the art of losing isn't hard to master

i've lost the ability to realize time. it all stopped and has restarted. i keep thinking it is january, the year is new. three friends of mine have died. i found out upon returning to the country. a new place. a new reality. a new emotional foundation. nothing seems real the way it seemed real before. i have known death. i have visited death in my dreams. a few nights ago, death visited me and i saw it and called it the devil. it was a big black emptiness that moved about and entered the house in which i was staying, it's edges were shaggy, unkept, like an old ill-fitting coat. the devil had a sickle and encompassed all. when i saw the devil, in my dream, i passed out. i woke up with blisters all over my body in the shape of whip lashes. death was getting to me. three of my friends are dead. two suicides in one day, both hangings. a scooter crash the next day. everyone i love is depressed and that is the most painful. i am worried. i am experiencing this all on a very psychological plane, not being in boston. my head hurts and my body is doing weird things. there are good moments and bad moments and not much to shift them in between. who knows what the earth is anymore, if so many people have found a way to dwell elsewhere? so many people in my life have gone and i can't imagine what makes me still here? i have a guardian angel. i know it. when the real trouble comes, i leave right before it. but i wish sometimes that maybe i could just take the place of one of them. there are so many bad people in the world, and all the good people are putting corn husks in their armpits and flying off. i am sick to my stomach. my eyes have been blurry for a week now. sometimes life it really, really hard. and i have no answers at all.

i don't need my friends here with me. i have friends all over the world who i miss. i just need my friends happy. there is so much sadness all the time. no one ever wants to talk about anything. i am scared. i admit it. i'm scared that people are a lot more depressed than they let on. i am scared that i can't help. i'm scared of the great Silence of my younger days, and that too many people still hear that inaudible rapping. I'm scared of that vast emptiness engulfing my home-city and the people i love most. the silence is rising and persistent. i don't want to listen to music anymore except at work, and i don't want to work. i can feel the silence in my bones. it is rapping on my marrow. it is sucking at my friends. i want to help, but i've got nothing.


The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.



Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.



Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.



I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.



I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.



-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"