Kate McDowell on Storytelling

Life goes on, and, for anyone who is awake, the list of losses grows over time.  So does the list of joys and wild moments of freedom, if you're paying attention.  This is the space we take up in the world, sad and joyous and all states in between. In the midst of late winter, our little cat died.  He brought us over twelve years of great joy, and saying goodbye was so hard.  I miss him everyday.  He was not just our cat, he was our clown, our cranky old guy, our sweet companion.  He was an amazing jumper, a selective nose-rubber, and always an enthusiastic friend at the food bowl. Three things I read helped me tremendously. First, Mary Oliver's words from the poem "In Blackwater Woods" (http://www.panhala.net/Archive/In_Blackwater_Woods.html and also in her Pulitzer-prize-winning collection American Primitive), p articularly the last few lines: To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it ...

This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is so remarkable for waking its readers up to the realities of a finite world, difficult choices, and the price that comes with not having any solitude: http://undertowmagazine.com/the-art-of-disappearing-naomi-shihab-nye/ It makes me think of another famous poem, One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop, which starts with the line "The art of losing..."  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212 Of course, on a day when bombs went off in Boston, losing feels poignant in a different way, even if the loss is just another perceived loss of safety.