It still lingers...

I had this very good friend when I was in Switzerland.
We would talk often - maybe at least every second day.
We would laugh a lot and it was happy days.
Sometimes we would get up to no good.
But it was all in the name of fun :-)

But when I came home,
it was like...
I had left our friendship behind.
It was like...
I had abandoned my best friend.
It was like...
it had existed in another time, another place, another life.
Yet the physical distance between us had lessened.

Something which was built upon
years and years of friendship,
Felt as if it had disappeared overnight.
Just like that. Gone.

Yet from time to time,
it still lingers.

Who Am I?

Standing alone. Stripped. Naked. Bare.
Of everything you've ever known,
of what you believed made you you.

There is a vastness, a void
that threatens to consume your being.
The world around you spins and spins
as the sounds inside your head
get louder and louder.

The world suddenly stops spinning,
and you erupt from deep within.
Your sorrow, your pain,
laid bare for all the world to see.

You fall to your knees,
sobbing like a lost child of god.
And you cry out to the heavens
Who Am I?

Embracing the present moment in 2010

Dear family and friends,

May 2010 be the year that we embrace the present moment. Let go of grudges, grievances and past failures. We cannot change what has passed and we cannot control the future. We can only be in the present moment and that's a powerful and wonderful thing :-)

Have a happy new year :-)

Love, Jackie :-)

A real need?

I keep seeing her face over and over again in my head. This woman with a gap between her top front teeth, clutching at a small bag, begging me...pleadingly...."Excuse me excuse me...do you have three dollar..." in her broken English..."I lost my..." and then her face kinda breaks...and I just shake my head and apologise...

I wonder...was she really in need? Did I turn away someone who really needed my money? My help? Or am I just too accustomed to seeing these beggars all around Town Hall? A few minutes earlier the tall, scruffy-looking beggar with grey mangled hair stood just beyond the ticket barriers. I, along with all the other commuters passing that way, see him there maybe three or four mornings a week. "Spare change...spare change" he asks holding out his hand. I wonder if it's the same beggar that Eddie talked about who he sees all the time outside Town Hall having a ciggy?

Just before I exit the QVB I see a lady in a raincoat holding an umbrella asking passers-by for money. Then I encountered the other lady...who begged...who pleaded with me...

Why didn't I just stop and ask her how I might be able to help her? Maybe she really did need help and was desperate...I had never seen her before. I felt like I was in China...in Xian when the beggars just kept begging and begging even after you've jumped on the bus...they are relentless and keep tapping the window. Could I really make that much of a difference to their lives? Could it mean the difference between them feeding their family or themselves for a week or even weeks?

Maybe I'm just jaded. I can't tell anymore what's real and what's not.