How sweet and precious that you can share the song and the interpretation of it with your son! Such deep connection you both share. Thanks for sharing the moment with us.
I find myself again and again drawn back to your Aug 4 post.
Yes, I had heard Leonard Cohen's Suzzane a few times in my life. With what you've shared, now I have a sense it will rise near to LC's Hallelujah (for the last 25 years I have had the great fortune to be a member of what we refer to as the Hallelujah Men's group).
Yes, with every passing day I more deeply respect and can attest to the bittersweet (yangyin, actioncontemplation, griefgrace) nature of reality.
Lastly, I would share that it was the Odilon Redon painting that seems to have struck a cord (not sure if it be a minor fall or major lift). The few times I have heard someone reference this biblical tale, every time I am sat up straight, baffled and alerted to the fearsome territory from which it arises. The attraction is strong, sometimes with a sense of too personally familiar. thus far I've ventured just a respectful glance in it's direction.
I sit here reading this as I prepare to take my mom to chemotherapy. This time with her is a gift. Five years ago I thought I may only have months left with her. There is no remission for this type of cancer. We are extremely close and she is the best mom, woman and friend. She is good and kind and generous with affection and love. Everyone who is special to her knows it. And knows the true feeling of being loved and cared about. She loves life and she doesn't shy away from the difficult topics. She never has. As a young girl in the 1950-60's she would call out bigotry and hate when she saw it. She recognized injustice as a small child and called it out, even when it got her in trouble. Because she knew then what was right. We are to love each other.
This post unexpectedly moved me deeper than I initially realized.
Yesterday I heard myself having an intense discussion with a part of me that was frustrated and refused to agree with the thought that the broken and the sacred are forever intertwined. As if being broken would be a perpetual burden that would stay for always present in my life.
I needed to channel a fury that was searching for a direction to release the tension I experienced.
I softened the thoughts and did not act on them, so nobody got hurt :).
For a few years now I don’t believe that all the things that happened to me were needed to bring me a sense of sacredness. Although I can see what it has brought me and I am grateful for the journey I undertook to liberate myself from the pain and (transgenerational) trauma’s, I do believe that as a toddler I was already one with the sacred. It's not a word I usually use and I don't mean it in a religious way. But it refers to the fact that I exist and am a living being, capable of experiencing awe and wonder as well as pain and disaster.
What I needed while growing up was guidance so I could develop my talents and become aware of the capacities I had and my abilities. And in a perfect world my parents, teachers, neighbors and family would be the providers. Reality is they weren’t capable to do this.
Their incapability however didn’t change my sacredness …
This week I visited my neighbors. They have a little 4 month old. She’s a treasure. As soon as she sees my partners her eyes light up and her smile illuminates the room and every one in it opens their hearts for the love she is.
Back home I shared with Ans how much I enjoy the thought that I will see her grow and become the woman she already is. Of course she will experience pain that’s how we learn, develop and grow an awareness of who we are. However she doesn’t need to be broken, she need to be guided through the pains so she can learn how to live through grief and reconnect herself again with the beauty she is, with her inner sacredness. Her divine love, the language she already speaks with her presence, being fully present. With her life and all that moves her.
This morning while I was going through my morning rituals, I felt a rage flowing through my body, a tear welled up and I heard an inner scream that stayed inside myself, saying (actually shouting); I don’t need to be broken! The next moment I sensed in my inner being a little toddler standing next to me. Her eyes were teary and her face was snotty, she held a blanket in her hands for comfort. She looked up to me and her whole being was saying to me; I don’t want to be broken.
I became so filled with love for this little ‘me’ and answered; you don’t have to.
I sat beside her, opened my arms and hold her tight. I will care for you, I said. Then I heard a warm male voice saying; and I’ll protect you.
I felt a tremendous relieve inside my body while every cell filled itself with life. At the same time I was amazed; I never heard this warm, male voice before. He felt like a father who would do everything to protect his child. The father I longed for as a kid.
I wonder, maybe being broken is an illusion we love to believe because we know how to handle it.
Maybe we are all on our way back to return to a life in which we care for, respect and protect this little child, who needs her/his/they parents more then everything and anyone else.
