ALONE

 

A series of essays....

“WE ENTER THE WORLD ALONE, WE LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE.”

....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

"We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone," a quote by the English writer and historian, James Anthony Froude, in the mid 1800's. Orson Welles added his own spin when he said, "We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

Variations on a theme. 

With eyelids carrying the day’s exhaustion, I tuck my pillow beneath my neck and slowly curl into a fetal position, my future dreams taking me down the haunted path of aloneness.

What is the reasoning behind this dour feeling?

I spend hours inspiriting a sensation of acceptance knowing that this vast, natural world is cradling me within its arms even when people fail to do so. Surely, I cannot be alone when I hear the joyful birdsong drifting among the tree branches, piercing the morning haze as I listen from my cozy bed.

I am not alone when I open my eyes and Nature’s concert carries me through simple morning routines: making coffee and relishing the first sip, brushing my hair and deciding what to wear, and drifting to my desk to begin my workday with a second cup of steaming coffee poured from the carafe on the kitchen counter.

Certainly, I could not be alone when the lively conversation between husband and wife of a gentle, spring evening clings to me like a second skin. Sitting side-by-side while plotting, planning, and dreaming of a time with mixed desires of future travel and moving back up north near family and friends. Life will never slow down if we do not allow it to slow down.

Can we be alone with others so nearby?

The realization hits me as if it were a hammer striking truth deep inside my brain—I am successfully 'creating the illusion' that best fits within my life's mold. I see the fine line between actual and contrived. It divides my thoughts like a gossamer web stretching between two solid objects.  

"Only through our love and friendship...." 

How much control do we truly have? The pieces float along the gentle breeze and match one shape into another adapted for accuracy and exactness like the pieces of a machine-cut puzzle. We are instruments of the grand illusion—living in the moment.

We are on the outside looking in.

Within the span of time we become thinkers, dreamers, artists and imagineers. A puppetmaster of our own world. Alone, I see the color blue. Alone, you see the color gold. Alone, I am bombarded and assailed by words and phrases. Alone, you create beauty from stone and mortar.

As we differentiate between fantasy and reality, we decide

when to choose love over hatred, or when to stand alone or follow the masses, or the right time to employ common sense or become a loose cannon—potentially causing damage to this beautiful planet and the people we share it with.

Do we believe in the rights of women worldwide or do we crush equality between men and women like so many generations of organized religions and cultures have done before us? 

Will honest souls prevail and black-hearted souls be crushed by their own cowardly deeds?

I sit upon the edge of my bed in the shadows of the early morning and chant "Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to my personal deity. I do so in appreciation of my life and the well-being of those I love. My prayer is carried out into the ethos on the wings of angels.

James and Orson, I remain grateful to both of you for your insight.

Vironika Tugaleva, an inspirational speaker and healing coach from the Ukraine, explains that, "The greatest tool of self-love is self-awareness. Once you truly know yourself, love is the only option."

Self-Love.

If love and friendship creates the illusion, for the moment, that we are not alone, then we must learn to be our own best friend and love ourselves with the passion and grace that we would afford to every other living soul around us.

In summary: We are alone with our thoughts and ideas. We create a glass-domed world around us in order to protect these thoughts and ideas. However, we must constantly watch our own beliefs because they will become the words of the people we draw into our inner sanctum.

Live—Laugh—Love for today! Tomorrow we will leave this world, all alone. May we make the best choices for ourselves and everyone around us in the meantime.

Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

Photo Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

"WHEN I PAINT MY MASTERPIECE"

A series of essays.....

BOB DYLAN AROUND 1971

.....as seen through my eyes!





By: Jacqueline E. Hughes


Upon my return home after ten fabulous days in Michigan with my children and five amazing grandchildren, I discover that our Bright House DVR (Digital Video Recorder) has reached an all time high of eighty-three percent!! What? How can that be?

I know that we record many good shows each week and tend to watch them within twenty-four hours so as not to collect them for extended periods of time. With my absence, those hours filled our seemingly controlled void rather quickly. The Voice was the main culprit and, considering this season was soon to wrap-up, there were several taped hours to catch-up on before the finale on Tuesday evening.

