The Calligraphy

In 1982, I lost a dear friend to suicide. Susan was the kind of girl who lit up people's lives. We were 26 years old the year she died, and had known each other since five years old at infants school.

In 1999, a mutual friend, someone I thought of as an old friend, a man who had once been my lover, but not someone I trusted, brought me this calligraphy. He asked me to frame it in a worthy frame, one that honored and respected Susan.

The calligraphy used an old technology called Letraset. You bought sheets of clear film with alphabets printed on them. You turned the sheet over and used a flat blade to press each letter onto the page. Susan created this calligraphy. She pressed a decorative border of leaves onto each side of the page, and then she colored inside each leaf. The text of the calligraphy is the Desiderata, the desirable things. In the original of this piece, you can see that Susan made some spelling mistakes. Letraset was not a forgiving technology. If you didn't hold the paper completely still, the letter you were pressing out could break. It took a minute or two to press each letter. If you tried to scrape off a miss-spelled letter, you left a shadow mark on the page.

Susan ended her own life, she didn't realize the Desiderata. She didn't feel her right to be here. Susan suffered from the disease of Anorexia. The more stress she experienced, the bigger part Anorexia played in her life. In the months before her death, many dramas, and misguided friends surrounded her. Susan seemed like an emotional vacuum that people (men) wanted to write on.

In 2006, I found out from Susan's former partner that the man who brought me this calligraphy was one of those men. I found out that this man -- the man who brought me the calligraphy to honor Susan, the man who had once been my lover -- had injured my friend. I can't bear to name the injury here. I didn't know about this injury when Susan died. I didn't know this man hurt my friend until later. Susan's former partner helped her decide not to press charges. So, the perpetrator did not get his day in court.

It's a funny thing. In our late teens, our foolish ways seemed somehow redeemable. And by our mid-twenties, life took a grip on us, and said: Look, look!

Susan's death shocked and scared me. I'm glad I didn't know till later of the injury this man did to her. I don't think I could have borne it. When I did find out, I felt betrayed and angry, but mostly I felt sad.

My intuition tells me that this man gave me the calligraphy to make amends to Susan and also to me. He didn't put it that way. He said, "I want you to have it: someone who cared about her. Get it framed. Buy the best frame you can find. I will pay for it. Tell me how much it costs. I will send you the money." He tended to speak that way, in commandments.

So, I did what he asked. Not understanding the context, I did this to honor my friend who died too soon and too young. Later I wondered: Did I do the right thing? I reflected on the pain of Susan's injury. I reflected on the veiled but still obvious pain of her perpetrator. And, I believe I did the right thing. I took the good and left the bad, the terrible bad. I couldn't do anything about the past. I left it there, and honored my friend.

I didn't take the money. The man who gave me the calligraphy had to let it go at giving me the calligraphy. He had to let it just be an offering.

Life weaves a complex cloth. I'm glad I'm just one thread in that cloth. Susan wove a bright thread in the cloth of my life. My dear friend is long gone now. Long gone, but I remember her. I can see her kneeling on a rug with a pad of paper and a sheet of Letraset in front of her, concentrating real hard to get the letters to come out right...

Here's looking at you, kid

Zorro

Night Drive through Boulder

Lilies of the Field

Gi-irl (Lennon & McCartney style)

Another Fine Mess of Purple

Purple

A Rosebud

Heart of Joy

Lady Bug Crosses Dandelion Leaves

Rabbie Burns - Scottish Poet and Collector of Songs

Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, was born on January 25th. Traditionally around this time, Scots celebrate their most famous poet with a Burns supper.

Burns wrote the song "Oh My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose." He also wrote "Auld Lang Syne." Burns spent a lot of time collecting traditional Scottish tunes and songs. He wrote poetry that showed compassion for living beings and joy tinged with sadness. Burns was a farmer and he once wrote a poem to a mouse that he met in his field when he was ploughing. The poem is called: To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough. He says to the mouse: "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie!" I like the vivid detail of the full title of the poem. This is why Scottish people make good Technical Writers!



The excerpt below is from the blog This Moment:

"I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation ... Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened ... His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture: but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school, i.e. none of your modern agriculturists who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman, who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty ... I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly."

Sir Walter Scott recalling the occasion when, as a boy of 15, he met Robert Burns in Edinburgh. I've [blogger Alan Edwards] never been convinced by the romanticised portraits of Burns like the one by Nasmyth, and I think Scott's verbal description probably gives a better picture of what the great poet was really like.