Maybe that is what we truly long for, to be able to be present within the love we are, even when loves looks like a fury who burns the place down, so new life can become alive. Or is so depressed that she falls through it in fatigue to open one day for the fruits that have ripened while she laid her head down. Maybe we just long to be guided by the ones who truly respect, care and love us, to be guided by life itself. As in hindsight life always did for me, guiding me to this point in my life. With grace.
I would like to add that I realize that we as human beings can feel broken, it doesn't have to mean we are broken. In my experience a spirit can't be broken, it learns, grows, evolves, changes and transforms into a new being. Which can feel as breaking, falling apart and dying. Maybe the most terrifying thing to do, to live through what’s death inside ourselves and no longer serves our life and well-being.
A higher consciousness opens us to a non-dualistic seeing of reality, in which terrific and horrific are one, like two sides of a coin. Deep pain or profound love is the catalyst for the transformative awakening, if we consent to walk into the river, holding the hands of someone or Someone, Suzanne or Jesus, touched by human kindness or divine redemption.
Susan, this so touching and beautiful. I forwarded it to all the closest people in my life. The depth in this post is so wonderful. And I do believe the reality of life is bittersweet. I’m ok with it as I think it allows me to appreciate the beauty of life even more.
I love this song! I used to play it all the time when I had a CD player in my car. 😁
I always wondered what the meaning of this song was and now it’s clearer. Thank you Susan for your interpretation. I once thought it was about transcendence into the after life.
OMG Susan! In tears reading "Suzanne"and the guidance you offer your son. Here's the thing: I heeded a reminder this morning to recalibrate my response in dealing with my day-to-day stress of confronting the dissonance we experience in our imperfect world on so many levels - and decided to take a short course with a very wise, no-frills meditation teacher and thinker. I say this because it's in my nature to seek my transcendent encounters through Art, through the cathartic release embedded in its power to capture heart-breaking beauty in the brokenness of our world and within each of us. But there's also the sustaining wisdom of touching our imperfect bodies with a whisper from our compassionate inner presence….”Bittersweet" was a powerful confirmation of how I understood myself. Your book infused the backbone of my expressive dance program Dancing with Joy & Sorrow, which I launched shortly after reading it.
Your writings and your caring approach to the Quiet Life community, etched in humility, have my abiding admiration and respect. Thank you!🌟🙏
When the bitter turns into sweet there will be a point where the bitter isn't bitter anymore and the sweet is not yet sweet. An open point where one can choose which way to turn to.
It might be the point where the inner is the outer and the outer the inner. Where the high is the low and the low is the high. Where everything comes together.
The bitter and the sweet will be in harmony with each other when you're in the middle, in this open space where you can be present in the moment and open yourself for the longing present in the feelings you have, for the underlying need that searches to be fulfilled on the level where the pain was once inflicted and caused a hole in your wholeness …
Maybe life can provide an answer and fulfill this hole, the need you have, the answers to the longing and bring you the love to heal from an experience that was still marinating in your body. One you almost had forgotten about but kept telling itself in your dreams, the poems you read, the songs you listened to, the books and art you love. It is life's way to remind you at the happenings and an invitation to open yourself for the healing and fulfillment of it.
I wonder what if you change the word broken into open?
Because in my mind it is not the world that's broken, it is mindsets that have become fixed and are closed for all kinds of realities that are broken.
Then it would say that being open is always intertwined with the sacred, which sounds beautiful to me ... like a song in the bones, rising up.
I don’t know the song but I understand the sentiment. I lost my children eleven years ago in a painful divorce. Some days I wake up - like today - with the albatross of grief around my neck, weighed down by incredible sorrow. And each time it appears, I wonder, “Will I ever heal from this pain?” And then, I accept the bittersweet truth that grief and love must coexist. Would I trade grief for never having known what it is to love? I can’t imagine anything more truly bittersweet than loving, then losing, a child, to the ambiguity of alienation.