One of my favorite contestants, a home-grown Michigan boy who attended Michigan State University and now lives in Traverse City, Michigan, Joshua Davis, performed a song written by Bob Dylan in 1971 entitled "When I Paint My Masterpiece." Dan and I have retained all of our albums from "back in the day" and I vividly recalled this particular cut off of Bob's Greatest Hits, Volume II album. It was first released by the group The Band who covered the song on their album Cahoots. This song has always held a soft spot in my heart because it represented a young, aspiring, female writer who had nothing but the entire world to roam around, play in and write about in her future. The world was a blank canvas and she was going to make sure it didn't stay that way for very long.....

I was just out of college, single, and the world truly was my oyster.

BEAUTIFUL DYLAN

Listening to Joshua sing the lyrics so beautifully brought back memories of people attempting to second guess Dylan's intentions specifying his conspiracy implications, witch hunts, and turning the Spanish Steps in Rome into code for more clandestine operations. Okay. Our minds can translate almost anything into whatever we want them to be. I never bought into it. I like to think my explanation reached a more personal and straight-forward dimension called....reality.  Hopes, dreams, and the power and sadness of love, for me, inspired Bob Dylan's words in "When I Paint My Masterpiece":


"Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs

Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece

Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum
Dodging lions and wastin' time
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb

Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory
As the daylight hours do retreat
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece

I left Rome and landed in Brussels
With a picture of a tall oak tree by my side
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles
Everyone was there but nobody tried to hide

Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece"

Lyrics © BOB DYLAN MUSIC CO



Listening to this song again, after so many years have passed, brought me back into the present. I thought about the trip I had just returned from and all of my interactions with the five young lives that teach me more about life, love, and myself than anything else could on a daily basis. Five bright stars out-shining the billions of others as they float dream-like in the heavens above. Their light is so bright it hurts my heart and brings tears to my eyes. Arms hug me so tight, my muscles ache and sweet, sugary kisses bless my lips with a thousand calories of loving deliciousness. Heaven.

MEMORIES FROM THE FARM

Thanks to a very dear friend of mine and her gracious husband, Farmer Fred, my children, grandchildren and I discovered the daily workings of an active sheep farm that was surrounded by lush, forested, and rolling Michigan acreage. The 'little ones' took turns steering the enormous John Deere as their small shapes were comfortably ensconced within the distinct glow of green and yellow paint, and Cheshire Cat smiles. The quintessential white Amish farmhouse rose high above the sweet lambs hopping in the green meadow below. And, the cherry on top was the huge, multi-level barn, home to the mighty rams and celebrated 'ancient ones.'  It was built by hand decades upon decades before, painted barn-red over and over again and houses unimaginable treasures, unpublished memories, from within its dusty, shadowy nooks and crevices. Truly a writer's delight!

"HOME TO THE MIGHTY RAMS AND
CELEBRATED ANCIENT ONES"

A simple trip to the Mall to ride the double-decker carousel over and over again turns into a journey. Pretending to capture a jungle excursion on the back of a giant gorilla, one grandson straddles the 'giant beast' as the other rides his zebra along the vast Serengeti Plain while the sun sets over a Masai village in Tanzania.




SERENGETI PLAIN



A ROMP THROUGH THE JUNGLE

Our imagination is captured by the miracle of flight when we visit the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo. My youngest granddaughter harnesses her inner Amelia Earhart in order to fly solo across the concrete floor in her shiny, blue machine.

SOLO FLIGHT

Mother's Day memories are captured on three smart phones while fingers and toes are painted bright, Easter egg colors at a nearby Spa.  Three amazing women can only just sit now while their bodies imbibe delight through every pore as they enjoy one another's company.  Relax my beautiful Daughters and Mothers in your own right. Relax because the world often just gets in the way.

CELEBRATING MOTHER'S DAY

Birthday celebrations were in order for my oldest granddaughter who turned eight years old during my visit. Oh, and did I happen to mention that she lost yet another tooth on her birthday eve? What a busy, wonderful time!

 

Bob Dylan wrote his song about all of the above....and, a little bit more.

He wrote about the struggles and emotional journey we all endure in order to find what makes us whole....our own masterpiece called 'True Love.'

He wrote about the artist striving to create his 'masterpiece' while self-doubt, disillusionment, and time nips at his heels. It's about filling a hole in our soul and discovering the power of faith, hope, and love.

