IN MEMORY OF MY TWIN BROTHER, BOBBY

 

My twin brother Bobby died on August 17th, 2013 but he still

lives in my heart.

I felt a deep sense of sadness this last week before I realized that I was approaching the one year anniversary of his passing.

I still feel his presence in my soul because he is now one of the many angels watching over me.

Those who we love deeply become part of us forever and Bobby

will always be a part of me.

Being a twin is an exhilarating experience for I have been twice blessed ~ One for having a traveling companion on my 9 month journey to this planet, especially since we were not wanted ~ and secondly for spending much of my early childhood playing with my inseparable friend and companion while sharing so many delights together.

I remember many of them but two distinctly stand out ~

We were both about 12 years old and since there was no Little League at that time, my mother sent us to a golf caddy camp in southern Massachusetts for the summer. It was in shambles and a god forsaken spot. We both hated it and felt like we were in a slave camp caddying every day for the Golf club members and existing on tips, terrible food and horrible living conditions.

I reluctantly adjusted to the dull routine but Bobby got sick and soon I realized that he was not getting better.

We were in separate cabins, or tents, and I still vividly remember going to his tent one day looking for him. I found him huddled in a low corner bunk, shivering in a cold sweat, looking feverish and almost dead.

There was no camp doctor or nurse and I realized in panic that he was going to die unless I did something ~ I was deeply concerned so I hiked into town, convinced someone to use their phone and called my mother. I literally screamed at her to come and get us or Bobby was going to die.

She did and Bobby survived double pneumonia and we returned home to Nahant, Massachusetts.

A few years later we were sent to Mount Hermon Prep school in Western Massachusetts.

The school placed us in two separate campus dwellings although we sought each other out every day and played sports and hung out together. I vividly remember early in our stay at Mount Hermon waking up one night and missing his presence. So I climbed out the window, stole across the campus to his lodging, climbed up the wall to his window, opened his window and crawled into bed with him.

That last memory is probably the best description of the indescribable loving connection that many Twins

enjoy.

Most people can barely comprehend or understand what Bobby and I experienced not only in the womb but also through most of our early childhood ~ before it tragically ended when he was forced to get married at 16 years old and became a reluctant father while I graduated from college, joined the Navy, moved to the West Coast as a Naval Aviator and never returned to the East Coast.

But the deep soul connection never really ended ~ for I was there for him in spirit during the last year of his life before he died from advanced Parkinson's Disease in August, 2013.

In November of 2012, I wrote him a note entitled  LOVE NOTE TO MY TWIN for I sensed his time was coming to an end and I wanted to prepare him for his transition. See article ~ http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/08/20/eulogy-for-my-beloved-twin/

 

 

 

 

My dearest twin,

As you look out your window at the old Thompson Club, you may not remember the glorious summer days we spent as children playing baseball, football and even tennis together but I will help you ~ for I remember virtually everything about our closeness and the fun we had together as twins, before events forced us to go on separate paths in our late teens.

It was so special to wake up every morning with my best friend and playmate ~ we were the Hardy Boys, my favorite book series, embarking on new daily adventures and using the whole peninsula as our playground. The Thompson club was our sports arena and depending on the season ~ it became Fenway Park or any sports stadium we invented in our active and exuberant imaginations.

The barn in our backyard became the set piece for all the movies we watched and acted out as well as the radio shows we listened to ~ The Shadow, Jack Armstrong, The green Hornet, the Adventures of Sam Spade , the Lone Ranger and of course, the Inner Sanctum and Lights Out.

