from Richard Diff.

On the Portland city bus, posted along with the ads and public service announcements, there are also little posters they call “Poetry in Motion.” Today, on the way downtown to visit the Chinese Gardens with my folks, and thinking of Carolyn, I read one by W. S. Merwin:

“Your presence enters me like thread through the eye of a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with your color.”

That seemed to connect directly to something I'd just read in the newspaper an hour or so earlier. A quote by a writer named Hofstadter I think. About a revelation he'd had while looking into the eyes of a photograph of his wife. He realized that in the many years of intimate communication with her, her mind had, in fact, entered and become part of his mind. That the complex collection of synapses, impulses and structures of his mind had been altered forever, and had taken on and incorporated so many of the structures and connections of her mind too. That her mind had, in fact, now become a permanent part of his own. And that this process would continue, and has always continued, from her mind to his mind and beyond, from person to person, from generation to generation, and that in fact we all, in fact, live within this one large interconnected mind...

And that seemed to connect perfectly and directly to the things that have been running through my mind during these last few days amid the onrush of terrible news about Carolyn...

The phrase keeps repeating: "It’s the thought that counts.” Something people say at a birthday or Christmas when you open a present that doesn't quite fit, or is something you already have, something that's not quite right...

Maybe it's something that's really great but just doesn't last long enough...

It's the thought that counts. It makes me think of how no conversation wth Carolyn, no matter how short or how routine, is ever anything less than rich and varied and full of meaning and wit and love... Carolyn can be more thoughtful in five minutes I think than other people can be in a year! What a privilege it is to know her and to share her wonderful mind and heart!

I love to imagine now how the experience of hearing and sharing with her, her thoughts and observations, her unique loves and insights, will now reside in my own thoughts and emotions forever...and how they will now be shared and transmitted beyond me as well...

And how her thoughts must have become such a part of her husband and her children and will continue to move on to their children and their children, and all their countless friends and children and colleagues...

What a wonderful thought! And how sweet to savor it now as I sit quietly, a visitor in the Chinese Gardens, soaking in all the complex textures and fragrances around me. The myriad plants and stones and water...the beautiful and intricate and alien architecture....all the shades of green and brown and gray...the light, light rain tickling my skin and making tiny little rings on the surface of the pond, appearing and disappearing almost instantly...