This week I received a letter from our friend Philip Miller (Chairman, Saks Fifth Avenue). It said:

Anne Ball will forever be carried in our memories for her qualities as a great and true friend, a deeply loving wife and mother, and a professional with a keen intellect, extraordinary vision, and an uncompromising set of standards.

Anne's caring and love elevated all of us and will provide us with delightful reflections always.

My name is David Ball, and I will speak briefly today about 3 things:

• Transcendence
• Love
• And an ambiguous but hopeful future

In the course of my talk, I will read three short poems related to each of these topics.

Transcendence, and its philosophical and literary cousin transcendentalism, is that which exists apart from the material universe. The notion is that all of us, you and I, those who have come before us, and those who will succeed us are somehow connected to each other, and that we are all, in turn, connected to the living natural world around us. Emerson and Thoreau wrote at length on transcendence, and even today in our popular culture, for those of you who are young or young at heart, we see reference to this notion of connectedness: The Force in Star Wars, for example. Central to this idea is that our essential being transcends our physical being, and even when we give up this vessel we know as our body, our essence continues. There is a bit of Newtonian physics at play here, in the idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed in form. And in this notion, many find the presence of God.

Robinson Jeffers was an American poet who lived from 1887 to 1962. California was his home, and in 1914 he arrived at Carmel near the magnificent Big Sur. He said at that time "when the stagecoach topped the hill from Monterey, and we looked down on the pines and sea fog on Carmel Bay, it was evident that we had come without knowing it to our inevitable place." Here on Point Sur he built with his own hands a stone house, and near it a high tower in which he worked for his lifetime. And here, in his later years, anticipating his continuing connection to the place he so loved, he wrote this poem:

I admired the beauty
while I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
touch you and Asia
at the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
and the glow of the grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
for a love-token.

On to Love. Love transcends this life we know. It awaits those yet to be born, and it reaches to us from those who have gone before us. My father was a distinguished soldier, and just over a year ago, we buried him at Arlington National Cemetery. But to this day, whenever I look at his old uniform hat that he wore to work each day, with its golden eagle medallion on the rise, and intricate braid on the brim, I can see his face and feel the same warmth of his love that I have felt throughout my life. Love transcends. We know it for our parents, for our children, for our friends, and often for some one particularly special. Someone whose unique qualities identify them as our soul mate. Someone who we decide that forever is the right amount of time to be with.

American poet Edward Estlin Cummings of Massachusetts signed his work, e.e. cummings. I read to you from a piece of legal paper on which this poem was copied by someone dear to me some 18 years ago. Love transcends time, place, circumstances, and this physical world around us. We carry it in our essence.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Finally, we are in the first month of a New Year. Traditionally, we make resolutions and look forward to the coming times, sometimes confidently, sometimes less so based on the ambiguities the future seems to hold and on the fragile quality of the life we know. But on into the future we must proceed. And if we are lucky, and perhaps courageous, we can create worlds we have not yet imagined. This notion was considered in a poem written January 3, 1993, on the island of St. Bartholomew. It arrives to us now, encouragement to transcend the day, a message from the past about our futures, urging us on, wishing us well. The poet did many things on this earth, but took the time to write thoughtfully. And as I read this poem, I feel I am in the presence of grace. The poet: Anne Ball.

St. Barth, January 3, 1993

Two strange events make me think:
1. a bird comes here to only sing at night
2. a cactus sprouts from the cavity of a
dormant bough.

Are surprises that exceed my idea of the ordinary
the cause for notice?
Is imagination so limited
to restrict vision to sight
voice to sound?
Is my sensibility required to secure proof of the known?
To demand a certainty not present,
to avoid a surprise that contradicts a thought?
Why?

New Year - the experiences to come are already
those of risk and chance; we add some measure
of confidence in choosing to graft a medium;
we surprise by our courage to disturb Silence
with our own imperfect, impertinent,
and too shrill song.

Bon chance, bon courage.

Good luck. Courage.

Thank you all for coming today