He wrote about feeling the disappointment of allowing time to slip through our fingers while our masterpiece sits, incomplete. The awakening is when we realize, after all this time, that along each journey we decide to take, every story our life writes, and all the people we meet and love along the way, each one helps to complete our masterpiece. In the end, our personal masterpiece is our own legacy handed down to each life we have touched; each life that has touched us in return.

In Dylan's case, it was about the task of growing-up and simply observing his own maturity. He stopped talking strictly about his 'social world' and began speaking in terms of personal growth. "Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb," he writes.

His whirlwind tour of Europe among a post-religious era fills him with a strong sense of the practical secularism sweeping through Europe at the time. A new Enlightenment looms on the horizon and this 'golden thread' weaves its way into Dylan's new world. He anticipates his future, at home, when the time will come for the hero to finally take the time to paint his masterpiece.

For myself.....  As I grow more comfortable in my own new world of Enlightenment, self-love and respect for the Earth and all of mankind that walks her fragrant meadows and dusty trails alike, I am that much closer to achieving all of my goals in this lifetime; my personal masterpiece.

My favorite line of this song has to be, "Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody when I paint my masterpiece." I wonder if Dylan has achieved this goal yet. As long as we are breathing, everything remains possible.



Copyright © 2015 by Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved

ALONE

 A series of essays.....

Love, Laugh and Live for Today!

.....as seen through my eyes!



By: Jacqueline E. Hughes


As the old adage suggests and its truth has no boundaries,
we come into this world alone and leave it in the very same manner.....

"We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone," is a quote by the English writer and historian, James Anthony Froude in the mid 1800's.

Orson Welles added his own spin when he said, "We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

Variations on a theme.

Waking-up each morning for the past several weeks, I have been haunted by these thoughts. Closing my eyes at night, tucking my pillow firmly beneath my neck and curling-up in the fetal position, I am haunted by these thoughts.

Why?

I tell myself I am not alone.....  The joyful birds are singing as I open my eyes! Their  sweet music carries me through my simple morning routines. My first sip of coffee tastes much sweeter because of my backyard concert.

I am not alone..... The lively conversation between husband and wife of a gentle, spring evening clings to me like a second skin. Plotting-out, planning and dreaming of a time closer to our grandchildren.

Or, am I?

The realization strikes me as if it were a hammer atop my head....I am successfully 'creating the illusion' that best fits within my life's mold. I see the fine line between 'actual' and 'contrived.' It divides my thoughts like a gossamer web stretching between two solid objects. 

"Only through our love and friendship......."

I have no control. The pieces float along the gentle breeze and match one shape into another adapted for accuracy and exactness. We are instruments of the grand illusion...in the moment.

On the outside.

Ahhh....Alone!

We remain individual thinkers, dreamers, artists and imagineers of our own world. Alone, I see the color blue. Alone, you see the color gold. Alone, I am bombarded and assailed by words and phrases. Alone, you create beauty from stone and mortar.

To be able to differentiate between good and evil, we are alone when we choose love over hatred or, to stand alone or follow the masses or, to employ 'common sense' or become a loose cannon....causing damage to this beautiful planet and the people we share it with.

Do we believe in feminism or, do we crush equality between men and woman like so many generations of organized religions and cultures have before us?

Will honest souls prevail and black-hearted souls be crushed by their own cowardly deeds?

When I sit upon the edge of my bed in the cool darkness of the morning and chant "Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to my God in appreciation for so many things.....I know my words are heard.

These are my current thoughts. This is what I feel and know and question as I navigate this world....alone.

I think I now know what has been eating at my soul lately and I am so grateful for writing down these words that have served to show me some understanding.

Thanks, also, to you both, James and Orson.

Simply, Self-Love.

Vironika Tugaleva, an inspirational speaker and healing coach from the Ukraine, sums it up for me by saying, "The greatest tool of self-love is self-awareness. Once you truly know yourself, love is the only option."

If love and friendship creates the illusion, for the moment, that we are not alone, then we must learn to be our own best friend and love ourselves with the passion and grace that we would afford to every living soul around us. We are all in this game of life together.

In conclusion:
We are alone with our thoughts and our ideas. We create a glass-domed world around us....to protect our thoughts and ideas. But, we must watch our own thoughts constantly because they will become the words of people we draw to ourselves.

Love...Laugh...Live today! Tomorrow we will leave this world, alone. I can only hope and pray that all of us make the best choices for everyone in the meantime.....!!





Savor the Beauty Around Us

Copyright © 2015 by Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved