It’s hard to put a bandaid on yourselfYou know what I meanIt’s hard to be the aid To hold the bandage and have the woundOf course it’s not impossiblePeople do it all the timeBut stillJust because people do it all the timeDoesn’t make it the best wayThe loving wayIt’s just a wayI miss my mom wrapping up my fingers for meThere I said itI miss her and I wish I didn’t have so manypainful places to begin with

Welcome to The ALIVE hour.

Illustration: Shannon ColonAudio: Chloe Riley, Nathan Karagianis. carefulGIANTS, music.

Things found in real life:

* This vow from “The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt” by John Bellairs

* This decomposing punkin head

* This ginkgo tree, completely green and shedding its leaves

Things found on the internet:

* This quote from that master of horror Stephen King, talking about the real-life horror he endured when he was almost killed after being hit by a car:

“For me, there have been times when the act of writing has been an act of faith, a spit in the eye of despair. Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

* This poem from this story of doctor and terminal patient sharing a love of words:

Time is promise,But uninvited circumstanceAnd wounded soulsEventually barter it away.The owner of my borrowed timeWill arrive at random to insistAll what remains of me vanish . . . .A shadow of a shadowPassing into mist.So, I and my last dayWill take a journey togetherWhen we both are spent,That leaves the familiarOnce infused in all the days,To stand at the edge of night,And wonder in the dying lightExactly where we went.

* This reminiscence about painter Helen Frankenthaler, via her stepdaughter Lise Motherwell:

“…Helen could paint anywhere. She could paint near the water, in the woods, in a hotel room, in a closet. That really speaks to something she said about her painting ‘Mountains and Sea’ — that she held a place in her arms as a memory, as something she felt, more than something she saw. She held the emotional memory of it.”

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