Once again, in many ways, we WERE the Hardy Boys ~ "The Hardy Boys are constantly involved in adventure and action. Despite frequent danger, the boys never lose their nerve ..."  They are hardy boys, luckier and more clever than anyone around them." They live in an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue: "Never were so many assorted felonies committed in a simple American small town. Murder, drug peddling, race horse kidnapping, diamond smuggling, medical malpractice, big-time auto theft, even (in the 1940s) the hijacking of strategic materials and espionage, all were conducted with Nahant (Bayport) as a nucleus." With so much in common, the boys are so little differentiated that one commentator facetiously describes them thus: "The boys' characters basically broke down this way ~ Frank (Allen)  was the thinker while Joe ( Bobby ) was more impulsive, and perhaps a little more athletic." The two boys are infallibly on good terms with each other and never engage in sibling rivalry."  Wikipedia / Hardy Boys

Those were fun childhood times in Nahant and I vividly remember the hurricanes that swept over that Peninsula as we watched from our top floor bedroom perch on 287 Nahant Road ~ two houses down from the Jesmond Home where you now reside.

You were my constant companion and sharer of joy and we were indelibly connected together through our shared nine month journey to this planet and obvious deep loving twin connection.

The twin connection defies description, Bobby ~ it's a loving connection that goes beyond time and space ~ it's a deep knowing soul connection that was cemented in the womb as well as our shared birth experience.

Since I am the first born twin, two minutes before you, it is my responsibility to prepare you for the final transition by sharing that God (a loving plan in action) only reveals itself to a grateful heart and that alone will prepare you for your final passage.

My heart is most definitely grateful that you were my loving twin and companion for so many years and I will most certainly be with you in your final moments and most definitely when you pass through the event horizon of physical death.

Right now, you may feel increasingly alone since it's so difficult to speak and move ~ but you are being well taken care of and are most certainly loved by your immediately family as well as brothers and sisters.

But be aware that I am already holding your hand, as I did as a young enfant, and as you look out that window at the Thompson Club you will see me beckoning to you, with a baseball bat on my shoulder, telling you to hurry up before the summer rain squall starts and you will smile knowingly and be grateful, as I am, that you are indeed blessed to be a twin.

With my deepest love and joy

Allen

 

Bobby died on August 17th, 2013 but not before reaching out to his beloved daughter Vanessa, who took his hand and reminded him that he was not alone ~  that myself and his beloved grandfather were also holding his hand through her and ready to welcome him home.

Those who we love deeply become part of us forever and Bobby still lives in many hearts including mine. But especially mine because I feel the same deep loving connection with my life partner, Keiko ~ for we both feel we were twins in another lifetime and deeply love and support each other in this lifetime.

 

“For some people, “the point of no return” begins at the very moment their souls become aware of each others’ existence.”
~ C. JoyBell C.

 

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/in-memory-of-my-twin-brother-bobby.html

 

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and heart centered spiritual counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations at allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is also a lecturer and shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

 

 

THE UPLIFTING CARTOONS OF CHARLES BARSOTTI 1933 -2014

 (Click on Cartoons to enlarge)

Charles Barsotti died this week at 80 years old but his New Yorker cartoons touched myself and millions of others with their wonderful quirky sense of humor and imaginative insights into profound truths which were both delightful and thought provoking. His presence will be sorely missed for his cartoons provided much needed solace in our chaotic ego driven world: Allen L Roland

I love the New Yorker not only for its in depth reporting but also for its staff of excellent cartoonists who seemed to fully capture the themes of our times ~ but my favorite was Charles Barsotti whose simple sketches spoke volumes about the human state we live in and always brought a smile to my face.

 How about this one for truth-seekers ~ which includes myself.

 

 

Or this one about our fear driven society ~

 

 

The artist in his nest ~ 

 

 

Charles Barsotti, a longtime cartoonist for The New Yorker. Credit C. Michael Barsotti

Charles Barsotti was a gentle soul in a dysfunctional world and his cartoons brought a knowing and uplifting humor onto this troubled planet for more than 40 years. He was living his dream for he was a doodler as a child and his parents encouraged him to follow his passion. Almost 1,400 of his cartoons appeared in the New Yorker, and many more were published in The Atlantic, The New York Times and elsewhere and all of them, I am sure, touched a chord as they most certainly have with me.

