Palace Planet the Palace Chat community Portal: Letter to the Palace Developers Group By Clifford Smith

Letter to the Palace Developers Group By Clifford Smith
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City Slicker on 15/04/2009 19:30:00
 
Dear Friends and Family,
I apologize in advance should what you now read causes you any upset or
distress, but this is something I must say. Delete this or save this for a later
time if you are vulnerable or in particular crisis in your own life.
As many of you know, and others have surmised, I am having a major problem
emotionally resulting from reaction to the holocaust in NYC and Washington D.C.
Let me explain my feelings as this may be helpful to you and therapeutic for me.
I am aghast and shocked beyond description with the events recently. My feelings
range from extreme sadness to extreme anger.
Obviously, I am saddened beyond ability to explain over the deaths and
destruction by this abominable terrorist act. That any human being(s) could even
contemplate such an act is beyond my ability to imagine, much less actually
accomplish it.
Yes, I am angry. I feel a deep anger, approaching a hatred, for the people who
would attempt this disaster, or who would encourage or support them. I want
nothing less than a complete and total reckoning of this event against the
people who were directly involved and are supportive of this atrocity.
Yes, I am frustrated. I feel frustration that I am unable to be of any
beneficial assistance in this effort. I wish I could be in NYC helping to find
survivors of this tragedy. I feel so ineffective.
But where I am frustrated most is not being able to reach out and hold all those
that I love. I have visited, and been visited by, my immediate family. I have
held each of my children, grandchildren and my mother and have had the
opportunity to tell each of them how much I love and cherish them.
My brother and my father are in Missouri, far from my reach here in Ohio. But I
have shared my love with them as woefully limited as it is.
My friends, mostly avatars on a computer screen, are few that I have been able
to meet and share a personal closeness. But that blessing has taken on a new
specialness for those I have had the opportunity to tell face-to-face how much
they mean to me as a human being and a friend.
Now I find another need, a need to see and be with these people again, and the
need to be with and see the people I have yet to meet. I have a burning need
within myself to be able to express in my own words, in my own voice, just how
important and special you are to me. I need to hold you in my arms and express
my true deep love for you and tell you how much I care.
My frustration grows knowing that many of you are far from me geographically.
Some, if economics and geography were unexpectedly overcome, could again be
within my arms. Some are much too far away for me to ever contemplate being able
to reach under my own resources. I am extremely frustrated in this need to be
able to share my feelings with you in person.
I am deeply concerned how each of you is affected by the events of the past few
days. I am frustrated that I cannot ease and console the feelings and emotions
you are experiencing. I wish I had a magic eraser that I could apply to erase
what has happened. If this is a wish were not possible after rubbing a magic
lamp, I would then wish that however it is affecting you that those effects
would be eased or removed. Alas, I have no such eraser or lamp available to me.
I am left with only one way to express this....here in this expression of love
and concern in simple electronic text. I have shed countless tears for the
victims of this catastrophe. I have shed countless more in longing to be with
you, my special and abiding friends.
If, after being online with you, you find I am suddenly unavailable, chances are
that I am sharing a closeness with those I can so share, or I am having to
remove myself from the frustrations of not being able to do the same thing with
you. I may be hugging you via proxy with someone nearby just to be able to
imagine, with the physical sensations, that I am in fact hugging you.
I cannot express just how much you have enriched my life by just being
associated with you. For those I have been able to enjoy a close moment with you
in person, in your home or mine, know those feelings have exploded within me and
I cherish the privilege and opportunity with which I have been graced to have
been able to be with you.
I have one request. Let us all take our petty differences, our petty squabbles,
our differences of opinion and set them aside for the duration. Let us embrace
that we do have each other and cherish the friendship, love and camaraderie that
we share, online and in real life, with all those who touch our lives. May we
grab each thread of friendship and bind each other together with that thread
until we have a cocoon of love and support holding us all together, as a Family
that the world has never seen.
May our differences in religion, skin tone, language, body structure and
everything else be felt as a new offering of experience to enhance us and not
something to distance us from one another. With each person I have met, no
matter in what context, I have been enhanced by their differences as those
differences were pieces of experience and life I could not have obtained on my
own. Let us savor and enjoy these differences, not avoid them.
May whatever deity, power or energy you consider supreme take you in it's power
and protect you from as much affect from this as possible. May we all be safe
and protected from further hurt and anguish.
UNITED is the first word in my country's name. UNITED we stand! UNITED we shall
be! UNITED we shall overcome!
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/ / (..)/ -----
////// ' / ` --- City Slicker
//// / // : : --- a.k.a.
// / / /` '-- Cliff Smith
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