Summerpoet

Fall's Arrival

2011-09-28T20:36:00.001-07:00

Today Summer was waning and Fall made it's appearance
there is always one day, one day when you know a season has passed
and another is here
In the Spring it's always the day when you can go out without a coat
and just by chance a crocus will bloom
and you know you won't face another morning of frost
another night of whistling winter winds
not for awhile,
not for a few months,
not tomorrow

Today someone who loves me read me a poem I wrote years ago
that I couldn't remember writing and even though it made him sad
he shared it with me and for a few moments
we lived as Uncle Walt trying to find meaning in the trees
looking for the one leaf that will convince me fall is here
and summer was gone
I wanted to hold off frost for just a few more weeks
hoping that more of the morning glories would bloom because
I think they have become my new favorite flower
they teach me patience
and I will need that patience when the earth is covered in snow
when Superman will look briefly for the green mermaid
when the summer bugs stop singing me to sleep

Oh Emily let the winged creatures you loved teach me about hope
let them land on my sill and share with me the secrets they keep
and I will push fall and winter aside and plan the Spring garden
I will be fearless
I will paint more
I will wrap myself in that cloak of hope and truly believe
I will believe in summers that last forever
for gardens blooming under winter snows
I will believe in sweet men who read poetry to women who cherish them
and of course that the morning glories will bloom just another few weeks.

Fireflies In A Jar

2011-09-24T18:09:00.001-07:00

He tells me that in the next life we will find the other sooner in life
we will live by the sea in a house full of books and paintings
and of course a cat with six toes
and when we grow weary of love as lovers often do
I will remind him how long it took to know us
the last time around and I'll dye my hair red
and learn to cook souffle
and we can eat it in a hammock
under an azure sky full of clouds
that look like circus animals

I won't get jealous when women admire your sweet smile
and you'll agree I should travel to meet the poets
and miss me until I return
and we'll meet at the Cafe Du Mond drinking coffee
because the first time I saw you, you were drinking coffee
and I fell like an autumn leaf sailing
happily to it's demise
only to be reborn under an autumn sky
wrapped in the love of the harvest moon
shining in the blue of your eye

I will keep a jar at our bedside table
where I an capture that noise you make right before
the sigh that whispers to me you'll let go
and give up your rib all over again
and when we are old the together kind of old
and on a park bench near the Seine and you ask me
why I have loved you through two lifetimes
because it will take me that long to convince you
we have loved before and will again
I will pull the jar from my bag
the jar that looks as though it holds a thousand fireflies
and open it to play
the sweetest battle cry of desire, a symphony of nights
in foreign hotels, in our room by the sea, in the hammock in our garden
and even the hotel in Paris

and I will tell you that you fill my head with music
that even after two lifetimes my heart beats faster when you are close
that you push away the wallow of sadness I tend to swim in
and you'll ask me what you ask me over and over
so I'll never wonder
and I'll ask you back
was there Spring before I loved you?
Do you really think of me when you put on your socks?
Is it forever thine, forever mine
not a day less
because I'd miss you so
just you and I on the river and a jar of fireflies
planning for the next time

She's the Moon

2011-09-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was missing my mother all day today as I fiddled around with the idea of fall closing in and putting away some of the garden. Another year turns and I don't miss them any less, those that aren't here anymore. So, I went to find Peter Gabriel and he kept me company while I hung the Halloween witch from a tree and fashioned the giant spider on the side of the house as a Saturday spins by.

I am my mother's only one
It's enough

I wear my garment so it shows
Now you know

Only love is all maroon
Gluey feathers on a Flume
Sky is womb and she's the moon

I am my mother on the wall, with us all
I move in water, shore to shore;
[ Flume lyrics from
http://www.lyricsyoulove.com/p/peter_gabriel/flume/ ] Nothing's more

Only love is all maroon
Lapping lakes like leary loons
Leaving rope burns --
Reddish ruse

Only love is all maroon
Gluey feathers on a flume
Sky is womb and she's the moon

The Monarch's Wing

2011-09-11T11:06:00.000-07:00

The arrival of the Monarch holds us
in the reverence of God's design
and as we are an audience to his beauty
we are reminded that nature is the inspiration
for all art and God's Apollonian winged ornament
tempts man's torment his want to pluck apart
anything more beautiful than himself
He is brave he is Mercury taking flight
unafraid
feeding from and nurturing flowers
like the buzzing bee
and as I am an instrument of God I stand here
gentle reader as his shield and in telling you of his beauty,
his sword
beauty can after all cause such want, such need and eventually
such pain

Then there is the tiger pacing in his diminutive cage
man's opportunity to humble such a fierce creature
and they will poke him, this pacing calculated feral animal
who would if left free tear the spectators limb from limb
and with a glance can strike fear even in those who carry guns
some creatures after all believe they can conquer anything
they are born with that inherent belief that they are Zeus
they are of the mighty Gods just walking around us as though
we are furniture
and for their restraint we put them in a cage
trying to capture what we aren't trying to reign in fire
trying to push back the ocean bucket by bucket of disdain
and of course fear

And as we are reminded we are all human
why is it that we take the best of us and try to dismantle them?
pluck their wings
make them into Godlike creatures, make their presence almost unattainable
with doubt and speculation
take for example man, a man among the Gods
a man that teaches, that guides us that would be a prophet of sorts
in an age where prophets no longer exist
and in a moment mans design to be whom he is
he steals a kiss, a simple kiss
we would destroy him, we would take away all he is
make him humble, remove from him what is who he is
just to remind us that he is of us, human
and rather than celebrate the piece of him that was God
we would dress him in shame and pull his wings
cage his soul
poke at him with sharp sticks and tell ourselves we are better for it
such is life
such is love
such is man

********************************************************
I can't think of a better thing to do on the anniversary of 9/11 than listen to Ani DeFranco, she is after all a singing patriot. I love this one:

she says forget what you have to do
pretend there is nothing
outside this room
and like an idea she came to me
but she came too late
or maybe too soon
I said please try not to love me
close your eyes, I'm turning on the light
you know I have no vacancy
and it's awfully cold outside tonight

the rain stains the brick a darker red
slowly I'm rolling out of her bed
the rain stains the streets a darker black
I dress my face in stone
because I can't go back

I feel her eyes watching me
from behind the curtain of her hair
and she says I'm sorry
I didn't mean to stare
I say I think I really have to go now
but oh baby, maybe someday
maybe somehow.

*****************************************************************

Ten years ago I was looking for Best Friend because the Sears Tower seemed such a prime target and I just wanted her close. We waited for Richie to get out of school watching in terror (isn't that what they wanted?) as the city I found myself, the city I love so much go up in flame. New Yorkers would help anyone, that have that kind spirit, that beautiful soul that is unique to New York. So, the three of us held out for a few days, playing dominoes, watching TV when we could, making plans. I think the truly shocking part is that this sort of thing didn't happen here. We were given a window of what it was like to live in Israel and at any moment we get on a bus, we lose everything, everyone we love. Why doesn't it happen here? because you see we live in a place of brave men, men who don't let insane zealots and social misfits light women on fire, refuse to educate their daughters and burn things just to watch it burn. We have brave men here who fight, who write, who do what they do unafraid, bold and for the safety and peace of mind of us all. So rather than dwell on the horrible of the world, I think I will spend the day thinking about the joy of those brave men and how lucky we all are they love us.

A fine addition to any ipod:

Langston Hughes

2011-09-04T07:26:00.001-07:00

The Death of the Bookstore

One of my favorite things to do is to peruse the bookstore with my Best Friend. We linger there for hours. I always order some coffee thing and she, iced tea and she will always ask me to share and then remind me why she hates coffee. "Tastes like dirt." will always be her reaction. They are all closing those giant mega mall of books. The days of sipping latte and reading a book you wont indulge in at home because $30 for a book you will just read parts of seems obscene are coming to an end, the end of an era. It's not just books, cds are obsolete with the invention of an ipod, with YouTube, with electronics changing our lives, making us just a little less social. I went to look for a Langston Hughes book of prose this morning and I found it on Amazon for $1, explains why borders would struggle to sell the same book for $15.

And while I do love my kindle, I also love the romance of a book. All my books have little notes on the pages, on the inside cover, little pieces of poems, something I was thinking at the time. And I save them, those worn books, the books I've read too many times to count. When I am feeling melancholy about life I want my old friend Pat Conroy to be on my bookshelf so I can read of men who wish for two lives. I have more Bukowski books than anyone should be allowed to own and depending on my moon I want to read his take on women, or shack jobs, or reading Tolstoy while working in the Los Angeles public library as a janitor. I want him at the end of my finger tips and to feel the pages beneath my fingers and my eyes, it's just comforting. Having those old books close is comforting like having church on Sunday morning and coming home to the scrambled eggs and black currant tea. It's comforting like old photo albums and calling my Best Friend to see what she is reading which I will do in a few moments.

As for the Langston Hughes poem I was looking for?

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

******************************

That poem is so beautiful it is a work of art, it's a song, it's pure art. Hughes was related to the first black man to ever hold a public office. You can find his prose of I wonder as I wander at Amazon for $1. I purchased a copy today and will be here soon. I like the idea of wandering with him a little during an autumn afternoon while leaves are flying, so I am preparing for that.

Here's a little taste of the joy of his work:

In The Rain

2011-09-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Being caught in the rain as a child is a rarity
you aren't allowed to play in the rain
and when I was wandering home and caught a rain storm
I would walk very slowly in watery dreamland

This summer afternoon was covered in rain
a honey dripping August afternoon
and as I was out walking when I turned the corner
there he was
it wasn't Yeats' glimmering girl
it was my shinning boy
his eyes gleaming in the rain
his hair plastered to the sides of his head
his shoes full of water
and that sweet smile that puts women at ease

"Is it five?" he asked
I whispered "Not yet."
and with that he pulled me under a tree
fashioned into an umbrella
and there we whispered the things lovers do
we were the bathing sparrows
drip dropping into fall

Lovers have an umbilical each to each
to nourish their souls and that cord is twisted
and snapped by life's every day this and that;
the moving of the world, the pursuit of our passions
other than the flesh
and on the days that are good
the soft peach days of summer passing into fall
you are certain that you are always taking more than you give
when the conversation is finished like a storm
and everything feels clean
and smells like linens hanging to dry

Those lovers, these lovers pause for just a moment
in the rain
and begin again to want for "hello baby"
and under the tree with the drip drip dripping
of nature singing to us he sat with me and we begged
time to move slower
like when we were children and the summer afternoons seems to last forever
when we held time in our pocket
next to the compass that led us to that place no one knew of
where we shared childhood thoughts of nothing ordinary

I'd like to find that secret tomb and find that unafraid girl
the girl who never looked before crossing
who never crawled
and share her with you
When I tell you of my life there
I will tell you that no one ever told me they loved me in the rain
their shoes full of water
no one ever told me they loved me in the rain
before today
a day like this can change your life
God teaches us that love changes everything
He has changed my heart
he of reasoning and science and romance
I had to ask
"Why are you out in the rain?"

"I was looking for you." he said
and then went on to explain we are born in the water
like the fish
when I am full of emotion, caught in the moment
my eyes are always covered in tears
the rain of my soul
and when he is on top of me moving
that intimate friction will turn to rain
until his skin is fused with mine
and we are one
one soul in two parts, two orbits, two lovers
twisting and holding and pushing one against the other
and both into God and out again

Nobody ever told me they loved me in the rain
you can't buy it or wrap it
you can only sing it or make it into a poem
and hope that long after you are gone someone finds it
and sings it for you
the song of two lovers who find the other in a twirling universe of stars
and who find the other again and again because without the other
life goes on but together there is an undeniable magic
that changes the world
the same love magic that teaches the sun to shine
that fill plants with foods for the harvest
that teach the ants to march
and birds to fly
it's the restrained strength when he holds me down
and and I could stay there forever and listen to his breathing
and the rain
listening to the water wash the dust from the world
and my heart

This is truly lovely:

It's hard to listen to a hard hard heart
Beating close to mine
Pounding up against the stone and steel
Walls that I won't climb
Sometimes a hurt is so deep deep deep
You think that you're gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep weep weep
With all this rain falling down

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain

It's hard to know when to give up the fight
Some things you want will just never be right
It's never rained like it has tonight before
Now I don't wanna beg you baby
For something maybe you could never give
I'm not looking for the rest of your life
I just want another chance to live

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm still alive underneath this shroud
Rain
Oh Rain
Oh Rain

And the butterflies began to sing

2011-08-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

The painting is the work of Surrealist painter Max Ernst. He's best known for his collage pieces, taking parts of 19th century works and creating something new entirely. He was a thinker and never led anyone too close to why he did anything leaving the work up to one's imagination. I found him recently in a book I wasreading and the caption under the painting read:

And the butterflies began to sing

The scientists don't really know why moths are irresistibly attracted to light, and they remark lamely that the insect's response "suggests that it has some biological meaning for these animals." But at least they now know that moths migrating at night can navigate by the moon and if there is no moon, by the stars. Pliny had some very curious and obscure reflections on the subject:

The month that is seen fluttering about the flame of a lamp is generally reckoned in the number of noxious medicaments; it's bad effects are neutralized by the agency of goat's liver.

