The intimate moments with one's self

clip from the Snowman,Friends do teach us how to fly,click to see

Dearest Readers, Sometimes I will just post something that is simple, eloquent, and just is a pleasant addition to my day or something that makes me pause and wonder. Today is such a day. Here is a poem that makes me feel a sense of connection to others in their private moments  of saying something  to one self. It is also the birthday of Raymond Briggs who wrote the Snowman which is one of my favorite childhood books as it softly introduces children to the magic of friendship, the sadness of the loss of a magical friend and the desire to appreciate the sweetness of life.Today is Raymond Briggs birthday.
         The Snowman (1978). It's just pictures, no words, but with those pictures it tells the story of a boy who makes a snowman that comes alive. They go on adventures and even fly through the air. But the next morning, the sun comes out and the snowman melts. The book was a big success, and a few years later it was made into a short animated film of the same name, which is shown on TV every year at the Christmas season.

When someone asked him why The Snowman ended so sadly, he said: "I don't believe in happy endings. Children have got to face death sooner or later. Granny and Grandpa die, dogs die, cats die, gerbils and those frightful things — what are they called? — hamsters: all die like flies. So there's no point avoiding it."

Talking to Ourselves

by Philip Schultz

A woman in my doctor's office last week
couldn't stop talking about Niagara Falls,
the difference between dog and deer ticks,
how her oldest boy, killed in Iraq, would lie
with her at night in the summer grass, singing
Puccini. Her eyes looked at me but saw only
the saffron swirls of the quivering heavens.

Yesterday, Mr. Miller, our tidy neighbor,
stopped under our lopsided maple to explain
how his wife of sixty years died last month
of Alzheimer's. I stood there, listening to
his longing reach across the darkness with
each bruised breath of his eloquent singing.

This morning my five-year-old asked himself
why he'd come into the kitchen. I understood
he was thinking out loud, personifying himself,
but the intimacy of his small voice was surprising.

When my father's vending business was failing,
he'd talk to himself while driving, his lips
silently moving, his black eyes deliquescent.
He didn't care that I was there, listening,
what he was saying was too important.

"Too important," I hear myself saying
in the kitchen, putting the dishes away,
and my wife looks up from her reading
and asks, "What's that you said?"
"Talking to Ourselves" by Philip Schultz, from Failure. © Harcourt, 2007