Hope

If you can find hope again when all hope seems lost, then you have understood, then you are on the path. I don't know how to say it any other way.
Beyond that, a reverential silence must suffice. 

Lear on the Heath

"Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just." 

- King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4 (On the Heath)

Rachmaninoff Can Help

Good Friday

Happy Passover

Thesaurus.com - Thou Most Helpful Site!

From this Middle-Aged Perch of Mine

From this, my middle-aged, a-ged, a-ged perch, with sore knees and aching limbs, I,  like many other forty-somethings, survey the rising tide of young and younger. Among these surging throngs of dilettantes, I see specimens of great energy and verve, boisterous urchins with cheery faces, unruly pups waiting impatiently to scale the heights, impish knaves and surly parvenus, itching to inhabit lofty perches recently vacated by other, older, aging drones, who resignedly shuffle along steadily toward the exit doors, clutching their canes, making haste for their rocking chairs. And of this new saucy bunch, with all their loud laughter and their wanton ways, with their mockery and their swagger, and their still-unproven aura of invincibility, I would like to say that I see great talent in the making. But fearful, lest by acknowledging their up-and-coming prowess, that I demean my own, I pause, I hesitate to commend in full. For such as these remember not the recent past, nor seek to relish any decade they have not lived through, nor do they hope to learn of any film or book or show or record or cultural artifact produced before the year 2001. And many scoff at literature in general. And many do make sport of their instructors. And some mistake noise for music, while others neglect the arts. And too many betake gadgetry for wisdom. And some disparage science, and some speak ill of algebra, and of my beloved geometry. And many others do not say "please" or "thank-you" and forget to say "excuse me" after a glaring faux-pas.  Do I over-generalize, ay faith, do I put on airs to paint with portly brush strokes grossly unfair and wide in swath and carriage? Very well then, perhaps I do. For lo, there shall come a time when these same up-and-comers will vie for privilege and status, and it shall come to pass that they (too) will wear business suits (or business jeans) and dawn gray hairs with matching age spots and shall be weighed down with girth and stooped posture themselves, and shall learn to grimace and grunt with worries and regrets. And behold, they shall in those (future) days look around them and say, "wherefore do these young hooligans and slackers speak ill of us in our settled habits, amid our bountiful accomplishments?" And with shaking fists and clattering jaws, they shall reek and rattle and call out to their elders, who by then shall be fishing in ponds near golf courses in Florida, and shall lament to them: "why did ye not warn of this, of time and of age, of mortality and taxes and of that deep, irreversible pain of forlorn nostalgia?" And it shall come to pass that one ancient, haggard-looking, elderly, retired, grumpy, introverted English teacher, gazing out upon his beloved Pacific ocean, and sporting a scraggly beard much like Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick, shall then rise from his rocking chair, putting down his coffee mug in a huff, and shall laugh and chortle briefly, before saying to this brood of ungrateful ingrates, this smattering of discomfited, no-longer-young, turks: "ah but I did warn ye, and hast thou not read my blog?"