Perspective

      Reading Wendell Berry always provides quoatables, this time from his novel Jayber Crow. Jayber after their deaths, is reflecting on old men who had frequented his barber shop.  "Things went to the grave with them that will never be know again." P. 127. Yeah and verily...it's that loss of history which I feel so keenly in the land of grief.
   A couple of pages later is this "The generation that was old and dying when I settled in Port William (in the late '30's) had memories that went back to the Civil War. And now my own generation, that calls back to the First World War, is old and dying. And gray hair is growing on the heads that just looked over tabletops at the time of Worlds War II. I can see how we grow up like crops of wheat and are harvested and carried away." P. 129. "...the generations rise and pass away before, You..."
    In the book Jayber Crow is reflecting on his life in old age. He was orphaned as a boy, went to live with an elderly aunt and uncle. When they die he is placed in an orphanage some distance away. Eventually he makes his way back to the area where he was born, After he's established as barber in the local town he goes to visit the graves of his parents and aunt and uncle. Reflecting on the grief of those losses he says "...This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy. In a strange way it added to me what I had lost. I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The  world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come." P. 132

"...presences and absences, presences of absences...."  If, we all have a place in the land of grief, we will indeed have these.

   Reflecting on his early life he says "...--all the people of that early world I once thought would last forever,..." P. 130.  Isn't this true? As youngsters we think of people as permanent. On my desk is a picture of a family gathering in which I'm a baby being held by my grandmother. Of the 28 in the picture there are 6 of us alive today. Growing up with that extended family I assumed it was forever.

Takk for alt,

Al