And I found this which is amazingly wonderful:

http://carriejotucker.com/2011/01/24/open-fangirl-letter-to-max-ernst/

Set yourself an hour at least when you start reading her blog you won't be able to stop, fascinating woman.

The whole concept of the moths flying around the flame is dangerously exciting. Langston Hughes knew the power of the attraction of flame:

The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.

And my contribution to the ever burning desire of moths and flames and love and the ending of summer the preparation of what is frozen and ungiving and what will seen in February unending...

Summer is dwindling and soon the summer bugs will be quieted with a blanket of dead leaves and I will miss them
When the temperatures are too cool I will look for their blazing glory the moths
circling the lamp's light
as they teach us how to love how to let go of the intellectual fight
to give in to the dance
to turn our face to the light
and resist what we know is true of love
of the attraction that turns a passing fancy to the clutches of want
to just let the flame touch you a little
as you brush shoulders
to absorb the warmth to believe it was only burning for you
for this very moment
burning brightly for a hundred years hoping you would find him here
and that you'd have the strength to let go
flying a little closer
the dance would make you dizzy even drunk with desire
and ordinary complications of life left
drowning in the mire their voices barely audible
under your laugh
under your sigh
beneath the clicking of your thinking tongue
that beautiful instrument of fire

The Crescent Moon

2011-08-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight the crescent moon hung in the summer sky
the dangling moon the hopeless moon of late July
You and I yes you and I
You were with me and it was just you and I

Bedouin women sit under that moon
marking days by it's glowing dance
until one day blends into another
then she disappears in the sand
being part of the landscape forever

And she is with us because we share the light
shooting down at us one hundred and eight six thousand miles a second
putting a glow on your face
that makes your blue eye seem an ocean
and your shoulders a trellis for me to cling to in the night air

When you are away we share the moon
I dance in it's light
and look for you
conjure you in a prayer keep you close to me
hear your laugh like thunder in the approaching storm

The summer bugs are out to sing and little fireflies on the wing
If this be just a summer crush
crush me hard and crush me slow
stay with me until the hanging moon
the glowing crescent almost ring
is full again welcoming the harvest
a thousand years from now
when other lovers will sit right here
in this very spot
and he will be her trellis heart

and we will be other people in another place
and the only thing that will be the same
is a warm summer evening the position of the moon
the promise of your blue eye
the forever love of a heart sick girl
and this passionate embrace

Long Summer Days

2011-07-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

When we were children and the summer days were long
my father would take us fishing
and near the water I'd spread out a blanket
and listen to Elton John on the radio
and watch for lady bugs in the grass
and he would tell us to enjoy these days
because all too soon they would pass

It was by no means a perfect life
but watching my brother cast like my father
knowing my mother would pack the perfect lunch
knowing she put work aside on a Sunday afternoon
made our life seem almost perfect
and she would tell us to drink the sun
as we'd have to leave soon

There was a Sunday when it rained and rained
and we had a picnic in the back of the car
the blanket spread out under us
and it was an adventure, the grandest of adventures
the fierce warrior taught us to play a card game
that required four people to play
and he told us when we were older we'd remember this day

and if I am still I can hear my mother humming
a neil diamond song and when she looked at him
he was the only man that ever existed
she will always be young and beautiful
and even when she was sad she a tragic beauty
she held the world at a safe distance
and before she could show the world who she was she was gone
and life marches on and on

On summer days like today when the sun is out longer than it's dark
when the fireflies come out at night to play
the dreaded fireflies who would mark our bed time
when the summer bugs get loud I think of them
and hope that maybe heaven will be the place where all those memories
are played out over and over so we can relive all the little details
that made those days magic
and like the miracle that puts the sun and the moon in the sky
at the same time
when night is day and day is night
they will be there too
and my brother and I can tell them of all the times
we laughed in quiet moments
what one of us couldn't remember
the other held on to like a sword and a shield
and indeed she was right
one day it would be the two of us
and it would be just fine

Patience

2011-07-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

Morning Glories don't bloom when the plant is two inches tall
they take their time climbing up something strong
something that commands the wind and brings it closer to the sun
and in each tendril there is a hidden leaf
another inch of life another twist and turn
and it can't be forced it just has to come along
but then one day when you least expect it
when there are no buds you are anticipating
no trumpet sound
just one day when you glance over
there will be a bloom so beautiful
it will make you stop and just enjoy it
and that bloom won't last forever
love doesn't last forever either
so there is no crime in lingering there
enjoying it for one more second
holding on
and even wishing for the watch boiling pot of nature
to move faster
no hopeful soul was ever convicted for wanting
who would condemn me for wishing your kiss never ends
who would point a finger at a girl, this girl even
for wanting summer to never end
for you to never stop loving me
for just one morning glory to bloom?

Do you mind?

2011-07-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

Do you mind if I ask you a question
Do you mind if I swear not to hurt you
Do you mind if I don't piss on your bed

Do you mind if I bring her still with me
Do you mind if I forget and thank you
Do you mind if I juggle the meaning

Do you care that I wear only silver
Do you care that set only stone
Are you angry the you I'm adopting
Is only a pretense at home

Do you mind if I make you wear earrings
Like she did, like you did before
Do you mind for I think I still love you
Do you mind
Always have
Evermore

http://youtu.be/-TCyyqvWfNI If you post that in your brower and listen all the way to the end, you get it.

Sometimes you have to look for the hidden secret, the tiny meaning nobody else would get, the idea that you share with someone who has a commonality of spirit. Secrets are only valid if they are kept, that way they can't hurt a soul and sharing a secret can forge a friendship like no other.

Every time I watch it I laugh and I don't like cartoons, just ask my nieces and nephews.

Best Friend tells me to be patient that quite often what we want is like watching morning glories bloom, they seem to take forever. I watch them tendril up the trellises I put up for them in the garden and I wait and wait, watering them, loving them, hoping against all hope I can see the blues and purples. The days when I am frustrated and wanting and wanting and wanting I just say a little prayer, not to get what I want but to have the patience to wait for what I need.

I love the way you Speak to Me

2011-07-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

Falling Garden In Venice

The Falling Garden in Venice in 2003 inspired some art project in my head and I knew I wanted a few large tree branches but wasn't sure I wanted to brave the heat to go find a few, the next day we have a horrible storm and it blows down half a tree in the yard. Be careful what you ask for, you never know who is listening.

The Way You Speak To Me

I wandered into a church like any other Sunday
there's a storm brewing
the air has been thick and hot for days
and finally the coolness washes the earth
and over the voices singing
you could hear the thunder carrying the rain
and under the whispered prayer,
the rejoicing song
above mother nature's fury
I could hear a voice ask me
"Why are you here?"
my heart answered back not waiting for me
to formulate a thought
"Because I Love the way you whisper to me"

When I am playing the violin
and I pull the bow over the strings
I can't even believe the music comes from my hands
it feels as though the violin would move without me
and I am just a spectator of the song
that the earth is singing in most any object
and to touch it, to make it your own
will create music and that music could change the world
or just the heart of a wonky girl
in those moments when I a hear the music
whispering to me
it will ask of me "Why do you need this music?"
and lost in the notes
lost in the timing, hearing that metronome
trapping me in the rhythm
my only answer is "I love the way you sing to me"

I find myself in old bookstores,
all the pages stacked one on another
someone else having read the passages
and now those words are their own,
part of their being how they think of the world
and when reading Bukowski's edge
or Wolff's passion, Shakespeare's terror
I found a book of Conroy had written
I'd read a few times
and turned to my favorite passage
one of secrets and how they bear on a man's soul
and I could hear Conroy speak to me
asking me "Why do you read this over and over?"
and if he had been on the other side of the stack
if I could meet his eyes with mine
I would tell him he has taught me much of how men think
and how duty can dampen their souls
and before I left I'd tell him
"I love the way you read to me"

When I am standing in the drive way with no end
and I can see my Best Friend pulling away
when I am already missing her
when I am wishing it was a Monday, a Monday of nothing to do
but drive Lake Shore Drive
in the summer sun and watch her hair get wind blown
to such wild imagination that she will need a large
pin to hold it down
our skin a little sun burn
celebrating the years we didn't sleep
life was too exciting and we couldn't miss a minute
and even when we are apart we are as close as the next heart beat
because that's how life works when you love and love and love
when I have my arms around her and I say
"Call me from the train"
and walk away quickly as to avoid too much emotion
she always stop for a few moments and just waves
and when you are friends for so long
you never have to ask and I never have to say
"Because I love the way you play with me"

And when the day is done
when there are just a few minutes before you drift
and if you drift before me
well then I will be in charge
when I can smell your skin and
yes indeed you smell like summer rain
and your hand slides over my throat
When I am sure I couldn't love you any more than I already do
it would just be silly and impossible
you say something
"Yesterday was long without you"
for a moment I am exactly where I want to be
suspended in time
I can be weak for a few moments
I drop pretense over the side of the bed
and listen to it crash like a glass
your eyes ask me why I love you
and while I hold your head in my hands
reminding you I am just as strong as you
but different
I can feel the days of warm heavy air in my lungs
and the cold front moving over me
this storm between us that never seems to end
I whisper "Because you see, I love the way you speak to me"

The last entry is my favorite passage in any book.

A good interview with Conroy you can watch the entire interview on Borders.com. He's a stunning southern gentleman and I could watch him speak for hours.

You Look Like Rain

2011-07-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Heard this song years ago, actually it was softly whispered in my ear. There are some evenings you just don't forget.

More Morphine:

Let's take a trip together
Headlong into the irresistible orbit
Breathing the cold black space
With the glistening edges
Let's take a trip me and you
Let's go the scenic route
Get to finally (x3)
Get to know each other
Just to be alone (x2)
Just to be alone with thee
Somewhere there's no distracting breeze of information
Leaking through the windows dripping from the trees
Somewhere there's no earthquakes
Of other people's anxious questions
No nervous wrecks going down (x2)
Let's take a trip together
Headlong into the irresistible orbit

And how could it be summer without a sad song:

A Summer Poem

2011-07-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

A Summer Shower
By Henry Timrod

Welcome, rain or tempest
From yon airy powers,
We have languished for them
Many sultry hours,
And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her flowers.

What have they been doing
In the burning June?
Riding with the genii?
Visiting the moon?
Or sleeping on the ice amid an arctic noon?

Bring they with them jewels
From the sunset lands?
What are these they scatter
With such lavish hands?
There are no brighter gems in Raolconda’s sands.

Pattering on the gravel,
Dropping from the eaves,
Glancing in the grass, and
Tinkling on the leaves,
They flash the liquid pearls as flung from fairy sieves.

Meanwhile, unreluctant,
Earth like Danae lies;
Listen! is it fancy
That beneath us sighs,
As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies?

Jove, it is, descendeth
In those crystal rills;
And this world-wide tremor
Is a pulse that thrills
To a god’s life infused through veins of velvet hills.

Wait, thou jealous sunshine,
Break not on their bliss;
Earth will blush in roses
Many a day for this,
And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss.

Source: The Collected Poems of Henry Timrod (1965)

Love Letters

2011-07-05T13:40:00.002-07:00

HBO ran the John Adams series over the weekend and of course the romantic in me was truly taken by the letters Adams wrote to his wife and the letters she returned to him. This one was a favorite.

