It would be nice to go back a number of years, to when Mom and Dad were still alive, when things were better. In the afterlife, is one allowed to go back in time to relive happy moments with one’s loved-ones who died years before? It’s a nice thought to someone who is very depressed.
The Incorruptibles. I general take an intellectual approach to religion (e.g., Saint Thomas Aquinas, etc.), and general find emotionalism dangerous (you become depressed and the faith goes away). But there is a place, a true place, for the mystical.
Damage done by German bombers during the night, September 1940
Time Travel
Have any of you, passers-by,
Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort?
Or a pain in the side that never quite left you?
Or a malignant growth that grew with time?
So that even in profoundest slumber
There was shadowy consciousness of the phantom of thought
Of the tooth, the side, the growth?
Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition,
Or a blunder in life which mixed your life
Hopelessly to the end,
Will, like the tooth, or a pain in the side,
Float through your dreams in the final sleep
Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere
Comes to you as one who wakes
Healed and glad in the morning!
— “Eugenia Todd” in Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
The damage of Allied bombings
Rotterdam in ruins thanks to Luftwaffe bombings, May/June 1940
Despair and Hopelessness over the World
Have you ever been in despair and hopelessness over the World
And then you see a glimmer of hope
And you feel better
But then the glimmer turns out to be a mirage
And you’re left in even greater despair and hopelessness than before.
A destroyed railroad bridge at the Moselle River in Germany, 1945
The destruction of Arnhem
Severely depressed
I see the future in all these war-ruins photos I’ve reblogged. Also, my own health problems, both physical and mental, are getting worse.
