prompted by jco memoir - a widow's story

i was reading a passage she included from a letter a good friend had sent after ray died. this friend told her, "suffer, joyce. ray was worth it." i don't think it is that this woman was necessarily wishing suffering upon her friend but realized a certain amount of suffering was part of the process and simply unavoidable. what's more, i think in a strange way when people can accept and even embrace things, difficult and heart wrenching as they may be, it sometimes gives us the all important sense of ownership. and with that sense of ownership i believe comes strength. it is strength that is critical to survival.

we can kick and scream and shake our fists at the stars for what lands in our laps as well as what we often bring upon ourselves, i do it constantly, but at the end of the day we still have to put things in their place and process it all, piece by piece, big or small, seemingly impossible or simple. like many people, i continue to be my biggest impediment. still, we keep plugging away, working on ways to get through. sometimes it feels clumsy, ungraceful like the frenetic splashing of a dog paddle instead of the streamlined, deliberate stroke of an english channel swimmer. but make no mistake, we are on top of the water, even if only treading sometimes. and i'll take that any day over sinking. dum spiro spero eventually gives way to res firma mitescere nescit. what is life if not an endurance sport.

i like jco because she exposes herself, hides little or nothing, is raw and revealing. i don't even know her but she makes you feel intimately involved in her most personal, private self. and i find it bizarrely comforting. she admits her "frailties". she would not define it as bravery, but it is by default. i admire that. i aspire to that. nobody is superman.



afterthought -- i briefly met jco after a talk she did a the dma back in february. like the others who had come to hear her, i fumbled with the book jacket as i stood in line to have her inscribe her latest work. the museum volunteers scurried around passing out 3M sticky notes to make the process as efficient as possible. we were to place the yellow square inside the title page and not ask the author to write anything "special". that seemed amusingly ironic to me. what she had written in that book was far more significant than any "good luck, soandso. jco".

when i reached the front of the line and it was my turn to have my book signed, even though we had been asked not to engage her in conversation, i thanked her very much for coming to dallas to talk to our group. it was then she stopped writing her name, put the pen down and raised her head to look at me. she did that funny "i'm checking you out" thing, eyes up and down, from my head to my feet. she smiled at me and said most sincerely, "i like how you put that together", referring to what i'd worn that night. i smiled a big one while thanking her. then i told her i admired the texture of the blouse she'd worn in the author photo on the back of the book jacket, and that for a 2D black and white photograph, it had come through very vividly 3D. her eyes seemed to brighten and a corner of her mouth tilted up. even though we were strangers, it was personal and familiar. that's how she is.