collie x, had his anal glads expelled and I learnt how to do it! The latex glove nearly set me off - but it was actually quite interesting once you thought about the mechnics of it! Poor lamb - the indignity of the practice with mum rather than the much more skilled vet! Still, he got his own back - a projectile spray over my hair, glasses and left shoulder. Just as well we came home by car - I would have been trailed half way around the Highlands if I had walked by a pack of dogs!
Shower. Hair wash. I am forgiven. Mungo is fast asleep with his head keeping my feet warm. If only it was this easy to let go, forgive and experience restoration within our human relationships!
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