Desiderata

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. — Max Ehrmann ©1927

Sometime in 1997:

I am with my sister and youngest uncle. It is shortly after my grandmother has died.

We are walking the beach in south Boston.

It is a cold and grey day.

I believe we had had a lunch together and somehow decided to stroll the beach.

There was a crumpled pamphlet of some sort. My sister picked it up.

It was the poem by Max Ehrmann, ‘Desiderata.’

My sister called us over and started to read out loud.

I had never heard of the work before then.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

And she read it through to the end under that grey sky on that beach with the famous Boston gas tanks on the horizon.

I always loved those painted tanks and associates them as a landmark of my…