My Dearest Friend,

...should I draw you the picture of my heart it would be what I hope you would still love though it contained nothing new. The early possession you obtained there, and the absolute power you have obtained over it, leaves not the smallest space unoccupied.

I look back to the early days of our acquaintance and friendship as to the days of love and innocence, and, with an indescribable pleasure, I have seen near a score of years roll over our heads with an affection heightened and improved by time, nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the image of the dear untitled man to whom I gave my heart.

Abigail Adams to John Adams, her husband.
Abigail Adams

Their letters not only reflected this emotional and intellectual interdependence; they also became symbols of it. Abigail found writing to John “the composure of my mind.” John, even more strikingly, asked, “Is there no Way for two friendly Souls, to converse together, altho the Bodies are 400 Miles off?— Yes by Letter.— But I want a better Communication. I want to hear you think, or see your Thoughts. The Conclusion of your Letter makes my Heart throb, more than a Cannonade would. You bid me burn your Letters. But I must forget you first.”

http://www.amazon.com/My-Dearest-Friend-Letters-Abigail/dp/0674026063

A great book for summer reading romance and for people love history.

Miss Adorable

By the same Token that the Bearer hereof satt up with you last night I hereby order you to give him, as many Kisses, and as many Hours of your Company after 9 O'Clock as he shall please to Demand and charge them to my Account: This Order, or Requisition call it which you will is in Consideration of a similar order Upon Aurelia for the like favour, and I presume I have good Right to draw upon you for the Kisses as I have given two or three Millions at least, when one has been received, and of Consequence the Account between us is immensely in favour of yours,
John Adams
Octr. 4th. 1762

New Baby Photo

2011-07-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've named him Buddha and he's the fuzziest of the new babies. He likes to sleep in the crook of my arm while I am reading and when his momma gets tired of his need to roam away from the crowd she brings him over and drops him at my feet for awhile. She has a built in babysitter.

That's Entertainment

2011-07-05T13:29:00.001-07:00

I am tearing through novels this summer and just finished Little Bee which was a good read but didn't end quite as dramatic as I had hoped. Best Friend told me Water For Elephants would be a fast read and as usual she was right. I finished the book in two sittings over the weekend and as it was a quick read it was a good story also. I like the old circus images it created and because of those images still in my head I am working on a few circus projects. I am forwarding both books on to friends to share as I have so many books to finish I am tired of storing them and promised myself not to buy another book until I finish another twenty of the books I already have and have forwarded to someone else. I started Beyond Desire this morning, the book based on the life of Felix and Cecile Mendelssohn an old old book I found abandoned in some bookstore for $1 and the $64 Tomato, a book about the cost of making the perfect garden. I spend half of my life doing that and now in two gardens it's a little overwhelming at times. Last year I planted thirty tomato plants and this year only four. I can't take the pressure of what to do with all the tomatoes.

I also went to the movies this weekend to see Larry Crowne. After just spending some time with my 18 year-old niece I was astonished at the energy of 18 year-olds and their power of fun. This movie was as little slow but I think all summer movies are supposed to be a little slow and it was a testament to the power of a life gone awry and how to fix it. I laughed and ate too much popcorn. I can't remember the last time I went to the mall, a fascinating place that people actually pick to spend leisure time there simply amazes me.

French Cooking Made Easy

2011-07-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

I made this peach raspberry blackberry blueberry tart in about 5 minutes of prep and a little over an hour of cooking time. It's summer perfect. You can find the uncooked pie crust (I like the pillsbury brand) put it on a cookie sheet and pile it high with two cans of peaches (drained), two handfulls of fresh raspberries, blueberries and a handfull of blackberries. I then topped it with a few pats of butter some some sugar mixed with cinnamon and baked it at 350 for a little over an hour until the edges are brown. It's the perfect summer treat that takes only minutes of prep time.

Celebrating Freedom

2011-06-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Just a note of thanks to everyone who fights to keep us safe.

Summer Project

2011-06-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make a headboard and thought of the tufting idea, watched all kinds of home improvement shows not sure if I wanted it to extend it to the ceiling or keep it on a smaller scale and I finally figured it out when I found my new quilt. I pulled the colors from the quilt, painted some canvases and then did a little circle pattern in silver as the bed frame is stainless steel. I may paint butterflies or birds on them later but I love the simplicity, so I am not sure.

New Garden Photos

2011-06-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Little Blessings

2011-06-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had a little animal sleep in your house, it's time to take a trip to your local animal shelter and donate some food, cat litter, blankets, and dog and cat toys. If you ask, they will allow you to take a pregnant dog or cat home and let them deliver in your home where there aren't cages and where they can get better love and attention. Fostering animals, taking care of them while they are ill or in crisis can be quite rewarding and I am always about loving over the little animals of the world. I am still about feeding the bunnies in the yard. The babies are precious and if you go a step further and offer to find them a home you will take quite a burden off the system.

There are many ways to share who you are with the world and make others happier. You can volunteer a week or a month of time. Years ago Best Friend wandered into the Chicago Public Library and when looking for a book realized how many books were shelved because they didn't have a staff big enough to put them where they belong. She volunteered her time a few days a week shelving books and was just happy to be at the library. You can volunteer time reading to kids in the summer, teach an art class, find your way to a retirement home and offer to play chess with someone who would otherwise have a lonely summer day. Giving of yourself is the greatest reward really, it's something selfish, it's about sharing your heart and talents with people who are just waiting for that to happen.

Here's a CNN article about volunteering your time: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/08/5.ways.to.volunteer/index.html

If you have summertime hours to kill maybe it's time to teach at Vacation Bible School or run a kid's carnival. I was at the party store the other day and they had home versions of all those great carnivals games really inexpensive. I can remember playing that silly duck game at the school's carnival every year and my brother and I loved it. I wish they had these when my son was little. He had a little plastic McDonald's center like a little kitchen, but all about the golden arches. I would go and purchase a bag full of hamburgers and watch him play with the neighborhood kids for hours and hours.

Stamen

2011-06-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

(The photo is from my garden)

I don't want to explain why I need his hands on me
My song is waiting for his honey bee goodness
and I just a simple filament waiting wanting
when he is close I will whisper "How do you know what I need?"
and he will respond as he does
"because I love you. I have loved you since God made flowers."
and the hovering is of such excitement
the electricity rivals that of the lightning strikes
the comfort almost like sleep
drifting away being pulled under and over
feeling the water fill your lungs
knowing he's never done anything he hasn't done well
this force of nature
wanting me dancing in the garden
where lovers dance
while rain fills the garden pots
Is that thunder or are the Gods playing Mozart
when we glide this way and that
and being one with him was just a matter of time
because his smile caught my eye
my laugh drew him near
then lost in the lovely way he speaks to me
I've waited my whole life for him to speak me
to hear that laugh like thunder
to get lost in the clicking of his tongue
while he's thinking
my heart sinking because he shares those thoughts with me
and how it opens the door of my cage
how it sets me free

Loving a Mangod

2011-06-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

Loving A Mangod

"You are with me in every step I take."
There is a beauty you see in the contrast between
how he speaks to me in those dulcet low tones
and what I want him to do with my body
with the way he feeds my soul
and yet leaves me wanting

when it is just the two of us whispering
our prayer of thanks more sacred than church
I could hear a dripping drop dripping
almost like the ticking of a clock
marking time, a reminder that we are mortal
a tiny leak in a ceiling and the immediate solution
was a big red bucket nothing fancy or wonderful
just this red red beating heart of water meeting
an object that wouldn't be moved
an underneath the thunder we were alive
every point of nature being more of wonder
because you are of the organic and yet a mangod
who would leave his footprint here
long after this moment passed
after even we stopped breathing
when we were different people our souls looking for one another
and when found like this time around
lost in the magic of the randomness of love
striking like lightning
slaying the monsters we create
because in the commonality of spirit
of his spirit I am found
like the muse or a talisman
found by a treasure map

Love's language is universal and it's power
so overwhelming
that even when you are falling
it feels like flying
when his mere absence leaves the space next to me empty
a little lost
the earth's wobbling movement not quite right
knowing peace is found when his thigh
is pushed up against mine
and victory found when I can hear him let go
praying in that moment he knows that peace is found
when I let go
and the lingering question sitting on the end of your tongue
when did you become part of my soul?
when did want's history become need?
Can Love be the sustenance of forever?
and even though "Yes, of course I know"
I still wait for you to ask

The photo above is a Morning Glory Pool. The pool is a hot spring in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. The pool was named by Mrs. E. N. McGowan, wife of Assistant Park Superintendent, Charles McGowan in 1883. She called it Convolutus, the Latin name for the morning glory flower of which the springs resemble. By 1889, the name Morning Glory Pool had become common usage in the park[1]. Many early guidebooks called this feature Morning Glory Spring. The distinct color of the pool is due to bacteria which inhabit the water. On a few rare occasions the Morning Glory Pool has erupted as a geyser, usually following an earthquake or other nearby seismic activity.

Summer Happiness

2011-06-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

Every season has it's joys, summer though is so full of joy that it's hard to not to get lost in the long warm June afternoons. I think I love the season of warmth more because of the garden and mine is overgrown as usual. I always plant too much, I try to show restraint but I love the little flowers and this year I planted seeds among the plants so that I could cherish the joy of discovering what new flowers will pop up between the herbs and the few tomato plants I planted this year. I didn't mark the seeds so I would be surprised what new leaf pattern and color combination would make it's summer appearance and I recognize the sweet peas twirling it's sweet tendrils up the side of the trellis and I can't wait for the pinks to appear.

One of my favorite ways to spend summer is to find something to cook that will define the summer. My unusual find this year via the amazing Ina Garten is the most amazing chicken stock one could imagine finding. She just throws this little recipe out there now and then and because the summer garden is so full of herbs I thought I'd try it. Her trick? She roasts the chicken or pieces of chicken first in the oven and I think that's the miracle part of it because it removes any extra chicken fat and all you really get after is this amazing golden broth that only a jewish mother could make. And how does this relate to summer meals? Well it's the lightness of it, making it thai by adding a little fish sauce and some egg noodles, chopped up peanuts and lots and lots of fresh cilantro. Cilantro grows like a weed and will make anything taste like a summer evening. You make this Italian by adding basil and maybe a half a can of chopped tomatoes. It's wonderful with loads of vegetables and it's comfort food of the highest order. It's easy too, just roast the chicken parts or the whole chicken, put it in a large stock pot and start to layer the flavors, carrots, celery, parsnips, two large spanish onions, and the best part? You don't even have to peel, cut the skins off anything, almost no prep work involved here, just cutting it up with a few heads of garlic, just cut the whole things in half, no need to remove the skin here either, a big batch of dill, some parsley a little sprig or two of rosemary and let it boil then turn it down to a summer for a few hours, and strain, take out the chicken and shred it and you can keep it all separated until you are ready to have dinner and throw all the rest away. It freezes for a quick meal and it's pure summer joy.

Bravo will make summer fun as Jeff Lewis is back and just the promos are fun. The summer fun movie? Hangover2 which is not quite as funny as the first, but hilarious all the same and I've seen the first about 300 times and it still makes me laugh.

Summer is the time to find a new OPI color and paint your toe nails, wear sandals and spend at least 20 minutes a day worshiping the sun. That is what I miss most in the winter, not being able just to sit outside without a coat or shoes. I am painting a series of canvases to make a new headboard and found some wood butterflies to make a mobile for the kitchen. If the sun makes an appearance today I will wander to the garden and take some photos to post. The Summer book this year? Little Bee by Chris Cleave about a girl who escapes Nigeria. You can find it on amazon used for about $4 and it's a true page turner as I am on my second reading and admit I missed a few things the first time around because it was so compelling. When I am done I will find his first novel and anything else he's written and put it in my head. If books make up who we are, I am glad to find this one. The compassion he writes of here between people who are almost strangers is lovely.

The stores here stopped selling my favorite Black currant tea so I am looking for a new brand. I just purchased a few different brands online and when i find the new perfect cup of brewed wondrous goodness I will let you know. I went to a few international markets near Chicago and found a few boxes written in Polish. Both were too purple, too bitter and not the black currant flavor I love. I did buy a bottle of black currant syrup that I have been adding to plain iced tea and although it does add a little too much sweetness, its lovely.

