Welcoming This Crowd of Sorrows

Beka sent me this poem a few months ago with a beautiful picture of her and her two daughters. I posted it on the door to my office, which has now become my bedroom. I pause and read it often.

Rumi - Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


I hope all the ills and torments that we endure are sweeping the way for new delights and that they are not just sent to “demonstrate the randomness, the meaninglessness of (almost) everything” as Will posits. (Will was my first long relationship, one that entailed several years and two continents. He has been a stalwart correspondent and friend through this latest cancer crisis.) Surely the worst episodes in my life cleared the way for some of the greatest joys. That is what it seems at this remove. However, I haven’t been tested as some have. I’ve been reading online the autobiography of my dear friend Deborah whose young son died in an auto accident many years ago. I have nothing to compare with that in my life. I know that the prospect of my own death pales in comparison to the prospect of one of my children dying before I do. I have no idea how I would endure that.

It’s a very narrow world that I inhabit these days. It’s so cold I’m not even bothering to get outside. My back is not surviving my dog’s old age at all well so I’ve been even more sedentary than usual. I’m in need of a bit more stimulation than this enforced omphaloskepsis can provide.
To that end, I’m planning a trip to San Diego the first weekend in February to see Jasper perform at the San Diego Repertory Theater in the play Don Quixote. It’s a bit scary, this idea of going on airplanes with all the seething humanity and their microbes. I’ll take a face mask and a wheelchair (I tire easily) and hope I won’t be detained as a bald, thin, exhausted terrorist due to the mask. I’m going down there with David. Howard and Andrine are mounting a more ambitious trip the week before that entails flying to LA to see his mother and take Petra to see Cal Arts, then driving to San Diego to see Jasper’s show.

I haven’t been to San Diego in a very long time. I’m hoping to take Jasper to the zoo there, with aid of wheelchair. It’s a spectacular zoo and I’m very interested is seeing the bonobos there. David has booked us a room at the Hyatt for free, using some of his points that he gathered while being a temporary diplomat in Kyrgyzstan. (He has some of the strangest jobs of any of us.) Assuming my health will allow the journey, it should be a welcome distraction.