My sister-in-law was just diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.  She's half-way into chemo, after undergoing a double masectomy.  She's 43 years old with an 8 year old daughter.

We are all passengers on a train heading in the same direction.  Some of us will be getting off at earlier destinations, but all of us will, eventually, have to disembark, one at a time.  Goodbye.  Goodbye.

We sit here, becoming attached to our fellow passengers, forgetting that every journey will come to an end, sooner or later.  If we smarten up to this, we tarnish the joy of being on this wondrous train of life. 

And so the pain of travel eventually catches up with all of us.

I just started reading "Second Space", Czeslaw Milosz's final book of poems, written when he was in his 90's.  He died in 2004.

Three things I've learnt so far from him: 

* With age comes clarity of vision. 

* We never completely leave adolescence.

* Everyone wants to remain alive for different reasons.

I have nothing to say.

Nothing.

My words are pictures that I speak with my eyes. 

Long ponderous sentences pour out of them,
Wetting the streets and the green palm leaves with drizzle:

Lines and lines of rain and poems.

So why should I speak at this moment, just when you are reaching for your umbrella?

This is a little thing I do to protect the environment in the Third World. Whenever I am throwing away a plastic bottle in the garbage, I always take the cover off. On the islands we have no re-cycling laws or practices. All garbage is put into one bag and disposed at the city dump. The beer company has a recycling system for their beer bottles, but that's the extent of re-cycling.

So, by taking the cover off I ensure that the plastic bottle will fill with earth or water and sink. It won't remain on the surface of the ocean, should it be washed out to sea, and it won't take up valuable cubic space in the dump, as it might be filled with some earth before its buried.

Sad, eh? But I wonder if a floating bottle is better than one that has drowned. At least the floating bottle will eventually wash up on a shore, and has a better chance of being dealt with on land than if it lay motionless on the seabed.

Questions. Questions.

Those that are most open with me.