Rayon de Soleil

Il ya tellement de facons d'etre un ami.
Proche ou loin, gentil , timide, vivant,
un ami nous rend plus heureux.

Vous etes si loin, toutes ces annees,
et malgre cet obstacle, vous restez toujours
proche a mon coeur.

Simplement un moment de votre temps precieux
dans votre vie si active, comme un petit oiseau bleu,
qui se repose un moment a ma fenetre.

Et souvent ce que me laisse ce petit oiseau bleu
est un rayon de soleil pour mon ame, une caresse
qui encourage le souffle et le coeur.

Merci, merci, ami fidel, ami si loin a l'autre bout
du monde, jeune toujours dans vos energies et espoirs,
vous voyagez le monde pour assurer le futur de votre beau pays.

Je garde ces rayons de soleil pour ces moments ou la pluie
est trop fort, ou les nuages sont trop gris, le froid trop noir.
Et ces rayons de soleil, chacun a son tour, chantent le refrain
d'un poeme qui s' annonce comme l'aurore d'un nouveau jour.

Trudi Ralston.
January 28th, 2016.

Pour le courage d'un ami pour toutes saisons.
Pour Driss Ouaouicha.

Feline Feathers

Our boy cat Tigger will be 8 years old this summer. He was an adorable kitten that just showed up one day and we have taken care of him ever since. He has always had a very sweet disposition, and really has stayed like a kitten in his personality that just wants to be cuddled and taken care of. The last couple of years he has been quite a challenge finding him gentle food that is rich in protein but will not upset his forever sensitive stomach. It can be quite exhausting to take care of him, now that he is a fullfledged ailing senior citizen, but I do so with relentless dedication. When all else fails, humour can be a welcome reprieve. I made my husband and son laugh when I said that one of these days Tigger will sneeze really heard and all that will be left will be a bunch of dusty feathers. After a particularly challenging night with him, Tigger reminded me of some of the toys I remembered as a kid. Every time you put them back together, another piece would fall off. I know it is tempting to think about giving up on Tigger at times, but then when he recovers from yet another winter cold, and he is happy with the new food regimen I tried out for him, he is a kitten all over again and all the frustration and lack of sleep dissipates. I hate to give up on anyone or anything, and I don't want to give up on my aging tomcat either. Over the years we have had to euthanize under a veterinarian's care several of our rescued dogs. That is heartbreaking, when you find out they have cancer and will only suffer needlessly if their death is postponed. Tigger is just one of those pets that is gradually falling apart, one feather at a time, and like a phoenix he always gets better and is all spunky again come spring. I do always look forward to spring, because then I get to catch up on many nights of interrupted sleep, as I smile and watch my Tigger sun himself in the sun in his blanket lined soft basket on the deck. In a next life , I would not mind being a cat. People seem to think it is a privilege to pick up after you, no matter what. No wonder I have seen my cat snicker on more than one occasion. When Tigger does implode into a pile of dusty feathers in the probably not too distant future, I will be very sad, but also very satisfied that I never gave up on him, just like I never gave up on my sweet cat Sneakers, who died 4 years ago and who lived a very happy life for 13 years when her kind heart finally gave out on sunny summer day. She is buried in our backyard and I still get to visit with her. She is resting underneath a big hazelnut bush, that fills every spring and summer with a ton of twittering little birds, very close to the place where she died. With her too, my heart is satisfied that all those years I took very loving care of her. That definitely eases the heartache, I think also for them when that time of saying goodbye comes as inevitable as the setting of the sun at the end of the day.