Last summer my favorite flower was the cosmos. I know why Alice Walker would find a field of those purple beauties to be worth writing an entire book around, but this year I think I am taken with the lilies. I owe someone a Lily poem and I am working that through my head. The come back every year and they are so beautiful, each like it's own painting, each worthy of a moment's pause on a June afternoon, and in colors so rich, it's hard to pick a favorite.

My novel is almost finished, the story finding it's way home. I am making jewelry again and while not consuming my life it does make me happy. There are a few lingering health issues but I am feel as though I am healing, love does that I think, finds a way to heal us. I am fostering some baby kittens from a local animal shelter and the mother and babies are a comfortable addition to the house. I like their little mewing. I will post some photos of them as well, their eyes just opened today. I took them out on the deck with me for awhile so their little faces could feel the warm sun, the momma just climbed the tree and sat in a branch looking down at me until I put them away. Life is good.

I am the master of my fate

2011-06-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

When I am unsure, when I am doubting anything, when I feel as though the world is a little too big and I am fighting a losing battle, I hold this poem in my head awhile because I have to move it around as it always lives near my heart.

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

My New Sanctuary

2011-05-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

It's finally done, my new studio space, a place for me to paint and write. What I love about this space? The light and that I found most everything thrift. The dining room set, the lamp, the chairs and even the little table. The space feels like me, a place to put things I love, a place that's quiet and just mine. I know that I already have a few spaces like this but I like this better than another guest room. It's a place where I can sip tea with Best Friend, to play the violin, a place to disappear, although I do allow the cats to visit, they aren't encouraged to stay. I like finding something someone loved and loved and then for whatever reason decided to let go of it and I get to turn it into something I can use, the history of it has it's own vibe, it's own soft pace. Time to finish the garden, which I gave a Beatrix Potter theme this year in making Mr. McGregor's Garden, photos to come soon.

The Gift Of Spring

2011-05-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

The warm sun felt good on the back of my neck
but it wasn't an indication of Spring
I had been waiting for Spring for what seemed like forever
and I wasn't going to be fooled by the soft air
or even the tulips pushing their pretty faces into the world
Even digging in the earth, throwing seeds around
and hoping for some warm rain
I didn't believe it was Spring
The calendar has been wrong before
and brightly colored eggs would be no indication of anything
and then today, time with you
that time I hold sacred like a holy flame
those moments that let me exhale
the window above my head open
blowing a calm through my room
and you were there whispering my name in low tones
and it felt like a carpet ride
and we were navigating a boat, wait I mean a shhhippppp
well you were
and closed my eyes and we were sailing
dragging my hand through the cool water
and the sun playing games in your hair
past the pier where we'd sat before watching the sun close
waiting for fire flies to dance on the water glittering on your hands
and finally Spring had arrived
and as you moved the earth you move me
I wouldn't listen for a frost warning
I exhaled and Spring filled my lungs
and I could only let go because I knew you loved me
behind the door others were waiting
the world was waiting
and you were busy wrapping up a new season
and I think I will wear the bow in my hair
and the memory of your kiss on my cheek

I was so shy to inquire
If you would like tea sometime
Then in my Mercury
Hand on hand, hand on knee, mercy mercy mercy me

************************************

"Don't underestimate the things I will do."

Solsbury Hill

2011-05-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Every relationship has that point where you know for certain that Love is the bond and even if the love were to change the moment couldn't and the bond would be forged in steel. Years ago I was at the lake house hiding from whatever I didn't want to change and feeling sad. Sometimes you see feeling sad is easier than fixing anything and where do you start to bail the ocean? I can't even remember how long I was there with Richie, spending summer days playing in the sand or taking the paddle boat out to fish for fish that were never there, mostly just to sit in the sun and read while he was close and for a change, quiet. I took a few calls, but mostly just wanted to be out there in the middle of nowhere on the lake and alone. Best Friend would call, week after week asking when I was returning home. I didn't have an answer for her, for Richie's father, for my family, for anyone.

One day she just shows up. Who? The Best Friend anyone has ever had. In the big black Chrysler she shows up on the gravel road. I was reading and listening to Richie play on the beach. I remember being surprised as usually she'd fire a warning shot that she was on her way, but not today. She was listening to Peter Gabriel in the car loud of course and she just looked at me and said, pack your things, I've come to take you home. She had that determined look I'd seen a few times before and more than a few times after. She's a force of nature and when she makes up her mind, that's just how it's going to be and either you are on board or you are an obstacle s he will push aside, your choice, of course. (always your choice) And I remembered being a little terrified to have to push aside sadness and make solid decisions and then a calm, she was on my side and everything would be just fine, of course it would be just fine.

We sat and talked for awhile, she'd listen to the reasons I didn't want to go back to the city, to return to the life that was just a dream falling into a thousand pieces. She'd listen as she packed my things. She'd help me tidy things as you can't just leave things in a house that you only visit when you are needing time away. You want to return to a new slate each time. We kept our most precious things there, the little things we had gathered when we traveled, the starfish from the Bahamas, the big wooden fish that sat at the end of the pier that now sits at her house, because that's where it belongs. When we would swim with Richie and his friends down the lake, we knew we were close to home when we could touch the fish. I remember wondering how some place so beautiful could feel like a prison at times. In the later part of my marriage, Best Friend and I were taking off from the Lake house for a day of goofing around, riding around to find antique shops, maybe an old book store, and I heard my husband tell her "Well just have her home by five or so." I remember thinking, we will be far away from here at five if for no other reason than that sill mandate. Thank God for fast cars and Best Friends. She shares her family with me, she shares her secret dreams with me, I know her real age and would never tell a soul, I know when we are in a crowded room and something insane is going on that nobody seems to notice that if we connect eye contact we won't be able to stop giggling and will probably have to leave the room.

So yesterday when heading home from the nursery, a trunk full of flowers and plants and a new trellis, there on the radio appears Solsbury Hill and I had to call her you see, "my heart going boom boom boom he said, son, pack your things I've come to take you home." changed my life. It was the first day of the rest of it, the getting on with it, the happy part of my life. Who else would I share that moment with but her? Who else would I share ten thousand of them after? She is the best part of this world, the adventure part, the fun part, the joy. She makes an ordinary afternoon one of exploration. We've driven around lost a thousand times only to find some landmark that makes us both sigh. We've had loud conversations in bookstores that gives other pause. And I never doubt for a moment she loves me. After all on that summer afternoon there were others who could have come to take me home, but that doesn't matter, she is the one who did.

I had to share the video from only the best concert ever in the history of all concerts and maybe a few more of Gabriel's songs. He is after all an angel by definition.

Eliot in the Rain

2011-05-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

I wish it would stop raining
and before you lecture me about Spring flowers
I know how to water the garden
but it's hard to warm your soul
when it just rains and rains and rains
When all you want is to feel warm
and dig in the dirt
digging out the worms and making a pile
for the daring mother robin
who will land close unafraid
to feed her chirping chicks

and may I land next to you?
mighty Zeus who commands all he sees
and more importantly all who see him
Yes while others are waiting for you
I could keep you company
read you poems from my head
read of Eliot's mermaids
or St. Vincent Millay's lost lovers
perhaps a little Emily because you too
may be sick of the rain
sometimes we feel the same thing
but lately it's more a coincidence
than a commonality of spirit

Let's build a raft and ride down the Mississippi
stopping at southern small towns to eat waffles
and talk of nothing ordinary
finishing in New Orleans sipping chikory coffee
and I will whisper that you're fine river rafting company
and you will call me that thing you call me
that makes my heart jump a little
and I will be your young female deer
if only because you won the prize
and I got to watch them carry you on their shoulders home
celebrating in a fashion fit a King

Perhaps tomorrow the rain will stop
the sun will shine down on my garden
and the flowers living there
maybe just maybe you'll be of kind spirit
and generous soul
and you'll look for me
and we will have one of those hour long talks
in the hoftgarten
and Eliot will join us and we can speak on April's cruel rain
on May sun
and on June love.

Selfish Love

2011-05-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

I love you selfishly
When I do something to make you laugh
it is because I long to hear your laugh like thunder
When I whisper something of seduction
it is to feel your lips on my neck
It is of my own welfare that I love you so
knowing you delight me
in the ever changing contemplation that falls on your face
when you are wondering
what I must be thinking when I am in pursuit of art
or literature or trying to put a poem in my head
one of Eliot's twisted tales of April's cruelty

And when you ask me why
"why must you push me away?"
Again it is the selfish need to have you close
but still be my own person
When you plant tulips in the garden
you know they will tower over the others
they seek that attention
and today I am standing on my tip toes
looking for you waiting for you to look for me
in this dance we do of lovers
and "was there Spring before I loved you?"

Time changed the day I decided I could love you
the clock was ticking for it's own pleasure
and had little consequence in my life
time marked by the next time I could know your smile
days marked by the moment you ask me
"do you know that I love you?"
and knowing you take the air from my lungs when you ask
and for a few moments time stands still
and all there is, is you
and when you add those moments together
through months and then somehow in a miracle of time's march
years
add them up and you have this life
one touching the other and connection only in admiration,
a little something we give eachother
and in that space
I am truly happy

I would take all the love you give me
then ask for more
put that love in a basket and dine on it
on a blanket
in some field where the grass grows soft and green
where lady bugs land on your arm just to feel that softness
where bee buzz feeding the world
where a weary bike traveler would stop
just to tell a girl he loves her
and your neck, your spine, the core of you
an oak tree
where I can rest
and whisper words of thanks
to a God who hears all

*******************************

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
Sylvia Plath

Discovering Rand

2011-05-11T06:43:00.000-07:00

How did I find Ayn? A man of business of course. He whispered in my year ears ago to find Atlas Shrugged and to read it and I did. I was lost in it. It's an epic novel, one of those books you read and read and wish you could read forever. I was fascinated by the characters, a strong woman, supported emotionally and intellectually by men who would want women to be their equal. Rand, an ex pat from Russia, the leader of the Objectivism movement here the the states, writes dialog flawlessly and creates a world that is of her own in a way no other woman writer had created before or even since. She writes like a man with the heart of a woman.

If you are a Christian, this writer will slap you in the face. She didn't believe in God when used in the term of charity. She didn't believe that we were put here to serve others that the socialism of that point of view was a way of controlling people. She believed that we weren't born to be a "sacrificial animal" that we better served a higher power by achieving our own happiness and taking care of ourselves. She believed that the self esteem we have for ourselves to put ourselves first and that loving someone unconditionally is truly loving nobody at all.

If Atlas Shrugged seems an overwhelming summer reading undertaking, The Fountainhead is wonderful. It's easy to be lost in the characters here. I have always taken Rand that she isn't cold-hearted but more that she is selective about who to love, who to let close, to love with a discrimination to allow our own lives to flourish. She started a cult under this philosophy and was in herself a social movement of the late 50's and early 60's. I read each of her books and if you read between the lines you can an overwhelming spirit of giving of herself. Nobody writes a book like Atlas Shrugged and not give of yourself to hope to free people from the binds that our religious backgrounds give us. When did we develop a guilt because we do well that we are successful?

I found the interview below on facebook and found it fascinating so I am sharing it here in three parts:

The political conversation here is fascinating to me. If you listen to her carefully she is what I think Republicans hope to be before they get caught up in pandering to the religious right. I Love love love when she talks about the selfish love she shows her husband, that she loves him selfishly. How lovely that thought is to me, to love someone because they bring you joy, because you love their spirit being close to your spirit, savoring them. It reminds me of a poem I read by Edna St. Vincent Milay:

OH, THINK not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you–think not but I would!–
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

**********************************************************************
Ayn with Donahue on Israel:

**********************************************************************

A speech from The Fountainhead that I love:

*************************************************************************
Rand on Love:

**************************************************************************

I like this too:

Ok, I've been caught up in this and could think about it for days, but I have a day to pursue, things to do. I found this finally and it's well written and although I've not seen the movie advertised here, I'll look for it:

http://hustlebear.com/2011/02/28/im-so-relieved-the-atlas-shrugged-movie-was-fantastic/

Clair De Lune

2011-05-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

Easily the most moving piece of music ever created by Claude Debussy

Victor Hugo writing about the magic of the moon:

X. Clair de lune

La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots.—
La fenêtre enfin libre est ouverte à la brise;
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
Là-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noirs îlots.