Once again, Susan, you tear open my heart! I have loved this song, Suzanne, since forever. Your interpretation is so clear and deep, and yes, it fits so well with your Bittersweet ("only drowning men [can] see him."). So now at your prompt, I've spent some time just contemplating the song. Suzanne is a song that sings itself on so many levels-- Suzanne herself, along with her husband, was a friend of Leonard Cohen, and lived in Montreal near the St. Lawrence River and the Basilica of Notre Dame ("our Lady of the Harbor"). Everything about her was half-crazy and exotic--even the mundane "tea and oranges" felt exotic, and erotic. Although he was sexually attracted to her ("her perfect body"), she was unavailable to him. But despite his lust or maybe because of it, Suzanne was a gateway to a deep creative unconscious, to soul, that recurrent archetype of water. (I feel like I, too, have had some great insights that started with the sensual, unattainable, and not-so-lofty parts of my life.) Anyway, his lust brought him to thinking about Jesus, who lived in that deep, like a sailor lives in the literal water. But although Jesus could walk on water, he could not walk on what "you" (i.e., Leonard Cohen himself) consider "wisdom". Ordinary "wisdom" lets Jesus sink like a rock! With depth, love, and yes great loss, Leonard sees (we see) the perfect beauty of life (our own "perfect body"). Our Suzannes are indeed ordinary people, dressed in Salvation Army rags (albeit with the quirky feathers of individuality), but that human connection, however it begins, if allowed to deepen, can show us the beauty of life, "amid the garbage and the flowers". It's everywhere, in the seaweed at the edges of the deep unconscious, and in the everyday. It's not limited to the church, but is even in the light ("[pouring] down like honey"). I think this is one of the most profound songs ever!
I always loved that song, but never stopped to analyze its meaning. Thank you for doing that! I’ve learned that it’s the broken heart that shows you the beauty and the magic that was always here. Just like Leonard said , it’s the cracks that let the light in (to paraphrase) .
How sweet and precious that you can share the song and the interpretation of it with your son! Such deep connection you both share. Thanks for sharing the moment with us.
I find myself again and again drawn back to your Aug 4 post.
Yes, I had heard Leonard Cohen's Suzzane a few times in my life. With what you've shared, now I have a sense it will rise near to LC's Hallelujah (for the last 25 years I have had the great fortune to be a member of what we refer to as the Hallelujah Men's group).
Yes, with every passing day I more deeply respect and can attest to the bittersweet (yangyin, actioncontemplation, griefgrace) nature of reality.
Lastly, I would share that it was the Odilon Redon painting that seems to have struck a cord (not sure if it be a minor fall or major lift). The few times I have heard someone reference this biblical tale, every time I am sat up straight, baffled and alerted to the fearsome territory from which it arises. The attraction is strong, sometimes with a sense of too personally familiar. thus far I've ventured just a respectful glance in it's direction.
I sit here reading this as I prepare to take my mom to chemotherapy. This time with her is a gift. Five years ago I thought I may only have months left with her. There is no remission for this type of cancer. We are extremely close and she is the best mom, woman and friend. She is good and kind and generous with affection and love. Everyone who is special to her knows it. And knows the true feeling of being loved and cared about. She loves life and she doesn't shy away from the difficult topics. She never has. As a young girl in the 1950-60's she would call out bigotry and hate when she saw it. She recognized injustice as a small child and called it out, even when it got her in trouble. Because she knew then what was right. We are to love each other.
This post unexpectedly moved me deeper than I initially realized.
Yesterday I heard myself having an intense discussion with a part of me that was frustrated and refused to agree with the thought that the broken and the sacred are forever intertwined. As if being broken would be a perpetual burden that would stay for always present in my life.
I needed to channel a fury that was searching for a direction to release the tension I experienced.
I softened the thoughts and did not act on them, so nobody got hurt :).
For a few years now I don’t believe that all the things that happened to me were needed to bring me a sense of sacredness. Although I can see what it has brought me and I am grateful for the journey I undertook to liberate myself from the pain and (transgenerational) trauma’s, I do believe that as a toddler I was already one with the sacred. It's not a word I usually use and I don't mean it in a religious way. But it refers to the fact that I exist and am a living being, capable of experiencing awe and wonder as well as pain and disaster.
