leonardcohenforum.com

good to be with someone familiar with the complicated intricacies of Leonard's literature. damellon and abby, you are two incredible ladies offering a lot of sound and appreciated material. thank you. it's twenty past midnight now, but i will be back tomorrow - unless i am very late home.

RP, pathetic comes from sympathy. It is often used in a scornful way but I don't think this is the way Abby is using it (I might be wrong, I've been wrong before).

Thanks for the song link, Marvin Gaye is <sigh>.

I like the way LC ends this crazy grief chapter with

The King of France was a man. I was a man. Therefore I was the King of France. F.! I'm sinking again.

It makes me laugh because I can't stop myself reading F.! as F***!

BM

Abby, you write:
"Wanting some contact with her might lead you do something similarly pathetic, something crazy, something absolutely wrong."

Firstly, you presume the person leaving the note (in this hypothetical case) is pathetic - why?
Secondly, you presume someone longing to have contact with a lost friend/relative is pathetic.
I know from experience that one of the emotions that haunts in the wake of the death of comeone near and dear is the desire to have some contact, some reassurance. I never thought of this as pathetic and I still don't, which is why I asked my original question.

Pathetic is a word I used to describe the narrator- not just a person who wants contact with someone who's died. I meant to say that the narrator's particular way of dealing is pathetic.

The point I was trying to make, and failed and failed, is the following: grief is so hard that sometimes in the heart of it, doing something (that I'm calling pathetic), like the narrator calling the dj, we (yes, we) might find ourselves convinced that we can contact our loved one. It hurts so much that we can't accept this being gone forever. Instead of taking the solace that F. really offered him, the narrator gets carried away and makes more of it than he safely can.

I don't know- maybe you know something about ghosts.

When I say the word pathetic, especially when related to Beautiful Losers, I mean not at home in the world. Pathetic used to describe our awkward attempts at making sense of this mysterious and painful existence- the way we try so hard and fail. I like the word for both its connotations of pathos and falling short of the mark.

It would be weird if we didn't long for our F.s but we don't have to make fools of ourselves unless we have to. We can go elegantly about our grief & accept that our loved one's gone forever, or we can go bumbling through it waiting for contact.

Abby

Hi Abby

My remarks about grief don't refer specifically to the episode in Beautiful Losers.

It would be weird if we didn't long for our F.s but we don't have to make fools of ourselves unless we have to. We can go elegantly about our grief & accept that our loved one's gone forever, or we can go bumbling through it waiting for contact.

And this is where you and I differ, Abby. You seem to be saying that grief can be contained in a place amenable to reason.
We don't have to make fools of ourselves - in the pit of grief, it's irrelevant to me that anyone else would think me foolish.
We can go elegantly about our grief - what care I for elegance or dignity when I am wounded and heartsore?
or accept that our loved one's gone forever - I may pay lip-service to this notion, but the heart does it's own thing.
we can go bumbling through it (waiting for contact) - I have no choice but to bumble through it, keeping vigil, enduring.
The idea of waiting for something specific to happen assumes the mind is in control when really it's the heart that dictates. Whatever accommodation I make with my grief comes to me slowly and unconsciously and no amount of reasoning will hurry that up.

Ghosts? - we live in hope but that's the heart speaking, not the mind.

"It would be weird if we didn't long for our F.s but we don't have to make fools of ourselves unless we have to. We can go elegantly about our grief & accept that our loved one's gone forever, or we can go bumbling through it waiting for contact. "

You seem to be suggesting, Abby, that it would be wonderful if everone dealt with grief in an "elegant" way but often death is not elegant and certainly grief is often not elegant. Why not leave each to their own way of grieving without judging?

I write this as an agnostic who doesn't believe there is an after life but who hopes there is and who certainly has felt some(pathetic perhaps) connnection with those who are gone - human and canine!

what a great turn this thread has taken, just as I start my practice as a bereavement counsellor and having today booked tickets to see Vanessa Redgrave performing in The Year Of Magical Thinking. Keep those insights coming!

michael

Hi Mickey-One
Have you read the book?
Tried to see VR in New York this time last year but tickets were too expensive.
One review I read at the time said she (VG) is a bit too 'regal' for the part. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it.
Do you have a view on so called pathetic actions of those in grief?

damellon wrote:Hi Mickey-One
Have you read the book?
Tried to see VR in New York this time last year but tickets were too expensive.
One review I read at the time said she (VG) is a bit too 'regal' for the part. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it.
Do you have a view on so called pathetic actions of those in grief?

I didn't read the book. Our course was just too crammed and I read more text books than "memoirs". What did you think of it? Here in England no critic has a bad word to say about VR's performance but the production is not so well rated and the theatre is considered too large.

I only glimpsed the word "pathetic" and haven't read the context yet but it sounds like an interesting discussion. Hope I can catch up over the long Bank Holiday weekend here. All the best

michael

I 'enjoyed ' the book. You should try to read it before you go to the show, if time permits.
'Memoirs', though it depends how self-conscious they are, may flesh out the texts books for you and of course when counselling, you will be at the coalface.
Are you saying the critics can see no wrong in anything VR does, or that they like this particular performance?
She's doing it so long now, I'm sure it has grown with her.
I wouldn't have thought that there could be much leeway for the production to fall short, but.......
The size of the theatre would have an impact. Something so personal would be more effective in a small theatre but profit will dictate.
Anyway, do enjoy it.

People are every which way and I don't know what's right for anyone but me. It would be wonderful if we all got to be exactly who we need to be. That's elegant to me- not stoicism, not dignity. And if I call you pathetic when I see you grieving, know that it's a compliment and means that I appreciate your deep hummanness.

Is your grief recent? I ask because it took years for me stop expecting to hear from my mom.

Abby

mickey_one wrote:what a great turn this thread has taken, just as I start my practice as a bereavement counsellor and having today booked tickets to see Vanessa Redgrave performing in The Year Of Magical Thinking. Keep those insights coming!

michael

I hijacked it again when there was a chance to talk about grief. I'm also studying to be a grief therapist. Heh heh heh.

Abby

Abby wrote:
>I hijacked [this thread] again when there was a chance to talk about grief.

Good grief. Go ahead and talk, Abby - you stray not. The deceitful couple that Andrew gave us from his over-active imagination cause nothing but grief - treacherous and false as they are. If he had experienced the hurt shamelessly endorsed by his poem he would avoid encouraging others. It's all to do with feelings, a commodity of which some people apparently have a severe deficit. The difference between a sociopath and a psychopath is that the former cannot understand that he is hurting someone, while the latter knows but doesn't give a damn. How can anyone of any moral substance love or trust someone capable of cheating on their partner? I have been consistent from the start with my criticism concerning Andrew's poem - and I stand by all I have written. Either he has no idea what he is writing about or he is an evil teacher.

blonde madonna wrote:
>Andrew you have been deliberately evasive about the meaning of your poem, encouraged this 'discussion' and not denied Geoffrey's charges . . . Your poem lies between a title adapted from a Beatle’s song with a rather prosaic view of life-long marriage, and closing lines from Dr Zhivago, a story about a passionate adulterous affair.


Thank you. It's nice to not feel completely alone.

Abby,
In my experience grief has a way of making itself recent and renewing itself at the most unexpected moments.I just watched James Taylor on BBC 4 singing "Carolina In My Mind" and there it was, looking over my shoulder. Again or still, I'm not sure which.

You write:
"I hijacked it again when there was a chance to talk about grief. I'm also studying to be a grief therapist. Heh heh heh."

Perhaps you'll tell me I'm being precious (as opposed to pathetic) but I find your last line extraordinary!