De ses doigts en vibrant s'échappe la guitare.
Elle écoute…Un bruit sourd frappe les sourds échos.
Est-ce un lourd vaisseau turc qui vient des eaux de Cos,
Battant l'archipel grec de sa rame tartare?

Sont-ce des cormorans qui plongent tour à tour,
Et coupent l'eau, qui roule en perles sur leur aile?
Est-ce un djinn qui là-haut siffle d'une voix grêle,
Et jette dans la mer les créneaux de la tour?

Qui trouble ainsi les flots près du sérail des femmes?—
Ni le noir cormoran, sur la vague bercé,
Ni les pierres du mur, ni le bruit cadence
D'un lourd vaisseau rampant sur l'onde avec des rames.

Ce sont des sacs pesants, d'où partent des sanglots.
On verrait, en sondant la mer qui les promène,
Se mouvoir dans leurs flancs comme une forme humaine.—
La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots.

Translated:

The moon was calm, and flecked the ocean streams.
The casement opens freely to the breeze;
While the sultana watches, breaking seas
Weave the black isles below with silver seams.

The lute slips from her fingers as she plays.
She listens:…echoes, dull, from some dull sound.
Is it a Turkish ship, full, homeward bound,
Whose Tartar oars beat the Greek waterways?

Are cormorants plunging successively,
Cleaving the waves, whose pearls roll from their wings?
Perhaps a djinn, with reedy whispers, flings
The tower's battlements into the sea?

Who is thus troubling the seraglio's shores?—
Neither the cormorant cradled on the flow,
Nor the wall's capstones, nor the to-and-fro
Of heavy vessels with their dipping oars.

Merely full sacks emitting muffled screams;
And as they sink, there might perhaps be spied
Something like human forms moving inside.…
The moon was calm, and flecked the ocean streams.

***********************************

I wrote a poem about a moon man about a year ago. It is by far the poem I loved writing the best because it took a piece of me with it. It wrote itself. An Ode to the magic of the moon and the man who lived there. I could listen to the music over and over again and when the notes are close together and then quick it sounds like chaos to me and I dwell in chaos. I was lost painting this morning on some old canvas I found at Goodwill, just painting over other painting and lost in the music and I looked over to find two of the cats sleeping on the edge of my desk, one giant lump of fur and two heads just lost in the music as I was and listening to the rain spit on the windows. Let's hope with all this rain comes Spring flowers. Yes, I've planted, yes I found things that popped up from the year before that I hadn't anticipated. I miss my Mom today. She was a businesswoman, running a salon but mostly I think she was a Wife. She loved being that more than anything and with that she was our mother. She made work seem effortless and my brother is more like her than I am, tender to his soul. I was thinking about her this morning, all the Halloween costumes she made, all the recitals she attended, all the birthday parties she planned and executed flawlessly, all the effort put into our lives and yet still keeping a life of her own. She painted and cooked and sewed and danced and was entirely her own person. I used to complain about going to the salon with her on Saturdays to be a shampoo girl. Today I would love to do that with her and instead I painted and wondered if I'd ever see her again.

2011-05-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

But God I love you

"But, God I love you."
He loves me too or else he wouldn't have shared you
"You are my touchstone."
and I could think of nothing else kinder
to be the landing spot of your right hand
for moments after it's said
I am no longer me, just an extension of you
a limb, a finger that turns the page
that pulls on your socks
and brushes the hair from my face
and as lovers do you are part of me
like some book I've read a hundred times
the teacup that my grandmother drank from
when she told us stories of my grandfather
that man she loved who used my brother's name before
If I linger longer with you
I may lose whatever energy I have to do anything else
but love you
lost in whispered thoughts of the great injustices of the world
and that contrast to time spent with you
the sublime joy of it
and if the rest of the world took notice
to those two lost in each other
they'd stop and wonder why I can't stop kissing your bottom lip
ask why I call you Zeus
and when you smile it will all come very clear

Brass Knuckles

2011-05-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Oh what to tell you about Dybek. If you haven't read Stuart Dybek you aren't from Chicago. In Chicago he is an icon. When you read his short stories they take you to the places my parents took me as a child, Bridgeport, Pilsen, Marquette Park. He captures the essence of Chicago in a way no other writer has even come close. And if you are a guy, he's a guy's guy kinda writer. What does that mean? Well, he understands romance and passion but doesn't get too caught up in it or should I say he finds romance in things men find touching, the bond of friendship, the beauty of sports, the idea of a legend. I've been to a reading, and he reads his work well but he's not as passionate about it as a fan would be. I like that part too. When I am reading Dybek I think of my grandmother taking us for a Saturday adventure down Archer Avenue to stop at the little stores on the way, visiting with friends. In Bridgeport the streets and side walks have little passage ways to the homes, like sidewalks on stilts and we were forever scolded not to go down under the sidewalks to go exploring but when Grandma Helen would take us to visit out Aunt Rita, we'd find ourselves exploring the catacombs under the city. Aunt Rita worked for Wrigley and she'd send us home with boxes of gum and spoil us rotten while we were there cooking some special dish they served in the "old country."

The first short story I ever read of Dybek's was a story called "we didn't," all about a young couple on the beach in Chicago getting ready to make love, waiting all summer, through "shades of lip gloss" and right before they were having that movie moment the police pull a dead body out of the lake. That omen would foreshadow anything they could do after. But let me tell you the moments before were so full of excitement and just hints of sexuality, the pulse beat of a city, the lightning flashes over Indiana, the feel of youth and summer that you just get lost in the telling of it and suddenly you are listening to jazz, not analyzing jazz really just enjoying it for what it is, joy.

His poetry? I've read all I can find and it's OK, but its not his fiction, the fiction is pure and good and from his soul. He teaches at Northwestern and his books Sailed with Magellan and The Coast of Chicago are perfect. Each story makes you want to read the next and you keep them with you, they become a part of your city, your thought on heritage and family and how we live. If I had to pick one book I guess it would be Childhood and other Neighborhoods. I was convinced after reading it that children, as children we all see things that are shocking to adults and that will frame our thought processes for life.

The Other Brad

2011-05-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

The First time I read Brad Leithauser it was years ago and I was in a little bookstore near Chicago called the Frugal Muse. There he was hiding among the poetry books a true diamond needle in the haystack of discarded poetry finds. I started reading and couldn't stop and this little paperback has been on my bedside table since. He is a true wordsmith and so you can take the Brads of the world on the big silver screen who tote a hoard of children around with them around the globe, I'll take this one. If you haven't ready "The Mail From Anywhere" I recommend it as you can find it on Amazon too inexpensive for words and you'll treasure it as I do and then be off to find "Curves and Angles." Leithauser uses words like musical instruments and I get lost in the them. A graduate of Harvard, I read to find out he married a poet and that made me smile all the more. The poem of his I really want to share with you is my favorite poem of all time. It's romantic and sad and wonderfully charming. It sings like a song that goes on and on and as is with Love, it's touching to the core, if you are missing someone or just the "idea" of someone. Be warned though that when t hat someone you are missing shows up, it's like you've never seen the sky before. The color change, the songs sound sweeter and now when I read this very touching fine work of poetic art, I just light a little candle of melancholy for those still looking.

The Crush
Harmless, no doubt,
because hopeless no doubt, yet far
From Hurtless, this nightly not
Being where you are --
Where, somewhere, you go right on being
That miraculously out-
Fitted and not quite conceivably
Tactile matter of yourself, Seeing
How this having you constantly not here
Appears to be my vacant lot
In life, why so implausible, then --that with the mere
Business of breathing, the body's slow
Expulsion of what has turned out to be
Useless, you'd truly disappear? But no-

No means, no hope
Of shaking you, though you're not here,
Days, days on end, no end, and so fully aware that I'm
Aware of just how perfectly absurd
It is-- how, ever, you pull on me, so though
A magnet to every tiny-toothed gear
And staple, brad and screw, all the drill-
Bits and fishooks, the hammer claws
And awls, and the metal rope.
Wrenches, vises, planes, rasps, and circular saws
in my belly...When, some nights ago, I heard
A summons that withdrew during my climb
Toward, wakefulness, until
I knew it was come from no

Physical phone,
But some dream hook-up, I can't explain just
How desolating that was -- only ask you to think
Of a phone ringing to wake the dead in some low-
Ceilinged office whose shades are drawn,
Some Bureau of Incorporations, Inc.,
Some annex of your local Heartfelt Loan,
Ltd., long hours after everyone's gone
Home. No doubt it's some mistake and our
Caller hasn't a prayer of bringing
Anyone to the receiver at this hour,
But still it goes on, that shaded ringing...
Still it all goes on, and still, my dear. I just
Say that I can't say you've brought no

Pleasure to me--
Pleased, anyhow, at having you enrich
My sense of worlds surrounding ours, in which
(Wouldn't you know?) we are invariably
Lovers, still, still no good...No good, you see,
Unless you see, and I don't think you do,
How daily, you're so painfully untrue
To all those worlds, and what a weight for me
It is, night after night, to field the same
Fatinguingly, fresh petulant demands
For entrance to that room -- really not so far--
Where you and I are shyly are
Undressing and you, yes whisper my name,
And I take your head in my hands.

Just typing it out here I am still moved and then when you read it out loud, and of course you must you get lost in the emotion of it. Miraculously outfitted and not quite conceivable tactile matter of yourself. Can you imagine a better compliment to someone? A more loving statement? To like someone so much that like turns to love and that love to you becomes a miracle? You almost want to hate him for making you believe it's possible to feel that way about someone until you do and then I wanted to find him and take him to dinner and wait just wait for him to say something that wonderful again.

So the other Brad of the world is THE Brad of the world to a woman who is full of romance. Everyone has a favorite poem, and yours is mine.

If you read his other poetry you will find stories of foreign lands, breathing an air unfamiliar and full of images that will send your head into another place. There is a poem in the same book called Your Natural History and I will let you find it for yourself hoping you will pop for the book but this lover he wakes in the middle of the night and when watching the woman he loves sleeping by the fire leans over to write FIRE on the window in the steam. Yes, he needed to write that word to save that moment. Since I've learned to type when I am having a moment like that I can feel my fingers type out a word, passion, faith, hope, sadness, fear but never Fire, fire is his, this lover he wrote of the lover who started the fire, who woke in the cold and couldn't decide whether to let her sleep or start two fires. What a lovely thought, a truly lovely thought. This week I will find the one who reads what I write and remind him he's a miracle.

I was dusting my bookshelf when I sat and read The Mail from Anywhere all over again, savoring each page like melting chocolate in your mouth, missing my Best Friend and our wanderings through bookstores. And then in my ipod after a little Neil Young, Shawn Mullins is singing and I really love this song, what a great Sunday afternoon. Souls Core is one of my favorite albums. He reminds me of someone different each time I hear him sing. I included Lullabye down there too so you'll recognize him.

Someone recently sang me a lullably and it was remarkable. Everythings going to be alright, rockabye, rockabye. Everythings going to be alright Rockabye, Rockabye, Rockabye. Sometimes that's all you have to hear.

Go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself

2011-04-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I laughed and learned a few things.

Dirty's Last Hurrah

2011-04-20T22:27:00.001-07:00

Yes, Dirty is now a changed white boy, he won't be running his game on the female cats that live here and these are the last of his kittens. I have thousands of photos of them because they are so cute it's hard not to look at them and play with them and kiss their pink little bellies. They are already promised out to people waiting to love them and make them the center of their universe and parting with them will be a little sad. Ive made them butterfly wings and unicorn horns and even little ballerina dresses. They like it, I swear they do or they don't even notice because they are chasing kitten things. Oh to be a kitten.

Rock Opera

2011-04-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

The first day of warm Spring weather and it seems almost criminal not to be driving somewhere fast listening to loud music. I was thinking about that this morning loading up my ipod and looking for something and stumbled across Meatloaf.

