Metachrosis at Chamaeleo Sapiens

Chamaeleo Sapiens has changed its colors once again! The look and the content have shifted, but I hope the same spirit - to work through life's highs and lows together - remains intact. This reorientation has been on my mind for a few months now, but as 2020 has progressed it has impressed upon me the need for the change, for my sake if for no one else's! If the revamped blog helps you navigate this difficult year any too, then I'll take that as an additional win for 2020!

I originally started this blog in the days when LiveJournal was still a recent thing and people didn't think twice about over-sharing personal information online. How times have changed! (And rightly so! What were we thinking?!) And my God, how times have changed! I know I personally had a great deal of hope for 2020, but here we are in this year when we don't get the options we want, but the options we have.

Last year was a year of great highs and lows for me personally (more on that later!), and I entered 2020 really expecting life to be on the up and up as 2019's lows worked themselves out. Instead, here we are! Decision after unexpected decision has confronted me this year, and I've procrastinated, whined, raged, and despaired by turn waiting and hoping against hope not even for the options I wish I had, but just for the far from ideal options I had just last year that are now themselves well and truly gone. (For the foreseeable future anyways!)

But this isn't the year we get the options we want, it's the year we get the options we have. My hope is to explore them together with you as we all navigate this difficult year and the years to come.

"Farewell, My Friends, Adieu"

I hate to say good-bye
Yet we have to say farewell
For we shall meet again
That I can foretell

The future is unpredictable
Tomorrow is uncertain
Keep our laughs and memoirs
But I wish you have no burden

We shall keep on learning
Remain as students and become as mentors
Face the unknown with confident yearning
Pursue our life endeavors

Farewell, my friends, adieu
I utter it with pain
Farewell, my friends, adieu
In sunshine or in rain

Farewell, my friends, adieu
This day would come, we knew
Our dreams we shall pursue
For now, my friends, adieu.

A poem by Verona Valentine. No doubt written for a graduation, but all the same this resonates with me...

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A poem by Robert Frost.

"The Hard Road"

Pure wine costs, for the golden cup, ten thousand coppers a flagon,
And a jade plate of dainty food calls for a million coins.
I fling aside my food-sticks and cup, I cannot eat nor drink...
I pull out my dagger, I peer four ways in vain.
I would cross the Yellow River, but ice chokes the ferry;
I would climb the Taihang Mountains, but the sky is blind with snow...
I would sit and poise a fishing-pole, lazy by a brook -
But I suddenly dream of riding a boat, sailing for the sun...
Journeying is hard,
Journeying is hard.
There are many turnings -
Which am I to follow?...
I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves
And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea.

A poem by Li Bai.

"A Widow in Black"

A widow in black - the crying fall
Covers all hearts with a depressing cloud...
While her man's words are clearly recalled,
She will not stop her lamentations loud.
It will be so, until the snow puff
Will give a mercy to the pined and tired.
Forgetfulness of suffering and love -
Though paid by life - what more could be desired?

A poem by Anna Akhmatova.

Quote of the Day: Fr. Alexander Elchaninov

A rule of life: To change my residence only when circumstances force me to do so; to undertake nothing in the practical sphere on my own initiative, but to delve deeply into the earth on the spot where God has placed me.

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The picture is from the area around Maryhill, Washington, in the Columbia Gorge. This poem (by William Wordsworth) seems especially true right now as I begin to close the door on this latest phase of my life's journey and prepare to reopen the door to another. What 'loneliness and toil' there has been, but what incredible beauty too...

Quote of the Day: Fr. Alexander Elchaninov

"In our present life everything is so uncertain, insecure, painful, almost intolerable, that death in no way appears as something terrifying. I often think of death as a calm and luminous haven, where there is no sickness, no sadness and, in particular, no parting. When, during morning and evening prayers, I pray for my loved ones in minutes of sadness, I am almost glad to think that I will soon be with them, and their life seems more certain than our phantom existence."

From page 117 of "The Diary of a Russian Priest," a posthumous compilation of the notes of Fr. Alexander Elchaninov, a Russian Orthodox priest who served in the south of France after the Bolshevik Revolution.

"Loss and Gain"

When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

"A Heart Divided"

He so spares himself

He so fears the coverings

The sky’s blue coverlet

And pillows of cloud

He is ill-clothed by his faith

He is so afraid of steps that go awry

And streets chipped in the ice

He is too tiny for winter

He so fears the cold

He is transparent in his mirror

He is so hazy he loses himself

Time rolls him under its waves

At moments his blood flows the wrong way

And his tears stain the linen

His hand gathers green trees

And nosegays of seaweed from the strand

His faith is a thorn bush

His hands bleed against his heart

His eyes have lost their glow

And his feet trail over the sea

Like the dead arms of devil-fish

He is lost in the universe

He stumbles against cities

Against himself and his own failings

Then pray that the Lord

Erase even the memory

Of this man from His mind.

A poem by Pierre Reverdy, a Cubist poet who later became a monk at the Solesmes Monastery (pictured above) in France.