Saturday, November 17, 2007

Ghosts


'The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.'
(Mitch Albom)

13 comments:

Sue said...

Yes, indeed.

Great pic. I don't quite intellectually understand the link between the pic and the text, but I understand it emotionally and physically - and that's the best kind of knowing :)

The Harbour of Ourselves said...

hi sue,
i started reading 'for one more day' thursday and couldn't carry on past that line - which was only the 3rd one in!

got me thinking of my grandma, that spare seat....

thanks re the pic, had to be something abstract, far more emotive in this case...

Rainbow dreams said...

a powerful line...so incredibly true, yet it's also what makes it bearable - the knowing that at least those we love, have never, and can never leave us totally... that whatever, they will be an integral part of our lives...
sitting at our inner table...

reminds me of a young lad I knew whose biggest fear was that he would forget, and that she was gone from his life forever - he needed exactly that reassurance...

The Harbour of Ourselves said...

katie,
i find that story of the lad moving, hope he can now forever remember her at his physical and inner tables...

Rainbow dreams said...

thanks paul, from what I hear he is finding life much easier...

I came back for a ps...great picture - is it just me, or is there a face in there? old and cracked and full of texture and feeling?

awareness said...

I find it comforting to believe this knowing that I am connected to the past and the future. Right now, my table is surrounded by the comforting presence of my ancestors, some of whom resonate more deeply than others, but all just as important. And in the future, I will be present at other's tables as a link to eternity.

I read a piece by Abraham Heschel last week from his book...."Man is not Alone..." and i think it fits here....(at least it does in my left handed way of thinking....)

"Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken in space, like a ray of light refracted in the water. "

The picture? You're going to think I'm nuts (well, perhaps you already do now) but it looks like a small fragment of the background in Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine chapel.

Bar L. said...

good
as always
feeling down
not sure how this helped but it did

JP (mom) said...

I think we all leave impressions upon the places we have traveled and the people we have touched. Lovely quote and photo. Peace, JP/deb

Michael K. Althouse said...

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your visits over the past few weeks. Today is Thanksgiving, and I am doing just that,

Mike

The Harbour of Ourselves said...

thanks for your comments all. i loved them, as i did the way Mitch concluded this work....

'Because there WAS a ghost involved, you may call this a ghost story. But what family isn't a ghost story? Sharing tales of those we've lost is how we keep from really losing them.'

Micah Hoover said...

Sometimes a single person can be a room full of dead guests unto themselves.

One hardly needs to recall the man who lived among the Gerasenes ... from the outside he appeared to be only one man, but he always took a legion with him.

Micah Hoover said...

The quality of this post is its elusiveness ... just like the style of real ghosts.

Mike Todd said...

Hey Paul - can you send me an email? I need to ask you a question, and I don't see an email address for you in your profile.
Thanks.