There was a beauty living on the edge of town
And she always put the top up and the hammer down
And she taught me everything I'll ever know
About the mystery and the muscle of love

The stars would glimmer and the moon would glow
I'm in the back seat with my Julie like a Romeo
And the signs along the highway all said,
Caution! Kids At Play!

Those were the rights of spring and we did everything
There was salvation every night
We got our dreams reborn and our upholstery torn
But everything we tried was right

She used her body just like a bandage,
She used my body just like a wound
I'll probably never know where she disappeared
But I can see her rising up out of the back seat now
Just like an angel rising up from a tomb

But it was long ago and it was far away,
Oh God it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway,
Then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are

How I love the Rock Opera and who does this better than Meatloaf? He's been a favorite of mine since the old Rocky Horror Picture Show Days, yes I was one of the troubled youth that found their way to the local theater to see Rocky Horror at midnight on Friday Nights. Meatloaf is one of those guys that got better looking as he got older and when he sang those terribly long songs about love and youth and sex and drugs and rock and roll I was singing along. When I was sure that Best Friend just needed to hear this music and she'd be as enamored as I was, I gave her a cd of bat out of hell. Needless to say it's still in pristine condition and I don't think it's ever been played. I am a sucker for romantic rock opera especially if the singer is a bad boy and meatloaf always seemed on the edge of bad boy for me and then he appeared in fight club and that fascination was over.

I Took Woolf Seriously

2011-04-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

I remember when I read the first of Woolf writing of Judith Shakespeare, the fictional character she developed, a sibling to the bard, unable to study, the first Yentl of sorts, beaten for wanting to marry for love, forbidden to read because she had too many household chores to attend. The importance for having a space that was just mine to write or create or even just read seemed of vital importance. I have been working to organize the billions of beads that are in my studio along with another desk I'd filled with papers, pages of french literature, tiny pictures of birds, rubber stamps, glitter, tiny tubes of glitter. I had filled yet another space to be creative and I had room so why not make that room even more my own? I had thought on this long and hard not wanting to take over too much space with my creative pursuits hearing from more than one person, "you need fewer interests." especially when they saw my desk, the desk that sits right outside my kitchen, where I could sit and paint and still watch over a cooking pot of soup.

And Woolf was right, of course she was right, I was so excited about having more space to make a soft place to paint where the light would be just right was more than a lingering thought, but a mission I guess. I looked at desks, hundreds and hundreds of desks, not really impressed with the modern pressboard issue of a desk. So I wandered over to a 2nd hand store and found a dining room set that was gently loved but worn well and used thousands of times. The table makes for a perfect desk, lots of room, no fear because of how little I paid for it that I would ruin anything with paint. It came with 9 pieces, but I asked them to keep the chairs and resell them because I wanted the chair to be wicker, wicker felt like summer to me.

You can see from the photo that the china cabinet sits on the back perfectly well. It felt to me that the set was only biding time as a dining set and waiting to be my painting desk. I have filled the buffet that sat under that china cabinet with paints, and more paints and brushes and things I love. I will post photos of that when I am done with the lamps. I think I want to make lamps to put on top or perhaps take some lamps I've found apart and make one tall lap with giant bubble bases made of wondrous glass that they just don't make anymore. Yes, I love old things, repurposing them, wondering who or what used and loved these things and delighting in finding my own way to use them. The piece came with a pretty carved buffet that has wheels on the bottom. I had them put it in my living room it just feels good there, a place to hold art books and my Spring collage, filled with images from old magazines, photos I've taken, little garden magazine clips and set in an old barn window on foam board so I can change it out when I am thinking all I want to see is summer flowers or fall leaves. I can't wait to fill the shelves in the china cabinet with little boxes filled with this or that, something to ponder on a summer afternoon while painting, pausing to finally make a decision about what I am going to do with a box of glass buttons. I found the bunny at the 2nd hand store as well. He's handsome and he is marking the days until easter. After I think I will put him in the garden and let him keep watch there. Yes, a garden, it's almost time to plant and after the longest winter I can remember, I am ready, oh so ready.

The Indigo Girls, how they do amaze me, telling a story about a published diary and how it can change one heart, one woman, one thought at a time, creating rooms all over the world.

Waiting For Spring

2011-03-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

In the dreary winter morning light
the blue sheets on my bed looked like an ocean
and floating there were books
some started, some waiting and others
near the end their secrets about to unfold themselves to me
The little gray cat that loves me
was lingering at the end of the bed
like a gargoyle surveying all below him
You were there with me as you are in most anything I do
Those secret thoughts that a woman can hide
because a woman's heart is stronger it always had to be
You put on a brave face like those sparrows looking for grass seeds in January
and when you aren't where I expect you to be
I will swallow the lump of worry and wait

I can hear your voice today like a song that plays over and over
when you've just heard a part of it
not the voice the world hears, that tender almost whisper voice
I get to hear and it's lovely
it keeps me warm you see when winter just lingers
like a scraped knee, pain, not enough to alarm
just enough to remind you it's not going away
and you aren't here to scoff at a scraped knee
shake your head and laugh thinking I am drama
when I dont have to be and stoic when I should fall to my knees

Next week when I am at the market waiting in line
wondering if I needed four more things to push me
into the line of never ending items
you will be with me and we will be dancing on the mall
to a lingering tune we can only hear
and the great monuments will be our tomb of sort
celebrating love and bravery and affection so rare
you'd look for it
and if I had a broken arm and you had a broken arm
people would think our happiness was generated by the crashing of bones
and soon everyone would have a broken arm
falling intentionally out of leafless trees
wanting to be us happily twirling
the cares of the world left to the world who seldom cares
about two such dancing creatures
and men will wonder, why does she look at him so dearly?
while women slip their numbers in his pocket
I will be glad being a tiny bit
the ever silent devoted actress

There are days when I am waiting for us to push into the next life
where time is an unlimited commodity like grass
or summer ants or late fall bees buzzing about
filling our head with ideas of what to do with those lingering moments
and we on the St. Germaine in some small cafe
crunching croissants your hair in a state of unrest
and not caring at all
lovers you see they are always in a state of half dressed
half combed
half done
half happy
half inside me keeping me there on the edge of time
full of want
I miss Spring today and I will repeat it a few times because
I'm not allowed to say I miss you
and if I did, if I were brave enough to break down
and plant some seeds in frozen earth
would you find me and assure me there is a time and place for everything
in that voice that makes me want to believe
that you not only carry my heart in your pocket
but also the secrets of Spring.

Henry's Ramblings

2011-01-12T17:43:00.000-08:00

A Romantic Love Letter written by King Henry IV of France (1553-1610) to Gabrielle d’Estres.
Romantic love letter written June 16, 1593 the night before a major battle.

I have waited patiently for one whole day without news of you; I have been counting the time and that’s what it must be. But a second day I can see no reason for it, unless my servants have grown lazy or been captured by the enemy, for I dare not put the blame on you, my beautiful angel: I am too confident of your affection–which is certainly due to me, for my love was never greater, nor my desire more urgent; that is why I repeat this refrain in all my letters: come, come, come, my dear love.

Honor with your presence the man who, if only he were free, would go a thousand miles to throw himself at your feet and never move from there. As for what is happening here, we have drained the water from the moat, but our cannons are not going to be in place until Friday when, God willing, I will dine in town.

*************************************
When I am bemoaning my state of "I hate when you are gone" he will say to me, "Carrie you have no concept of time at all." or "Let's rearrange the Myan calendar to add another day at your whim." or even "You defeat the purpose of us spending a moment together if you will storm off in anger." There is nothing reasonable about missing someone when they are gone and you hold them so dear to your heart, nothing reasonable at all. Love will turn the most understanding person to a pouting child and even a serial phone slammer. So when I found this letter of Henry's I thought, you see the world really does live as a romantic lives in the unreasonable state of there has to be something wrong with the world when you are gone. There was a Starbucks Ad over the Christmas season, notes written on their cups and one of them read "Our friends found us to be the strangest of couples. We only find it strange when we are apart." This I loved.

winter footprints

2011-01-12T17:20:00.000-08:00

I gave you socks and gloves because I wanted your feet and hands warm
not because I didn't think you were capable of keeping them warm
but because I wanted it not to be something you thought about
I wanted your head open to think of things not so tangible
especially in the winter
The winter is glittering for a reason, it is the season of thinking
of things bigger than we are
it's the time to make Valentines
to write poetry of nothing ordinary
even though the ordinary can be very enchanting
if you dont believe me watch an icicle melt
to understand that while the living breathing world is fast asleep
under the cold layer of ice
that there is a piece of us quite alive and waiting and even planning
the same way I plan when I walk by the winter garden and picture violets living there
that tiny part of us that understands that like anything
even like love
like adventure
this too shall pass and it's a reckoning we seek
the epiphany to explain all suffering of the world
summed up in a lyrical phrase
to minimize pain, a whisper of "this too shall pass"
and if I were to take that sort of direction from anyone
wouldn't that someone be you?
So I will care to the little things, the insignificant,
the "I know how you take your coffee"
and "you shouldn't miss this appointment"
if only to give your head the space to dream of things
no one else can conjure
to nurture the soul that feeds mine
to give you the energy to change the world
as Ive watched you do, your loudest silent cheerleader
to remind you who you are
if nowhere else than in my eyes
floating above the earth, clean
doing the right thing when the right thing seems impossible
like Armstrong's wife cheering his footprint
she knowing that all men want to leave their mark
wringing her hands together wondering what sometimes possesses him
wouldn't he rather be with her at the opera?
of course not
no man would rather be doing something you've suggested he do
perhaps he will agree to disagree and in there
lies the hope of change
if only for a brief moment in the middle of winter

Kissing

2011-01-05T21:19:00.001-08:00

When we are whispering in low tones
my lover and and I
and the world has faded
spinning the way the world just does
and close to me are his sweet bones
I am compelled to kiss him
take him in my mouth
and kiss him some more
as Shelley's waves crash the shore

That's what lovers do
hours spent kissing
wanting that time to be connected
to his lips
to fall into him
to steal the breath from his lovely mouth
to taste him to smell him like summer
because he smells like summer
for my lips to know the respite of his
those soft lips that speak all day
a thousand words,
that hum in the shower
it is his mouth after all to do as he pleases
until he's a foot away
and then those lips are mine

That's the promise of lovers
to steal a kiss at any moment
without notice
to lean in and just expect their comfort
that lovely wetness
the sweet curve of passion's embrace
letting me love you the way I like to love you
the way I need to love
and in that moment you see
do you see?
that I am free

You pull me to the lofty place
where time moves quickly
where your shoulder is an anchor
and my heart lives in your pocket
where there are noises outside the door
we dare not open
"Can you stay for just a few more minutes?"
I will ask of him as I often do
how could one deny such a request?
and when he presses his lips to mine
his whisper speaks of "will this do?"

*****************************************************
We have approached the season of kissing, the season the bossy republican calls, "Carrie's favorite thing." He will tease me that this holiday is like Christmas, my birthday and the fourth of July all rolled into one. It is the holiday of the romantic notions that float around in my head and land usually somewhere interesting. I had a greeting card business once and Best Friend and I would spend endless hours making Valentines, covered in glitter, listening to Carly Simon songs.

I don't think I will ever tire of my fascination with little hearts cut from paper that are made to look like lace, or the idea that someone would save a Valentine forever and ever and yes, ever. I know I have been in love for awhile now and I still get caught in it's romantic trappings, i.e. forever thine, forever mine, forever ours. How could anyone not fall in love with someone who wrote that to them?

" Good morning, on July 7
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours"

You see Beethoven didn't just write great music, he wrote of love. He wrote three love letters similar all during a three day stretch and never indicated who they were written for. Lovers share such secrets in quiet whispers when they are sure they are alone. I know I do. I am planning a Valentine or two, are you?

