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Heather Petit's avatar

I'm having that same week. Only my mom died a few weeks ago (3 1/2?), a young relative got mobility devices, the world is on fire, we watched the live stream of the moon flyby, I remembered my mom putting pins in a globe and running string around it, a new pin for where the astronauts were today, my extended family is having a catastrophic blowup (not directly related to my mom's death), and yep, world still on absolute fire. Beautiful messy disastrous painful tender beloved.

Asha Dornfest's avatar

Oh Heather! I'm speechless all over again in solidarity. My deepest sympathies on the loss of your Mom. It's all so very much. I would say too much, but that's not exactly right, because here we are living it. As Jon Kabat-Zinn calls it, "the full catastrophe." 🤗

Janna Kimel's avatar

"The juxtaposition of cherry blossoms and bombs" 😭

Tiana's avatar

I came here to add the exact same quote. Yes!!!! There's no sentence that better encapsulates the world right now.

Jen Zug's avatar

The phrase I use often and have written about numerous times is “somewhere between limitless possibility and certain painful death.” I can feel both multiple times in the same day during times like this.

Christine Castro Hughes's avatar

Terrible beauty, yes. That sums it all up perfectly. I'm glad we're witnessing it together.

G M's avatar

“Terrible beauty” as a phrase will always remind me of the refrain in the William Butler Yeats poem “Easter, 1916” about the Irish Civil War — “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.” —applicable to so many other things too.