From a Letter to a Friend

Do you remember the novel/movie Fahrenheit 451, where at the end all the book-lovers lived in the woods, where they memorized their books and walked around in the falling snow, repeating them?  I envision spending some time in a community like that where old nuts can live together but privately, getting some help if they need it but mostly just doing what they want to do. Do you know of any such place? Linda

 

 

I wrote that to a friend, and that's what I would like to find.

 

I look at elderly facilities  on the web, and I shudder.  Not a very pretty picture. I wrote a poem about it years ago, about the nice ladies I'd see at concerts at nights, in suits, their grey hair nicely coiffed, waiting to be picked up and transported back to their dormitories.

 

As a contrast, there was the other old lady I saw in Texas, she's an icon really, the one with her gray hair in a knot but waving in the breeze, in her long black dress, striding across a vacant lot on her business,  and I called the poem, "Walking to Meet".  The La Jolla ladies were Waiting to Meet...their bus, their friend, their Jesus Christ, or yet  perhaps a lover...I wanted to be the one Walking to Meet.  Walking to Meet my fate.

 

Then I realize I can hardly walk at all.  I 've gotta get it together and fast.  And not fall down and break my bones in the process.  And not be afraid to be Walking to Meet. Lord, I need your help.

 

YAZZYBEL