A thousand kisses deep

2010-11-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

Leonard always breaks my heart from the first time I heard Suzanne only to realize she was my Best Friend and I wanted him to sit on her sofa and have her make him tea like she does when I am feeling out of sorts and play scrabble or some other word game that she will win and I will win just because I have her company. So I was listening and looking sort of working through my head a poem about the word obtuse and was looking for a poem Cohen had read. He was reading part of a poem at the opening of one of Tori Amos' songs. I was struck by the beauty of it. "I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name, women give of themselves to him. If I am dumb behind your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips it is because I heard him climb the stairs and hear him clear his throat outside our door." It was so beautiful it stopped my breath for a few seconds. Then my phone rings with a text just happened to be what I needed to read. Perhaps the first day of snow won't be dark and gloomy and well winter. Yes, winter has started and as I am missing my garden today and my parents (at this time of the year my mother almost always smelled like sugar cookies) I found my brother yesterday who comforted me with the words, "You are the only other person in the world who would understand missing our parents." With the snow bring the holidays. I told myself I wasn't going to decorate this year and I already have the lights up, so much for intention.

Cohen wrote a hundred versions of the poem and ten songs. In the second version I love that he refers to himself as a melting snowman.

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep:
You ditch it all to stay alive,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Confined to sex, we pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
I made it to the forward deck.
I blessed our remnant fleet –
And then consented to be wrecked,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
I guess they won’t exchange the gifts
That you were meant to keep.
And quiet is the thought of you,
The file on you complete,
Except what we forgot to do,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat . . .

1. You came to me this morning
And you handled me like meat.
You´d have to live alone to know
How good that feels, how sweet.
My mirror twin, my next of kin,
I´d know you in my sleep.
And who but you would take me in
A thousand kisses deep?

2. I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat.
I´m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique -
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep.

3. All soaked in sex, and pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
We made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet -
And then consented to be wrecked
A thousand kisses deep.

4. I know you had to lie to me,
I know you had to cheat.
But the Means no longer guarantee
The Virtue in Deceit.
That truth is bent, that beauty spent,
That style is obsolete -
Ever since the Holy Spirit went
A thousand kisses deep.

5. (So what about this Inner Light
That´s boundless and unique?
I´m slouching through another night
A thousand kisses deep.)

6. I´m turning tricks; I´m getting fixed,
I´m back on Boogie Street.
I tried to quit the business -
Hey, I´m lazy and I´m weak.
But sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep.

7. (And fragrant is the thought of you,
The file on you complete -
Except what we forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep.)

8. The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it´s done -
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it´s real
A thousand kisses deep.

9. (I jammed with Diz and Dante -
I did not have their sweep -
But once or twice, they let me play
A thousand kisses deep.)

10. And I´m still working with the wine,
Still dancing cheek to cheek.
The band is playing "Auld Lang Syne" -
The heart will not retreat.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep -
You ditch it all to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep.

11. And now you are the Angel Death
And now the Paraclete;
And now you are the Savior's Breath
And now the Belsen heap.
No turning from the threat of love,
No transcendental leap -
As witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep.

you would think

2010-11-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

You would think the carved Jack O Lantern faces would keep the squirrels out of the pumpkins but no they burrow through the back and turn the fall pumpkins into a condo. I have put out several pumpkins now and they are all squirrel condos and in a few days they will be gone when I throw out the rest of the garden. Richie's near me for his birthday and we had a lovely lunch, went and did a little shopping finding him some things I wouldn't dare pick out without him being with me. He came back and washed a few of the windows that you had to reach on the ladder and we are off to the movies. Because it's his birthday I will let him pick. I picked Anna and the King once a long time ago and have never heard the end of it and now he uses it as his excuse to pick for me.

I saw my kid last weekend because we had a family function, a funeral for some family members that passed together in an accident. Everyone was back at the house and although it was a sad event it was nice to see everyone to have them all close at the same time, as the kids get older its a rarer event. Even though Rich had spent the summer living at the house its nice to see him, spend time with him as an adult. We seldom run out of things to talk about, it's the comfortable conversation, nothing of his future plans, He seems happy and for me that's what's important. At his age I had a child and a family and he's braver, doing it all on his own, forging a life for himself.He loves the job and being on his own and I love it for him.

I mentioned to him that crazy Jeannie was back and we both laughed. "Mom does she still think Luxor is in Vegas?" Of course she does. If only there were more stringent laws about who can collect disability she wouldn't have time to write. Do you endlessly try to contact someone you claim not to like? claim being the operative word here.

Do you know that I love you?

2010-11-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

This morning the little gray cat climbed in my lap
and while I rocked him in the gray light
I was marveling how nature comforts us
and when we must comfort her
I am in turn in the garden
pruning or pulling plants, fall's ritual dance
making room for next Spring's eager bloom
or comforting one of her creatures into twilight slumber

And for further evidence of nature's wonder
I would use for argument's sake your arms
those wondrous pieces of nature's design weren't just for
laborious garden tasks or painting but for harvesting my soul
and giving me a place to lumber like that silly
gray cat who will later be chasing bits of yarn
in the same kitten excitement with which I chase your heart
the tender part of you saved for moments of quiet
in the shade of a white cross
when no one can find you when you are living alone
but never alone

You are the silent robin who swoops from his haughty perch
to thrill me with the touch of a wing on my cheek
a touch of teeth brushing my ear
and it's all I can do but stand frozen in nature's awe
how she built the elusive creature I love
with that line from your neck to your shoulder
that artists have tried to capture over and over
in the eternal struggle to capture man's strength and his tender beauty
and as many times as I paint blue birds or tender azure flowers
I will never paint anything as beautiful
as your left thigh wrapped in denim

And as nature herself summons the clouds and pushes
us through another day in sturdy fall wind
I can close my eyes and feel your hand in the small of my back
leading me from a crowded room
to a quiet place where there is only me
and always only you
and were there two people who ever desired to be as alone
as much as you and I
who could leave the world behind knowing the wind will still blow
the flowers will push their way through the dirt
and no one should miss us because no one knows
oh no one knows how you comfort me so
fly down and dance and dance with me now
let's sway to and fro and twirl a little in fall's magesty

I wouldn't ask them to understand you see
there are cynics in libraries and never one in a garden
there are naysayers in board rooms
but I would believe you anything
There are women who would be contrary just for contrary's sake
but when you ask me the question
that you asked me today
that you've asked me enough the time tested question
"Do you know that I love you?"
I can hear the inflection
as I can feel the October winds blow the leaves from my heart
and as they blow away they even sound like a yes
yes yes yes yes yes

********************************************

I have been attempting to get the cats to wear a sombrero I found with best friend at a garage sale. They all freak out of course so I am introducing it to them because you see I want to make a Christmas card of them wearing a sombrero, at least one of them. I am thinking this is like bailing the ocean or asking feenie foodie to be at good at something but I am putting in the effort. The babies like to play with the little neck tassel and dirty just carries it around with him from room to room taking a nap with it. They are endless entertainment. The garden is just about wrapped up for the fall and I put a few pumpkins outside, one carved like a jack o lantern and the other in tact. The squirrels have been eating them at the jack o lantern to the core and the other has a big hole in the back so they can go in for pumpkin seeds for their daily ritual of burying things for the winter. I like to feed the outside animals it keeps them from getting too close and it just makes me happy so I don't mind sharing the garden with them.

In honor of the closing fall garden and big bruce

subtitled in Italian because some very sexy things are said in Italian, just saying.

"She'll let you in her mouth if the words you say are right."

Girls always love the boys who are tougher than the rest.

The Passion of Irish Men

2010-10-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

There are many photos of Yeats, this is my favorite. He looks wise and yet a bit tired, all of man but yet human, the best part of man. He looks deep in thought and perhaps even a bit tired. It's harder to nail down the perfect Yeats poem, there's too many choices, too many thoughts that roll through your head like red wine. I found this one though and thought of Will rocking his new Lilly and since I havent found the words for my own Lilly poem offer this to that gentle reader:

And as any bickering session always turns with the one I love to the time he's spend for just him, pleading with him to push work aside in my own unique fashion, I do love Down in the Salley Garden. It took me awhile to find the right song version, knowing that my Irish father would have wanted a soft gentle voice to sing the song because he wrote of her snow white feet.

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white
feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not
agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white
hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

In 1923 Yeats won the nobel prize in literature and unlike most writers and poets finished his best work after being given the prize and the first Irishman to claim the coveted honor. He sang his song for an an entire nation of people and loved their legend and even loved the occult. He noted Shelley as an influence and I love his works as well, he had great taste. When Shelley wrote about a kiss it was as though no one else had ever heard of kissing before and wouldn't feel the same about it after.

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

PB Shelley

I digress. You only have to look to pop culture to know how many have read Yeats' work and who love him.

And when one things of ephemera you think of the disposable use of a theater ticket or a playbill from some musical in new york you've seen once but it became part of you. So he compares this throw away memory of life's time passing to love.

"Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."
And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!"

Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
while slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."

The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
ell like faint meteors in the gloom and once
a rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
on the lone border of the lake once more;
turning he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
gathered in silence, dewey as her eyes, in bosom and hair

"Ah, do not mourn," he said,
"that we are tired, for other loves await us;
hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Bfore us lies eternity, our souls
are love, and continual farewell."

**********************************************

And my contribution?

Maybe it's the weather
perhaps the fall, the leaves falling in their deadening dance
someone wrote a dream on every one of those falling leaves
a dream of what they imagined their life to be
in a trip to the opera
to watch a woman dressed as an egyptian princess
sing in italian
everyone suddenly understands italian when its full of such pain
and in fall's opera
there is a young woman
so full of passion's promise
that her cheek turns red with blush
at a man's sweet smile and whispering italian phrase
and to conquer the girl with porcelain skin
he would tell her most anything
he will regale her with stories of white horses
and princes
and their love how it lasts forever

In a quiet moment leaning near a tree
she will ask him
"when is the last time you kissed a woman because if you didn't
you'd die?"
In that question his armor will fall to the ground
and he will be a tiny woodland creature
scurrying for ground cover

and if he is brave and aren't all men who murmur in italian brave?
if he is brave he will stand on the stage
and be naked
and say what he wants
and let the leaves fall where they will
passion is temporary after all and love is not
love is the tender moment when someone holds your hand
because the next moment isn't so easy
and he wouldn't want you to be alone

A man can live on little love
I have discovered this
but when he ia asked to live without passion
something of him dies
he stops believing in the white horses
he's sure they are all gray, and weary and dunked in bleach
their tails pulled into threads

He won't charge into the room with a sword
there will be nothing to fight for
his lawyer will write your lawyer a letter
and when someone asks him "what's wrong?"
he will smile that charming smile and tell you, "Nothing, perhaps I'm just tired is all."

Perhaps it is the weather
perhaps it's the smell of the leaves
maybe it's mozart's inspiration
or seeing one of Yeats' faeries in the garden
while you are pulling up the dead plants of fall
suddenly in the fall air and it fills his lungs
in the shadows all over the ground
suddenly love isn't enough and maybe it never was

Edna St. Vincent Millay

2010-10-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

I think she had her own Superman:
"I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."

Have you ever watched a man play Keno?

Have you ever watched a man play Keno?
You aren't going to find a rocket scientist
waiting for the lottery ball to fall
they are off guiding rockets
You aren't going to find a man of industry
or a great man of thought pushing the button
over and over again
hoping for a little jingle of music
and some coins to fall loose
Men of industry are in a meeting
playing golf
planning his next big move

I saw a man playing Keno
his face like a dead limb on a tree
falling to the side a little
waiting for a strong wind of something
to push him free
waiting for the jingle of coins

He was playing hoping to win it big
to take his wife to Kansas City, the land of
well nothing, it's Kansas City
Famous people lived there
Walter Cronkite, Hemingway,
the Great Jazz Saxophonist; Charlie Parker
but they all left and Hemingway told people
he was from Oak Park

He must really love this woman I thought to plan the big
trip to Kansas City, the land of whatever it was
the land of
but he shook his head slowly like a man married
to someone who was once charming and even interesting
and now was a robot of herself
angry with the world
her friends avoiding her calls
unless they need something
a ride to this place
or a few dollars for dinner
You see they don't really come around
they don't have to listen to what he listens to
night after night
and when a co-worker asks how she is
he just nods, just fine
knowing she's busy hating something hating and hating and hating
and his only respite? the little bouncing balls of Keno
the mindless game of lottery where he has no control
no power
no big meeting he's missing
just life spinning off another 20 years of nothing
glad his unborn children aren't watching this
life of his the dead limb of life
hang just a little closer to the ground
hoping the air conditioning works when he gets home
and maybe she's asleep on the sofa
dreaming of Kansas City

**********************************************************

Millay wrote of nothing ordinary. She was the first female poet that caught my attention back in high school, Ms. Kerns English class. Kerns was very quiet, wore her hair in long braids rolled up on the side of her head and she knew poetry. She was serious about poetry. In the season when everyone was reciting the Raven, she loved Millay and so do I. Millay was the first woman to ever receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. If you are looking for a good fall read Nancy Millford's; Savage Beauty charts her life in a mysterious fashion.