The Shoreline

There is a beautiful line in the 2012 movie "Act of Valor" : " Every man has a code of ethics, an ethos. It is his shoreline that gets him home each time, and believe me, we all want to go home". I know this wisdom was in reference to the code brave soldiers follow, but I think its depth applies to life in general. The words kept coming back to me today, perhaps because the other side of human nature was on my mind, the one that at times gives in to weakness, to poor decision making and to having to come to terms with the consequences of such acts. We have all been there, for one reason or another. I know I have. To me, the best part about such a situation is to get to the other side of it, and to realize you are OK, that all is fixed, forgiven, understood and we can move on. That was what I was thinking of when I heard those clear and precise words. To be given a second chance, whether for offenses that are minor to serious at the forgiveness of those who love us in spite of our short comings, is sweet homecoming indeed. To be given the opportunity to rebuild your ethos after we bent the rules we were convinced we held sacred is a very cathartic experience, one that can bolster our heart to be kinder, more compassionate and understanding because someone we hurt or disappointed gave us a second chance, forgave us instead of shaming or dismissing us as a hopelessly flawed human being. To me, people that sincerely regret mistakes and move forward with positive attitude and action, are wiser because of that forgiveness. Forgiveness implies that we are trusted to rise to the better part of ourselves in spite of having shown evidence to the contrary in the past. That is simply awesome. To be allowed to leave past mistakes behind and trusted to make the right choices from here on out in matters of importance is very freeing. It calms the heart and brings a quiet joy to the soul. It energizes our determination, keeps our self confidence from becoming arrogant, or frail. Home is not only where the heart is, it is the place where we are allowed to be ourselves, where our strengths and weaknesses have signed a peace treaty that allows us to build on the lessons learned form the past and the resources needed to build the future, and also where the present is not wishful thinking or regrets, but resolve and integrity. With those treasures in our chest, it is hard to get lost too many times. We can adhere to a solid code of ethics, and that shoreline will get us home indeed each and every time, because, yes, we all want to not just go home, but truly, fully be home, not just in body, but in heart, mind and soul. To be forgiven feels amazing, and the best part about that is that to in turn then have a chance to forgive somewhere down the road is a bliss you won't want to miss. 

The Piece of String

My father had a definite philosophical bend. This past week one particular memory of such musings on his part came back to mind. I was already in college in Texas and home for the summer one year when he and I were just casually talking. I forgot what led to this, but my father said suddenly very solemnly : " In life you can have those moments where you reach into your pocket and go, what is that piece of old string doing in here ? The temptation is to just to want to throw it away. But I can guarantee that the moment you do, you will have a need for that piece of seemingly useless bit of string. " He did not elaborate, he was silent after that and walked away, going back to doing what he was doing in the house before we had started talking. Over the years, and especially since his death in 2008, these words of his have come back to me many times. I still wonder as to their meaning, or what specifically he was trying to tell me. I think in part he was referring to the throw away society we live in. Things have improved somewhat in that sense since the importance of recycling seems to have hit home, but there is no denying we are as humans a wasteful bunch. Perhaps my father was referring to the casual attitude of modern man to also treat relationships as throw away. I will never really know what he was trying so determinedly to communicate to me that day. I do take his admonition to heart. I value the importance of things, I take good care of them, and even keep a zip lock bag where I reuse ribbons and pieces of string from gifts and boxes. Perhaps I do this to keep his memory alive, I always think of him when I add another reusable ribbon or string to the bag. I also try to keep it in mind in my relationships with my friends and neighbours, my husband and son, the few family members I still have in Texas and Belgium. The sad thing is that he himself was tossed aside when he became difficult because he was showing signs of early dementia. My mother decided to throw him out of his own house, and he did not fight her on it. He never said a bad word about her to the end, while she spoke ill of him to us, her children for most of our lives, the poison of her words dripping like acid into our souls until she had us paralyzed to believe she was the victim.
I just took a brand new blanket out of its pretty box. It was tied together with a pretty silk ribbon. I took the ribbon off and rolled it up and carefully put it in the zip lock with the other ribbons. Perhaps my father sensed he would be discarded as he got older. I do not know. All I know is that his words left an impression on me, and that I try really hard not to take anything or anyone for granted.

