I have calmed myself and put on clean clothes to visit Cathy –
A monthly pilgrimage I take with equal measure of passion and pain, joy and hesitation,
Cathy lives in Tulip Hills, a verdant stretch of wild flowers covering a poignant hill,
My two hours journey there is filled with the nostalgia of a loved life lived life with Cathy.
Cathy lived by passion for life, studded artistically with love for humanity and natural beauty,
For her life was an exercise of the heart – not impulsive or emotional,
But a grand theater of ideals, humanity, courage, wonder, and adventure,
She believed that God had created only one chance for us to live
And to waste it in inaction, hording, hating, was the greatest crime.
I found painfully that her vision was the distillation of the wisdom of the ages,
Her originality was ingrained in her cells and did not come from a thought process,
She succeeded a lot, she failed a lot; she loved a lot, she lost a lot; she laughed a lot, she forgave a lot;
But never was there a moment when she was not alive,
She laughed at the conventions of the world, its stifling culture, its moronic materialism.
She was a visionary maverick if there was one,
My Aunt Cathy’s spark is frozen forever in the folds of time,
At her place I spend an hour or two meditating on her spirit
And end my visit by laying two marigolds on her grave.
Suffern, New York, 9.14.10
