Of Christmas. It also kills independent bookstores and probably people who slave away trying to make all the cheap crap people buy there. Sadly, I had to enter one today. In search of specific toys. Ugh. By the time I got to the toy aisle my IQ had dropped 20 points, and I felt devoid of any Christmas spirit. Shopping in those places is a chore and is meaningless consumerism. What is Christmas-y about spend spend spend? How many people will plunge themselves into further debt over one day?
Enough of my ranting. I picked up a glossy magazine as I stood there in the aisle awaiting check out with my plundered toys (LOL), and happened upon a Pablo Neruda quotation. Surely a quote from one of his poems. It was beautiful and moving in the moment and I almost bought the magazine to have that quote. The words are silently resonating within me and yet I cannot recall them. It drove me to look for it, and in doing so I happened upon other works by him. Beautiful. Some that struck my core....
If You Forget Me, Drunk as Drunk, The Question, are all poems I love and move me deeply. But I especially relate to this....
from "We are Many"
But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear
