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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477026" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>When The Geriatric Drunk Next Door</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the geriatric drunk next door who was <br>raising chihuahuas to make a living, <br>but couldn't part with one them when it came time to sell <br>came over one day in my childhood, <br>shaking like an aspen leaf in the fall, <br>going through withdrawal, to ask if he could borrow<br>a few bucks, I watched my mother give him five <br>of the last ten she had to raise four kids <br>for half of the rest of the month before<br>the next welfare check arrived, and say, <br>Here. Don't hurt yourself. Something to ease the pain.<br>Though she didn't drink and he'd been drinking too long<br>to turn the herd that had trampled him around.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She didn't judge. She didn't try to give advice. <br>She didn't belittle the man in the way she gave. <br>She didn't count how much the giving took off her plate. <br>She wasn't indulging her progressive, liberal, altruism. <br>She wasn't breaking loaves and fishes on a hillside <br>or trying to win a popular election.<br>She just gave like the sea, the earth, the sky, <br>like fire gives heat and light, all in one easy action <br>of a heart that has suffered enough on its own to know<br>we're all in the same lifeboat on the moon <br>white-water rafting through the rapids of a waterclock.<br>And that has been my religion ever since. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though I've never said anything to her about it. <br>How much I loved her in that moment <br>of compassionate tenderness, how she pulled <br>one thread out of the straitjacket of despair in his eyes, <br>and rewove it not on a loom like the moon but a harp<br>into a flying carpet of joy so another human <br>in as much of a mess in her own way as he was<br>could gain some altitude for a little while above the misery, <br>and hang on to at least one single wavelength of threadbare radiance <br>that could still fall on the shit everybody was living in <br>and turn it into a flower. Indelible, <br>the understanding in their eyes when he <br>looked at her incredulously for a moment <br>and she knew exactly what he meant<br>as she laughed at herself with a soft, wry smile <br>as if she'd just seen the sacred fool behind her best sentiment. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That was the whole of enlightenment to me. <br>The beginning of a spontaneous discipline<br>and still is, though it's sometimes bitter to practise, <br>when your giving is mistaken for having been taken <br>and you lament how many people can't tell the difference <br>between a theft and a gift anymore. How they deprive themselves<br>of so many jewels of inestimable value, <br>and that human touch that can pour the heart like gold <br>from the darkest of ores, the deepest of mines, <br>or bring meteors to shed hot tears like diamonds upon impact.<br>Or oxygen and the bases of protein. <br>Though it be a nuclear winter outside. <br>Though the bride was left standing at the altar<br>and there was no one there to lift the veils of Isis<br>to see the stars in the eyes of the Queen of Heaven even at nadir <br>like a chance someone wasn't willing to take.<br> <br>Though common sense dictate a rational sacrifice, <br>and Ayn Rand and the Union of Spiritual Snakeoil Salesmen <br>preach that you've got to learn to love yourself first <br>as if you had a self to nurture that wasn't rooted <br>like a mirage in a desert in an hourglass that poured <br>through your fingers like water when you tried to grasp <br>the delusion of the flower. Though all the mystics<br>try to annihilate what doesn't exist to see God as she really is <br>as they come before her like busy, busy bees <br>with money in their pockets and honey in their hives<br>and all their martyrdom proves to be just another mode of suicide. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">You can give a piece of garbage you've picked <br>out of a dumpster like the bruised fruits of the earth, <br>and when you give it to someone you can eat <br>from the Tree of Life with impunity without having to choose <br>between the serpent and the apple, the evil and the good, <br>or the knowledge you must suffer to be understood<br>as a human, who can gain altitude by erring on the side <br>of someone else's plight without even wearing wings, <br>to the wonderment of the angels and demons alike, <br>and occasionally, like me, your angry, eldest son, <br>who didn't know until that one moment whether <br>he should approach the world like a fist <br>with teethmarks on the knuckles, or <br>an open palm with lifelines thrown out to another<br>like billions of umbilical cords woven like a strong rope <br>into a mother who didn't need to build an ark to be a lifeboat.<br>Who could see lucidly through a glass darkly<br>the veils of her own nebulosity breaking out of the fog <br>like the search lanterns of the stars <br>out of the most ancient mystery of love <br>hidden in her heart without the aid of a teacher or telescope.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Patrick+White">Patrick White</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477026" data-title="When The Geriatric Drunk Next Door de Patrick White" data-description="When the geriatric drunk next door who was 
raising chihuahuas to make a living, 
but couldn't part with one them when it came time to sell 
came over one day in my childhood, 
shaking like an aspen leaf in the fall, 
going through withdrawal, to ..."></div>
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