What I needed while growing up was guidance so I could develop my talents and become aware of the capacities I had and my abilities. And in a perfect world my parents, teachers, neighbors and family would be the providers. Reality is they weren’t capable to do this.
Their incapability however didn’t change my sacredness …
This week I visited my neighbors. They have a little 4 month old. She’s a treasure. As soon as she sees my partners her eyes light up and her smile illuminates the room and every one in it opens their hearts for the love she is.
Back home I shared with Ans how much I enjoy the thought that I will see her grow and become the woman she already is. Of course she will experience pain that’s how we learn, develop and grow an awareness of who we are. However she doesn’t need to be broken, she need to be guided through the pains so she can learn how to live through grief and reconnect herself again with the beauty she is, with her inner sacredness. Her divine love, the language she already speaks with her presence, being fully present. With her life and all that moves her.
This morning while I was going through my morning rituals, I felt a rage flowing through my body, a tear welled up and I heard an inner scream that stayed inside myself, saying (actually shouting); I don’t need to be broken! The next moment I sensed in my inner being a little toddler standing next to me. Her eyes were teary and her face was snotty, she held a blanket in her hands for comfort. She looked up to me and her whole being was saying to me; I don’t want to be broken.
I became so filled with love for this little ‘me’ and answered; you don’t have to.
I sat beside her, opened my arms and hold her tight. I will care for you, I said. Then I heard a warm male voice saying; and I’ll protect you.
I felt a tremendous relieve inside my body while every cell filled itself with life. At the same time I was amazed; I never heard this warm, male voice before. He felt like a father who would do everything to protect his child. The father I longed for as a kid.
I wonder, maybe being broken is an illusion we love to believe because we know how to handle it.
Maybe we are all on our way back to return to a life in which we care for, respect and protect this little child, who needs her/his/they parents more then everything and anyone else.
Maybe that is what we truly long for, to be able to be present within the love we are, even when loves looks like a fury who burns the place down, so new life can become alive. Or is so depressed that she falls through it in fatigue to open one day for the fruits that have ripened while she laid her head down. Maybe we just long to be guided by the ones who truly respect, care and love us, to be guided by life itself. As in hindsight life always did for me, guiding me to this point in my life. With grace.
I would like to add that I realize that we as human beings can feel broken, it doesn't have to mean we are broken. In my experience a spirit can't be broken, it learns, grows, evolves, changes and transforms into a new being. Which can feel as breaking, falling apart and dying. Maybe the most terrifying thing to do, to live through what’s death inside ourselves and no longer serves our life and well-being.
Very moving commentary ! There is so much pain and beauty in the world so your writing helps me process it.
A higher consciousness opens us to a non-dualistic seeing of reality, in which terrific and horrific are one, like two sides of a coin. Deep pain or profound love is the catalyst for the transformative awakening, if we consent to walk into the river, holding the hands of someone or Someone, Suzanne or Jesus, touched by human kindness or divine redemption.
Love this post and love this community. I have finally found my people. So much beauty and depth.
Susan, this so touching and beautiful. I forwarded it to all the closest people in my life. The depth in this post is so wonderful. And I do believe the reality of life is bittersweet. I’m ok with it as I think it allows me to appreciate the beauty of life even more.
I love this song! I used to play it all the time when I had a CD player in my car. 😁
I always wondered what the meaning of this song was and now it’s clearer. Thank you Susan for your interpretation. I once thought it was about transcendence into the after life.
OMG Susan! In tears reading "Suzanne"and the guidance you offer your son. Here's the thing: I heeded a reminder this morning to recalibrate my response in dealing with my day-to-day stress of confronting the dissonance we experience in our imperfect world on so many levels - and decided to take a short course with a very wise, no-frills meditation teacher and thinker. I say this because it's in my nature to seek my transcendent encounters through Art, through the cathartic release embedded in its power to capture heart-breaking beauty in the brokenness of our world and within each of us. But there's also the sustaining wisdom of touching our imperfect bodies with a whisper from our compassionate inner presence….”Bittersweet" was a powerful confirmation of how I understood myself. Your book infused the backbone of my expressive dance program Dancing with Joy & Sorrow, which I launched shortly after reading it.
