Parinama

  What’s the point of starting something new when you know you will never be good at it? Margaret Talbot, “Starting Fresh” New Yorker, January 18, 2021   At 80, when my grandfather Nunzio gave up his beauty parlor, he took up drawing and painting.   He had been styling women’s hair since he was 20 most of that time in the little shop he rented in the Commodore Hotel near Harvard University.   There he styled the hair of Harvard professor’s wives flirting with them in French or Italian as he wrapped strands of hair around curlers, added red highlights, teased and sprayed thin layers into high standing crowns.   After giving up the business, he continued styling hair at the senior center and nursing homes until the accident with the snow blower that took three fingers off of his left hand.   When he could no longer style hair, he took up drawing and painting with the same tenderness and fervor he had brought to the ladies for all th...

The closer we get to the light the closer we get to the darkness. Parker Palmer   This is the light of hope, joy, and belovedness that comes during the dark journey of grief.   It is the light that comes through the kindness of a stranger, a healer’s touch, a friend’s attention. Light is brightest in the darkness because it comes unexpectedly, when it feels as if there may never be joy again.          This kind of darkness that I am writing about is not the darkness of depression.   In depression, there is numbness, a lack of feeling, a lack of vitality.   In this darkness of grief, there is a feeling of the possibility for Spring, of moving through the dark woods alone but not unaccompanied, a feeling of being chosen for this moment to grow.   Whereas in depression there is a dark fog that no light can penetrate, in this darkness the tiniest sliver of light shines so brightly.   This dark night of the ...