1) A Cordial Meeting In Paris (Though She Will Be Difficult To Write About, She Will Not Be Difficult To Remember.) Poem by Otradom Pelogo

A Cordial Meeting In Paris
An Epistle
(from Songs From The Women Of The L.O.M.)

While I was in France, on my first extended visit to Europe, after having toured the city of Paris, I stopped by, after randomly coffee-pub-hopping and met a couple of young ladies that I only had a brief moment to talk to while there. The first one that I met, she was sort of apprehensive about talking, but shortly after a brief introduction, she sat and had a cup of coffee with me. I can neither remember her name, nor where she was from, though I try each day, for there seem to be something special about her, and for some phenomenal reason, I suspected either Israel or Palestine. Of all the people that I have met, I have never had trouble recalling certain events about that person that I knew I would want to keep. I remember her face vividly, the way she looked from head to feet, but, for some reason, all of the personal dialogue was erased; though she will be difficult to write about, she will not be difficult to remember.

Preparations for the Future

They say that, though usually looking back in retrospection, that it's wonderful being a child even at that point in reverie when great sacrifices are being made to comfort and protect them, to guide and nurture them, to mold the mind and soul for what we sometimes hope will be a predestined quest that we have planned out; the worst case scenario is that they part at least half way through the journey after the mind has assimilated into its DOS, the basis, as we say, for discipline that will create and hold fast to a good work ethic, the understanding of a moral life that does not become a cliché after a year or two of being tempted and should challenge recovery if after a temporary setback; for it's the basis of being a constituent in a family, society or global community, the norms and standards that give our world an ecumenical stability that's recognized, excepted, respected and considered desirable, and the same retrospection that is being used to guide them, will allow them to look back as we often do, and show altruistic appreciation by one day acknowledging what has happened; if possible, improved and perpetuated throughout their lives and that of their posterity.

A group of children who are not yet expected to indulge in what is happening, not expected to even understand or appreciate, but expect to receive the venerated guidance of the giver of life and law until that day of questioning, with rationale and introspection, are playing in the middle of a room while the adults are listening to a radio in the background. Knowing that their children sit there, still unaware of the great expectations that are being planned out for them, they continue plotting the perfect handoff to what will be the posterity of a perfect future; but today they hope, like the victims in the eye of a hurricane, that this unbelievable calm will be the end of their woes, yet fervidly laying the tracks to a locomotive that is not only inevitable like the storm after the calm, but necessary at the present; desirable after the throes that comes from and arduous labor.