Rumi

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!

(Unknown translator)

Every day is a day that comes from a finite number given to each life form and then it ends. Each morning it arrives in a unique and different guise. It won't come again. If we are lucky, we can remember the days. Some of us have certain medical conditions and we can't remember. Some of us don't want to remember for they have days that are too painful to recall. A man or a woman who survives the German Nazi Concentration Camps would not want to see their days there in memories although they would come back unbidden in nightmares.

Children who were severely abused often grow up to be adults who develop amnesia so they can forget the abuse. Many of the adults molested and abused as children often imagine themselves as survivors of German Concentration Camps. It is a way of surviving the horrible memories. Even the good days that come in the morning light of freedom cannot block those memories and many survivors cannot continue years after their abuse.

Each day comes floods of echoes of past memories and new ones often bring the old ones tagging behind. That is why some of us visit therapists for help in understanding that, if we are lucky. Old soldiers wake up in sweat soaked beds trying to forget the glory and the tears of battlefields.
Even the short lived butterfly has memories if not the caterpillar days, the lives before. No one knows who will walk through the door for there is no lock and no key. All will enter eventually.

It is best to offer your visitors some tea or coffee and a comfortable chair no matter who or why they come. It is also best to listen to them and what they have to say. Breath in and breath out the pain, sorrow and joy. They will keep coming until you do anyhow.

Michael Anania

from Stops Along the Western Bank of the Missouri River: of the River Itself

By Michael Anania

This is my advice to foreigners:
call it simply - the river;
never say old muddy
or even Missouri,
and except when it is necessary
ignore the fact that it moves.
It is the river, a singular,
stationary figure of division.
Do not allow the pre-Socratic
to enter your mind except
when thinking of clear water trout
streams in north central Wyoming.
The river is a variety of land,
a kind of dark sea or great bay,'
sea of greater ocean.
At times I find it good discipline
to think of it as a tree
rooted in the delta,
a snake on its topmost western branch.
These hills are not containers;
they give no vantage but that
looking out is an act of transit.
We are not confused,
we do not lose our place.


I was born and raised in San Diego, California. Rivers were dry empty beds of rock and brush in which bridges were placed over them with signs announcing this river or that. There was one I remembered the most in Mission Valley near Old Town. The sign said "San Diego River" and it never, to the best of my knowledge, had water in it.

Not far from San Diego was Los Angeles and they had rivers too except they were paved and had signs too such as the "Los Angeles River". Chaparral was all over the hills and dry creek beds were the norm. Reading about the Missouri River in school as a kid was to learn the history of this country and the river seemed so unreal and so far away.

Then I went to Oregon to visit an aunt who live on the high bank of a river that had water in it. It was the Rogue River and it changed forever what I thought a river was like. It was real and it was so beautiful, full of rapids, fish, and clear sparkling water. The only water I ever saw in San Diego was the water in the bathtub and the sea.

Then I moved to Topeka, Kansas where my first son was born. There was a river Missouri River. It, too, was muddy. It was powerful and brown.

I used to take my children down to the Ozarks and to Arkansas so they could swim in clear water. Even the lakes in Kansas were brown so that if you didn't paint your toe nails with clear polish your nails would turn brown. I even followed the Missouri River once to see the kind of people who lived along its banks and took pictures. I was surprised at the variety of animal life and people. The poet is right. Everyone just called the river just The River.

The poet was born and raised in Nebraska and now lives and teaches in Chicago. I found a lot to explore in the Midwest but I never felt at home there. The lakes and streams are pretty much like Korean lakes and streams, muddy. Some people get frustrated in not being able see through the center of it and it was muddy. I did not like it. I wanted a river that looked like the Rogue River. No one swam in it like they did the Rogue River nor do I remember anyone fishing from it. Then we moved to Kansas City and I saw the to swim and enjoy themselves like they do in clear stream and lakes in other countries. They fish here and use nets for they are very serious about the fishing. The sea when I have seen it is muddy too.

I coming back to California next week. The poet said that people are not confused and know their sense of place by The River and that is what I found when I explored its banks so many years ago. It was what I felt when the river seemed so strange to me. Home is the Rogue River with its rainbow trout and salmon. It is the Sacramento River with its full banks of flowing water making its way to the Pacific ocean and trees and rice fields on its banks. Rivers do not confuse us even the dry ones without any water as it did when I was a kid. With rivers, we do not lose our place.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Day In Autumn

by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Mary Kinzie

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

I think the reader of the above poem will think this is a poem about the season of autumn until the last stanza. Then it becomes apparent, at least to me, that we are looking at a metaphor. This transforms the entire poem about someone who has reached the autumn of his or her life. The reader might even suspect this poem is about the poet.

After living one's life, it is time to let the time pass and those who come behind you play in the pastures of life because your summers are over now. You can take the fruit of those memories and make them into a wine to enjoy.

In the twilight of one's years, if you are alone you will stay alone. Sometimes at night, you wake up because like most of us when we get older we have trouble sleeping at night. When you do,you read a little, maybe draft long letters and wonder along the city's avenues looking at the people and seeing the wild leaves loosen knowing that someday your time will be over.

I know that memories are more important now to me as I am in the Autumn of my years although I am not looking at death but this poet did not live past middle age. I shift through these memories seeing meaning and connections that I did not see before and learning things from experiences that I had not thought about before. I don't see it as a sad exercise although if you had asked me whether I would enjoy this years ago I would have recoiled in horror. Now, I enjoy it.

I think if I could classify writers according to seasons, I would be an autumn writer which would always been alright with me as it was my favorite season. I like stories and novels where are a past and a mystery that started years before. I like to think of myself as Sherlock Holmes investigating why a character is acting the way they do. And come up with hints, evidence and finally the real reason they do what they do.

When I was a kid, I was famished for some experience, adventure. Oh, I got some alright. I am still getting some which is a surprise. In my childhood, I wanted to run down into the valley below where I lived and see what the houses, churches, buildings were really like. I wanted to travel and see what was on the other side of the ocean, lakes continents. If I could have done it, I would like to have traveled to other worlds. I did it in books.

Autumn was the season I have been waiting for all of my life. I made it and darn if I am going to be pessimistic about it. So what if I have a few age spots on my hands. So what if society and culture views me as less valuable as a senior citizen than when I was young and alluring. I like it this way better. I think Rainer Maria Rilke would have liked it too if he only lived long enough to enjoy it.