~~~

"When she was a young girl, Clemantine displayed the large courage to endure genocide. In this essay she displays the courage of small things: the courage to live with feelings wide open even after trauma; the maturity to accept unanswerable ambiguity; the tenacity to seek coherence after arbitrary cruelty; the ability to create tenacious bonds that have some give to them, to allow for the mistakes others make; the unwillingness to settle for the simple, fake story; and the capacity to look at life in all its ugly complexity."

David Brooks, NY Times, July 7, 2015
"The Courage of Small Things"
~~~

and you ask yourself
could I write this any better,

and you no/know/no
the answer well before the asking

but these combinations of letters
don't mere resonate,
they sound bells, all kind of bells,
wind chimes, mean car alarms, church bells, door bells,
sounds of nature soothing,
harsh noises so terrible
only humans can devise and extract,
not found in nature

the ringing sound of
the compartments of your brain,
clashing for predominance,
each with their own agenda,
and you silence them and write

thus compelled,
to review, define truths egocentrically,
examine your spatial perceptions,
ask the better, important question

do I have the courage of small things?

The easy answer is a runaway
yes or no,
the certitude of a familiar self-
(confidence, hate, righteousness, loathing),
the sadness of deprecation,
the pleasure of surety

and you know,
even the fools know,
neither are true answers,
only easy ways out

you chew and chew each small courage,
acknowledging insufficiency on any scale,
some here and there, maybe as good as average,
some here and there, far worse than most

in only one do grant yourself a passing grade,
and even that,
barely, minimally

"the capacity to look at life
in all its ugly complexity."

for here you are,
measuring and minding,
tallying and totaling,
in full public view,
knowing what only you know,
if, you this small courage, possess

I answer diffidently, fearfully, dangerously,
treading the line

in this above all, I must be a striver,
for all else,
even the simplest life,
is complex beyond reason,
see the ugly, say the ugly out loud,
permit to admit

for without this first step,
threshold, door jamb, Styx crossing,
you will never be able to summon,
you will never possess
the starting line courage of
asking and answering,
running when the starter pistol fires,
in a manner
unexcused, undisguised, fully disclosed,
and find the
beauty in
simplicity

do I have the courage
to do the summming up
of my smallest things,
that together
are truly
courage writ
large?

~~~
July 8, 2015
8:00am
NML