Allow me to set the stage:
The stage was set,
From strings to winds,
Percussion at their back.
Trombone scans the audience
Looking for familiar face;
Between strings and lights,
Sees none.
No matter,
Though life-changing it could be:
Now is time to focus,
Now is time to play.
Trombone shifts to euphonium;
Focus, his shadow.
Back to trombone,
Shadow maintained.
Applause over,
Ovations ended,
Instruments
Clear the stage.
Brain out to lunch, shadow stays;
Trombone turns to talk to tuba,
Then bid farewell until next time
The orchestras combine.
Leaving the stage,
To retrieve his shell,
Trombone's brain
Returns from lunch.
"By the way,"
Trombone brain says,
Replaying the recording made
While out to lunch,
"Someone called out,
'Nice job on the trombone!'
While you were talking to the tuba."
It may have been that familiar face.
Already gone from the stage,
And minutes passed,
Trombone
Picks up the pace.
Back on stage,
Putting instruments in case,
Trombone searches remaining audience,
Finds no familiar face.
Trombone leaves
To put all gear
In his car,
Then enters again
In search of that voice,
That face.
Crowd thinned,
It was clear,
The Complimenter
Had left.
Trombone replayed the compliment,
To identify the voice;
Memory obscured by delay
Before the replay.
Time steals clarity,
Memory morphs,
'Til Trombone remembers it
As if compliment was heard when spoken,
Leaving Trombone with the guilt
Of ignoring the Complimenter,
And the effect,
But not the intention.
© 2023 H.K. Longmore
Posted in poetry
Tagged bliss and glad life, cathartic, consequence, coping, desire, hope, memories, metaphors, music, pain, poem, poetry, regrets, therapy
Musings of a Kunderian Monster 
Is Suffering Really Necessary?
Author’s note: I wrote this last week, in two cities and over hundreds of miles in the air, before Robin Williams left our sphere of existence. While that event and the subsequent news and social media flurry may color how you read this, and while some of it may even apply, to think I am making any statement about that would be incorrect.
This post showed up in my FB feed the other day stating:
Someone commented on that post saying that pain is necessary, but suffering is not. This idea is not restricted to that post or its comments. Over at society6.com, Josh Lafayette has an art print expressing this idea. And there’s a picture incorrectly attributing the idea to Buddha (the tl;dr version of the article: “Imagine someone in Asia posting ‘Jesus quotes’ (which are actually AA slogans) under a picture of Santa Claus, and you’ll get a feel for what’s [wrong with this picture]”).
The problem with reading the dictionary when you’re doing your spelling assignments in second grade is that you can’t let people misuse their native language with impunity. So let’s take a look at the root word “suffer“, as defined by the descriptive linguists at Merriam-Webster:
You won’t believe what happens next! Oh, sorry, this isn’t bait. I’ll leave that stuff on buzzfeed.
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Posted in commentary, essays
Tagged art, atonement, auto accident, co-feeling, compassion, Edvard Munch, etymology, Fake Buddha Quotes, language, linguistics, medkänsla, Milan Kundera, Mitgefühl, pain, pietà, pity, semantics, soucit, suffering, The Merchant of Venice, The Scream, word misuse, współczucie