Because one day of Thanksgiving is not enough (7 of 7)

[aroraborealis]

Finally, a day late, due to an unexpectedly full day yesterday, I'm thankful for connections. One of my favorite things in the world is to touch into little invisible connections, especially between strangers. I like meeting eyes with someone I don't know at an event and recognizing each other as of a piece in that moment, or being in public spaces where I and a bunch of people I don't know share the space and/or time without necessarily even thinking about or acknowledging it.

I'm thankful for all the ways we are connected to each other, and how many different experiences we are all having all the time, and for the occasional stepping back to the perspective of sharing in that variety, alone and together.

Comments

Alive Together, by Lisel Mueller

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrong-headed angel,
or Mary's friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who--but for endless ifs--
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.

Re: Alive Together, by Lisel Mueller

[darthsunshine.livejournal.com]

That is beautiful. Thank you.

[muffyjo]

I heard a wonderful term on NPR about that called "being a consequential stranger". It talked about the consequential strangers in our lives, the storekeeper you see semi-regularly and wave at, the person on the bus who smiled and made you smile, all varying degrees.

I really like that concept a great deal.

[darthsunshine.livejournal.com]

I so enjoy your tradition of the Seven Days of Thanksgiving. It's a way better tradition than the Twelve Days of Christmas, in my opinion. :)

Thank you!