The Crossing

No one will notice, and very few people will find out about a date that is a milestone for me. This year will be the 40th year I have been living in the US. I came here as a 19 year old, fresh out of high school, and started walking a path that I had really no idea about as far as where it would take me. To this day, it feels like I carry an ocean inside of me, the ocean I crossed to get here. To this day, I feel that big distance between Europe where I came from and the US which has been my new home now for many more years than Belgium ever was. The longing to bridge that ocean of distance has remained strong. It feels like I want to build this very, very long rope bridge that would allow me to walk across to the other side. That sounds weird, I know. Perhaps the reason I feel that way is because the last time I was in Belgium, my country of birth, was 29 years ago. A series of circumstances, all of them unfortunate, led to this fact. Now that the tides have calmed and turned, the hope of returning for a nice long visit shows itself glimmering on the horizon like a new dawn. I have an aunt in Oostende who is very dear to my heart. She has known me my whole life, and I did get to see her 20 years ago when I visited her with my then 4 yr. old son, when she was visiting my parents and youngest sister in Georgia where they were living at the time. Through the loss of my father, who was her brother, and the tragic circumstances of the last years of his life, my aunt Lieve and I have become good friends, and we call each other several times a year for a nice long visit on the phone, kind of like a coffee lunch long distance, very enjoyable. She is a woman of great insight and intelligence, and combined with her warm heart and wicked sense of humour, she has taught me many useful insights into life and its at times unpredictable bends and turns. Through her, I have found the courage to re- establish connections with several of my cousins on my father's side, which has been heart warming after all these years of silence between us. Home is where the heart is. It sounds cliche enough, but when I think of all the experiences I went through, both good and bad, in my forty years here, the one anchor that saved me was that I met a good man with a steady heart, who gave me a home here and a son. The ache at the loss of my roots in my country of birth will never fade, but I have a home of my own in this country now, and that grows dearer to me with each passing day. It is hard work to integrate oneself into another culture, especially when you have no other family of your homeland nearby to ease the transition and remember the joys of speaking your native language, and keeping alive some of your native country's traditions and history. Being a lone wolf, going it incognito is difficult on good days, let alone on the sad or hard days. There remains a part of me that was emptied out, and remains yearning for closure that will never come because I lost my birth family, one after another, in a story of woe and loss too exhausting to revisit in this realization that I have lived in the US since 1976. A phone visit with my aunt in Belgium is a real treat. So often I have drawn inspiration, hope and courage from our talks. I take great pride in realizing that the best parts of me when it comes to persistence, endurance, resolve, wit and emotional resilience come from a part of her that I am also a part of because we are family, we are blood. In those moments, that endlessly long drawbridge between Belgium and the US is only a few steps long. As an immigrant, you have to be flexible, adaptable in order to stay relevant, in order not to become locked in the past, or even lost in it. My aunt makes sure I keep finding my way, and together with my husband and son, the journey continues forward, with every so often a longing look backwards to that long drawbridge from which I am forever now on the other side, with hopefully in the near future a nice long visit. The kind that requires packing a suitcase.  