Your writings and your caring approach to the Quiet Life community, etched in humility, have my abiding admiration and respect. Thank you!🌟🙏
Here are some of my thoughts ...
When the bitter turns into sweet there will be a point where the bitter isn't bitter anymore and the sweet is not yet sweet. An open point where one can choose which way to turn to.
It might be the point where the inner is the outer and the outer the inner. Where the high is the low and the low is the high. Where everything comes together.
The bitter and the sweet will be in harmony with each other when you're in the middle, in this open space where you can be present in the moment and open yourself for the longing present in the feelings you have, for the underlying need that searches to be fulfilled on the level where the pain was once inflicted and caused a hole in your wholeness …
Maybe life can provide an answer and fulfill this hole, the need you have, the answers to the longing and bring you the love to heal from an experience that was still marinating in your body. One you almost had forgotten about but kept telling itself in your dreams, the poems you read, the songs you listened to, the books and art you love. It is life's way to remind you at the happenings and an invitation to open yourself for the healing and fulfillment of it.
I wonder what if you change the word broken into open?
Because in my mind it is not the world that's broken, it is mindsets that have become fixed and are closed for all kinds of realities that are broken.
Then it would say that being open is always intertwined with the sacred, which sounds beautiful to me ... like a song in the bones, rising up.
I don’t know the song but I understand the sentiment. I lost my children eleven years ago in a painful divorce. Some days I wake up - like today - with the albatross of grief around my neck, weighed down by incredible sorrow. And each time it appears, I wonder, “Will I ever heal from this pain?” And then, I accept the bittersweet truth that grief and love must coexist. Would I trade grief for never having known what it is to love? I can’t imagine anything more truly bittersweet than loving, then losing, a child, to the ambiguity of alienation.
Dear David, I'm so so sorry - such a grief.
And yes, to accepting the bittersweet truth of grief and love.
Here is an epigraph at the beginning of a book called “Frankie” by Graham Norton that I just started reading. Another confirmation of Bittersweet.
Life . . . [is] a lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other. Seán O’Casey
what a fantastic way to express the bittersweet!!
Once again, Susan, you tear open my heart! I have loved this song, Suzanne, since forever. Your interpretation is so clear and deep, and yes, it fits so well with your Bittersweet ("only drowning men [can] see him."). So now at your prompt, I've spent some time just contemplating the song. Suzanne is a song that sings itself on so many levels-- Suzanne herself, along with her husband, was a friend of Leonard Cohen, and lived in Montreal near the St. Lawrence River and the Basilica of Notre Dame ("our Lady of the Harbor"). Everything about her was half-crazy and exotic--even the mundane "tea and oranges" felt exotic, and erotic. Although he was sexually attracted to her ("her perfect body"), she was unavailable to him. But despite his lust or maybe because of it, Suzanne was a gateway to a deep creative unconscious, to soul, that recurrent archetype of water. (I feel like I, too, have had some great insights that started with the sensual, unattainable, and not-so-lofty parts of my life.) Anyway, his lust brought him to thinking about Jesus, who lived in that deep, like a sailor lives in the literal water. But although Jesus could walk on water, he could not walk on what "you" (i.e., Leonard Cohen himself) consider "wisdom". Ordinary "wisdom" lets Jesus sink like a rock! With depth, love, and yes great loss, Leonard sees (we see) the perfect beauty of life (our own "perfect body"). Our Suzannes are indeed ordinary people, dressed in Salvation Army rags (albeit with the quirky feathers of individuality), but that human connection, however it begins, if allowed to deepen, can show us the beauty of life, "amid the garbage and the flowers". It's everywhere, in the seaweed at the edges of the deep unconscious, and in the everyday. It's not limited to the church, but is even in the light ("[pouring] down like honey"). I think this is one of the most profound songs ever!
I love your interpretations, Michele - thank you!
What a beautiful post. I do certainly agree that reality is bitter sweet. Thank you for sharing this
you're welcome, Inma.
I always loved that song, but never stopped to analyze its meaning. Thank you for doing that! I’ve learned that it’s the broken heart that shows you the beauty and the magic that was always here. Just like Leonard said , it’s the cracks that let the light in (to paraphrase) .