98.
P.S. to Bob:
...There's still that question about 'it', my friend.
We know it blows.
Things blow in it. (The answer may or may not be in it; probably depending upon your needs
at a given moment.)
It has sons (and daughters).
People mistake it for God.
There's a great scene near the end of 'The Magnificent Seven' when the village's old priest
tells Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen that it hasn't been the gunfighters--or even the farmers
--who have won the fight: it's been the land.
"You're like the wind--blowing over the land and passing on," the old man says to their nodding
heads.1
Near the time of his death in 1988 i exchanged some letters with South Africa's great writer
Alan Paton and his wife, and in one i mentioned that in an article he'd written for Canada's
(since defunct) February/March 1988 Influence magazine he'd paralleled Canada's great writer
W.O. Mitchell by quoting 19th century English poet Christina Rossetti, as Mr. Mitchell had
in his classic book, 'Who Has Seen The Wind?'
I added that 'Who Has Seen the Wind?' also quoted this from Psalm 103: 15-16:
"As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field,
so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place
thereof shall know it no more."
There's a saying (that i've learned since from a 'Murphy Brown' episode is an old native
proverb) i saw on a t-shirt (supposedly in both of Canada's official languages--though,
skeptical of the French translation on the shirt, i checked with two French-speaking friends
and here include their more correct translations) during a walk for peace that goes:
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow
it from our children."
"On a surrement pas hérité la terre de nos encêtres; on
les a emprunter de nos enfants."
or
"Nous n'avon pas hérité la terre de nos encêtres;; nous
l'empretons de nos enfants."
And i have a poster at home that reads:
"Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
CREE INDIAN PROPHECY"
It brings to mind these words of Cree soulmate, Canada's Joni Mitchell:
"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
You know where you are in all this...beyond all the references to 'it' which
in some ways has affected/afflicted me as it did you.
Maybe all i want to say is that it seems it's always forgotten except maybe by the kids,
while they're still allowed to be kids, who watch the movie every year) that 'it' took
Dorothy and Toto to Oz...but it was a special love, faith, and/or magic that brought them home.
--by GORDON C. WONG,
from "What Lies Beyond This
Door",*
copyright 1987 by GORDON C.
WONG
-JUNE 7, 1997 NOTE TO BOB: GLAD TO HEAR YOU'RE GOING TO OVERCOME
THIS RECENT MEDICAL PROBLEM. YOU HAVE MY PRAYERS YOU LIVE FOREVER.
1-THIS REMINDS ME SO MUCH OF SOMETHING THAT AROSE AWHILE BACK, ALTHOUGH AFTER I HAD WRITTEN THIS PAGE AND OBVIOUSLY WELL AFTER THE SOURCE OF THE WISDOM QUOTED IN THE LINKED TERM OF REFERENCE ADDRESSING THE SUBJECT OF THIS FOOTNOTE.
THE CONTENTS AND CONTINUING FRONT PAGE NEWS SURROUNDING RESPECT/DISRESPECT FOR THE CENTRAL PRINCIPLE UNDERLINE THE ENDURING RELEVANCE OF THIS.
SO, TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM TERM OF REFERENCE ABOUT THE SUBJECT AT THE HEART OF THIS PAGE'S CONTENTS, TAKE YOUR NEXT FOOTSTEP HERE.