Child 44

It seems to me that the 2015 British - American mystery thriller " Child 44 " is getting a raw deal. Apparently the critics panned it. Directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by Ricard Price and based on Tom Rob Smith's 2008 novel I myself thought the movie brilliant. Tom Hardy puts on a tour de force performance as Leo Demidov, a Ministry of State Security agent who tries to unravel a series of baffling child murders and in the process infuriates government officials who see even a hint at the idea of a mass murder as intolerable seeing the Soviet doctrine believes "there is no murder in paradise", the supposed worker's paradise under Stalin that is mandated to be free of crime , a disease
seen as evidence of the West's inferiority. But Leo Demidov persists at grave risk to his life and the life of his wife Raisa Demidova, eloquently played by Noomi Rapace. Together they are able to convince General Nesterov played by Gary Oldman with Shakespearean dignity and class, that there is validity to their case, that the large number of children murdered no longer can be considered as accidents. The movie has gotten criticism for having the actors speak English with very heavy Russian accents which was seen as a distraction from an already complex plot. But I believe the thick accents and the at times strain required to follow the conversations as a result of them adds to the murky politics the plot tries to wade through. Life under Stalin was terrifying and invaded people's daily lives to a psychotic degree. The distrust, the fear, the whispers, the omnipresence of the secret police who would take people away to be murdered or sent to the horror of the Gulag system of labour camps for the slightest infractions, from suspicion to rumour, was everywhere like poisoned air. No one could escape it. The Herculean effort Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace's character demonstrate to fight the brutal, dehumanizing system in a quest to get to the truth is impressive. Stumbling over the accents of the actors misses the point entirely. The movie comes across as coated in molasses because the Stalinist system made life that way for the millions of its victims. Life was meant to be stagnant, unsolvable, unmovable with the granite colossus of Stalin and his army of secret police and enforcers gluing people's psyches and bodies to the cement of his demonic reign. This movie needs to be seen. The acting is brilliant, the plot breath taking. The effort put forth by Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinniman, Vincent Cassel and Jason Clarke are valiant. Check out this amazing movie that sheds light on a part of the terrror of Stalin's reign in the Ukraine, the now infamous genocide of 1932- 1933, the Holodomor that claimed the lives of anywhere it is estimated between 2.5 to 7.5 million people.

Stonewalls

The air is thick , heavy like my breath
along this cold winter path.
Stones stacking up all around me
as were I in a prison quarry.
I pause to turn a corner's edge.

The urge to flee the unwelcome scene
briefly overtakes my soul.
I wait, quiet, stifling my alarm
at solitude's sneering stir,
as carefully I step to evade this somber home.

Better to welcome the heavy stones
and touch their grave contours.
The trick is not to mind their weight
and allow time to make brittle
their walls, to walk clothed in patience
and with confident stride 
past their crumbled mass that once tried
to bury my heart's hope and winged desires.


Trudi Ralston.
January 6th, 2015.  

Water Colour

It often is a stormy beach when time to dream
has us meet and walk the damp, bright sands.

The winds blows our hair to bring a blush
 to tales of conquests past and near.

The foaming waves catch our laughter like
the seabirds dipping wings
as our steps press their memories and weight
deep into the beach's murmuring songs.

Friends used to the expanse of oceans and time
the smooth light in your amber eyes calms
the green darkness in mine.   

Our words swim with the tides, with
ease and grace, the horizon the only line
that defines the limits of our reach and dance.
The moon above a quiet witness to wishes
whispered past the gathering clouds.  


Trudi Ralston.
January 4th, 2016.
For Catherine Bouchacourt, and our friendship
that celebrates its 32nd year this summer.   

Quiet Reach

It is a loud world, full of loud people
speaking often loud words with loud voices.

And then there is you.

Like a gentle breeze easing a sharp current
you soften all that is harsh, bitter, brittle.
A spirit that bends with all the blows
that life brings, you quiet even silence
with your eyes , your smile, your hands
that reach beyond all doubt, all pain.

Words have to whisper to hear when
your wisdom speaks, so still, so strong.

Around you, a soul finds its peace,
and for those of us who hear your muted call,
the heart finds its measure of courage,
its breadth of love.

Trudi Ralston.
January 2nd, 2016.
For my friend of 21 years,
for Diane Baldwin. 

Receptaculum

Blanc et clair comme cette nuit brilliante
d'etoiles.
Doux et fort comme cette eau coulante entre
mes doigts.
Chaud et profond comme ce frisson
que cet espoir me donne.

Tu nages dans ces couloirs
des cascades de mes mots,
soie et silence, cri et soupire. 



Tu visites la mer ou voyagent
les bateaux de mes poemes.
Sur, discret, tu me suis
a distance, comme un 
Neptune genereux, prudent avec moi,
sirene sauvage.


C'est toi qui recuperes les lettres muettes
du sable sonore, pourque ma voix
trouve la musique   
pour tous ces mots en route vers
la page suivante d'un de mes livres.  


Trudi Ralston.
January 1st, 2016.
Pour D.O.