 He leaves behind his wife, son, four daughters, three grandchildren and a sister but also the profound legacy of knowing that he struck a meaningful chord with many of his readers and brought a smile to countless human beings who were delighted to see the world through Barsotti's insightful childlike eyes.

 Here's my favorite  ~

 

 

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 
Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-uplifting-cartoons-of-charles.html

 

 Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and heart centered spiritual counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations at allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is also a lecturer and shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

 

 

IN THE GATHERING DARKNESS, A LIGHT GOES OUT / SEAMUS HEANEY 1939-2013

Dublin's Seamus Heaney in repose

Poetry is the bridge between the mind and the heart where feelings become words and none was more accomplished at that gift than Dublin's Seamus Heaney ~ the Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. His light will be missed in the gathering darkness of our present times: Allen L Roland

As a writer, columnist and amateur poet, I recognize and relish the power of poetry and the emotional impact of putting feelings into words but it is implicit in Seamus Heaney's view of poetry ~  "poetry as divination, poetry as revelation of the self to the self, as restoration of the culture to itself; poems as elements of continuity, with the aura and authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard has an importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being plants. ‘Digging’, in fact, was the name of the first poem I wrote where I thought my feelings had got into words, or to put it more accurately, where I thought my feel had got into words. Its rhythms and noises still please me, although there are a couple of lines in it that have more of the theatricality of the gunslinger than the self-absorption of the digger. I wrote it in the summer of 1964, almost two years after I had begun to ‘dabble in verses’. This was the first place where I felt I had done more than make an arrangement of words: I felt that I had let down a shaft into real life. The facts and surfaces of the thing were true, but more important, the excitement that came from naming them gave me a kind of insouciance and a kind of confidence. I didn’t care who thought what about it: somehow, it had surprised me by coming out with a stance and an idea that I would stand over"

Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978 (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 41-60

Digging

"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it."

 

And dig with it, he did ~ here's a two minute video of Seamus reading one of his early poems, Scaffolding on his 70th birthday. 2 minute video   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNYBwF7lKLA

Here’s Heaney's poem about a budding young love where he perfectly captures the feelings of youthful anticipation and excitement of an early evening walk together by the river.

Twice Shy

"Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.

Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.

A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.

Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.

So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk."

As Margalit Fox writes in the New York Times ~ " Throughout his work, Mr. Heaney was consumed with morality. In his hands, a peat bog is not merely an emblematic feature of the Irish landscape; it is also a spiritual quagmire, evoking the deep ethical conundrums that have long pervaded the place ~ “Yeats, despite being quite well known, despite his public role, actually didn’t have anything like the celebrity or, frankly, the ability to touch the people in the way that Seamus did,” Mr. Muldoon, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the poetry editor at The New Yorker, said in an interview on Friday. “It was almost like he was indistinguishable from the country. He was like a rock star who also happened to be a poet.”    See times article ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/arts/seamus-heaney-acclaimed-irish-poet-dies-at-74.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

In his 1995 Nobel acceptance speech, Seamus Heaney said that he prized the sort of poem that provides not just “a surprising variation played upon the world,” but “a retuning of the world itself” ~ delivering a visceral surprise, “like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm.”

And Seamus Heaney has indeed, in this time of gathering darkness, caught many of our hearts off guard and brought them back to their proper rhythm ~ as seen in this prophetic poem.

Postscript

"And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open."

 

In "Station Island " Heaney, through the eyes of the ghost of James Joyce, offers some important advice for writers and poets to write for the joy of it ~

“... Keep at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.”

The important point here is that Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney not only saw through different eyes but he also had the courage to dig for and share what he discovered through his poetic heart.

The Robin doesn't sing because its happy, its happy because it sings.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/in-gathering-darkness-light-goes-out.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and transformational counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations allen@allenroland.com

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net