Floyd Dell wrote of her "a frivolous young woman, with a brand-new pair of dancing slippers and a mouth like a valentine." She wrote of love you see, not the ordinary love of some shack worker an his rabid wife but of the out of the ordinary love and broken hearts and high expectations.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

******************************************************

This is a favorite

OH, THINK not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you–think not but I would!–
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

********************************************************
and of course..the first poem of Millay's I heard in Mrs. Kern's English class:

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—
I shall have only good to say of you.

The Fall of Man

2010-10-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

"American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough."
— Pat Conroy (Beach Music)

Nothing Ordinary

I was riding in the woods today listening to the hush of leaves under the tires
the sun low in the sky throwing fall's shadows all over the ground making
the air feel dark and mysterious the earth spinning and strangling the last breath of summer's promise
wondering what part of the garden I'd pull from the ground when this journey
found me back at home
and as I turned the corner there in a glade of trees all green and brown
was a brilliant orange tree and I was compelled to stop and admire it
it was though it was from a dream, just that beautiful, nature screaming at me
and it was so brilliant it made me ache a little
you there with me as you always are, as you promise you always are
I could smell leaves burning somewhere as the mother of the earth itself satisfied all senses
if I had to put all you are in a metaphor it would be that tree
I could point to the leaves that make up the whole and know those parts of you I admire so
I gathered some leaves that had fallen as a burning flame and called one brilliant and another charming and yet another fun
And if I had to sift among my arm's fill of them, sifting through handsome and gallant and protective and wise, I would hold closest to me the fun of you
It is that fun that makes time stop, that makes me a child again in awe of nature, in the strength of man as often you are all I cannot be
It makes everything around me seem clearer and creates moments under the tree
when I can stop my life, stop the world from spinning and admire it and you
and then create this moment when I have the power to write about it
This is my song you see, a giving of thanks for all you share with me
for the way you love me and mostly for the way you let me love you
you, that just this morning I could pause and know you were looking for me
and for you to know what that means to me
You see, and I don't know that you do, you are the miracle set against the world so ordinary
In a world where we are taught that ordinary is good and mediocre, the standard
the brilliant orange tree set ablaze with fall
reminding us to cherish every moment because soon it changes into something else
Those moments when you are close are nothing ordinary if only because you are part of them and I hold them close even when you seem so far away
and the only constant
the only truth
the only thing that matters
is that I love you

***********************************************
I was listening to Bill Withers this morning riding in the woods. Recently on a local station here they played a week of rock from A to Z by song title. I listened while I worked, listened while I ran errands and wondered what the next song would be. I hadn't imagined how many song titles started with the word Angel. This amused me so. I developed a theory as I was listening all the way to Z, that men love so deeply. Every woman's name you could imagine had a song and a song title. There were Jackies and Lelas and even a few Carolines. This also amused me. I couldn't think of many song titles with a man's name written by a woman. My theory? That women love the idea of what men are supposed to be and men love women for what they are. Just a theory. I haven't written in awhile busy with some larger wholesale orders and a new art adventure.

Thanks for the notes asking how I am doing. I appreciate it. As for the stalkerama drama? I leave that to old ladies with nothing to do all day but patrol when their husband is perusing online porn. I have bigger fish to fry and the Feenie Foodies of the world know what they are and what they aren't they don't need me to remind them. As they spin and whine they only make themselves miserable. They own that misery, I do not.

If you are looking for a little Bill Withers, here ya go. I love this song.

***************************************
Here's Lenny Kravitz and his version and it's just as wonderful but a little faster

******************************************

And for Pat Conroy, well he's brilliant and insightful. I have used the above quote before in his reference and it always bears repeating. I admire men for their calm, cool spirit and the wisdom they offer when cooler heads prevail.

"Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. Philip's, lawyers moving out of their offices to lunch on Broad Street, the darkness of reveille on cold winter mornings, regattas, the flash of bagpipers' tartans passing in review, blue herons on the marshes, the pressure of the chinstrap on my shako, brotherhood, shad roe at Henry's, camellias floating above water in a porcelain bowl, the scowl of Mark Santoro, and brotherhood again."
— Pat Conroy (The Lords of Discipline)

When I think of memories that inspire me I think of this passage from the Lords Of Discipline and hold the things to me that make me who I am. I hold the memory of seeing Van Gogh's night scape for the first time at the Art Institute, and Monet's water flowers covering the walls of that sacred place. I remember my first English teacher reading us the stories of the Greek Gods and the first time I read the grapes of wrath. I think about holding Richie when he was still a baby (and wondering how Will enjoys that now), I think of cool ohio summers on the porch sipping iced tea and the smell of cut grass always reminds me of mowing in the summer with my father and then going for a chocolate malted afterward. Seeing sand brings me back to moments at the lake house when Richie was younger and the endless times I've brushed sand off his clothes after he'd been playing on the beach all day. I can't go swimming without thinking of Suzy and I swimming at the lake and seeing the big white wooden fish off the pier and knowing we were close to home.

"The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave
anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the
genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language.
Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a
ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had
nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in
"Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my
mother killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten
thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers
in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous
English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and
women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me
when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English
language. "
— Pat Conroy

This has to be my favorite Conroy quote other than the quote from the Prince of Tides where he wishes two lives were apportioned to every man and woman and it was the secret life that sustained him now.

Because of John Irving I could feel Garp fly the way home with his kids in the back seat, and only because I read Atlas Shrugged did I understand that being selfish was actually the way to share of yourself. Yes, Ayn Rand changed my life. Read Anthem and you will know why she loved America and why I do. When I read Misery I was on a city bus on my way to class and had to stop and get off it was so terrifying. Later when I read the Tommy Knockers I was in awe of King's power and the stories he tells. I was pissed when nowhere in the bridges of Madison county did Waller mention that Yeats wrote that poetry and so much more. I remember sitting at the lake wondering how anyone could claim that kind of love and then be powerless to follow it. It took a wise man later to explain it to me to take the edge off that anger. Books make up who we are, what we value and what we imagine heaven will be. There is a moment when Hemingway was writing of Killmanjaro when he wrote of a man's pain, the raw truth of what he knew and how brave he was for putting it out in the world, his own frailties. If he were only remembered for this that would be enough. What books have moved you? Changed you? When we stop reading we are done dreaming.

In 44 Minutes

2010-08-14T13:47:00.001-07:00

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
Omar Khayyam

It never takes me 44 minutes to write a poem
but sometimes I am writing it in my head for 44 days
it just takes that long to grow there to fill in the blank places

I won't change the world in 44 minutes and I suppose
it passes in the blink of an eye the same as a year does
when you aren't looking
when you are just living in the moment and it ticks away
the sands falling through time and at the end faster and faster

When I am looking for you 44 minutes seems torture
and if you can imagine someone twisting your arm behind your back
for 44 minutes
a bus hitting you and it taking 44 minutes to realize you wont survive
44 minutes for water to boil
44 minutes to hear you say
"Have I told you today I love you?"

I'm sure no one's ever written a sonata in 44 minutes
or built a highway
but if you string together that burst of time
doing what you want what you know is true and good
when you are feeding your soul
44 minutes can change a heart
it can open a window
fill your lungs with air
even cause you to smile when someone is being unkind
and if you trust love
you can fly
to perhaps to an ancient city
and walk by a river that created time
and stroll there

We are remembered not only by the work we do here
but how we love
The balance comprises the whole
In 44 minutes a man can decide he's done fighting
and just close his eyes and go under the water
and trust that there's a bigger plan for all of us
pieces of a cosmic puzzle of love and life and renewal

When I know I am only as valuable as the time I share
when I forget I'd rather be alone because being near you
is such joy
and "being with you is like being alone."
when I know you are close and my heart is racing
and not because it's shiny new but because it's time tested
something you can count on
something true
and always you

***********************************************************

A little Aaron to fill the summer

2010-08-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Because it's raining today (its been raining for days) and there is something very magical about a not so gentle summer rain. Like a flower drinking from the pouring rain, the same rain that could wash it away.

And because it's always a favorite of mine on a rainy day

Love Letters

2010-08-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

I am weary with love's maladroit dance today
and could toss love aside easily for chocolate
or a new rose in the garden
or any movie with Daniel Craig

Restless summer days like this my father
would take us to the lake to go fishing
and listen to the radio on a blanket
sipping orange soda

I want to stand in the garden
and tear up love letters
and watch the earth worms eat the pages
the idea that those pen marks
could be worm shit
makes me giggle
because every time he makes me cry
I plan my exit

I'll write a cryptic note
leave it next to a bottle of red wine
pack a suit case full of blame
and go look for the blue wind boy
and the next time not take love so seriously

Keep your hand inside the ride at all times
avoid making toast while swimming
when you find a boy that could break your heart
keep a little piece hidden in your coat pocket
for the end of summer
and I will show you where to plant it

And Annie's best of all the best:

I used to be a lunatic from the gracious days
I used to feel woebegone and so restless nights
My aching heart would bleed for you to see

1-Oh, but now

I don't find myself bouncing home
Whistling buttonhole tunes to make me cry

No more I love you's
The language is leaving me
No more i love you's changes are shifting
Outside the words

No one ever speaks about the monsters

I used to have demons in my room at night
Desire, despair, desire
So many monsters
(rpt 1)

2-No more i love you's
The language is leaving me
No more i love you's
The language is leaving me in silence
No more i love you's
Changes are shifting outside the words

And people are being real crazy
And you know what mommy?
Everybody was being real crazy
And the monsters are crazy.
There are monsters outside
(rpt 2, 2,...)

Do be do be do do do oh
Outside the words

August's flower

2010-08-02T08:13:00.001-07:00

August's Flower

I planted a pot of morning glories near the front window
I wanted to be able to sit there in late summer, listen to the summer bugs sing
and have their blue and white blooms crawl up the side of the house
on a trellis because a garden feels more like a garden with a trellis

I have been watching them grow those little seedlings
into the heart shaped green leaves spilling out of the pot
but the miracle in all this talk of the glories of the new day
is in the tendril not in the flower
Those tendrils curl out from under the plant and they wait and wait
they wait for a wind strong enough to blow their sticky fingers
onto the trellis so they have something to hold on to
somewhere to climb
something of strength
to compliment that tender twirl of living thing

Without the strength of the wooden earth ladder
this pot of leaves would spill out onto the ground
and nobody could see them from the street
and I couldn't see them from my favorite chair
in my favorite window where the kittens like to keep guard for squirrels
so the trellis is their spine, unattached but part of it
not alive but holding life allowing it to flourish

How do you tell a trellis that it is nothing but wood
if it were not for the bravery of that tiny tendril of curled sticky love?
How do you point to the blooms and tell him
"If it were not for that blossom you'd be kindle"
Sometimes strength bears a curious hubris
and in nature's child-like soothsayer ability
she points out the obvious that beauty will always inspire
that strength is only as good as the beauty that leans into it
crawls up its leg and rests on it's shoulder, unafraid
and ultimately unashamed

******************************************************

I was missing my friend Jay this morning and he introduced me to Nina. When she sings in french it will steal your heart. Today is a quiet summer day and the perfect time for a little Nina in the garden.

The Catfish Poem I love

2010-08-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about Richard Brautigan. He is one of those writers I want to embrace but ultimately would like to strangle. I find one poem of his I love and the next I hate. The Catfish Friend poem I found years ago and made it a study of some altered books I made. I love the images it creates:

The Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

**************************************************

Some of Brautigan's poetry seems like a child's fairy tale and others as though it was never finished that it wasn't really a poem but more of a thought of a poem. He was the voice of San Francisco and the beat movement of the 70's and 80's. I suggest a little interest in his work and see what you can take away as something you will love.

The Wait

It seemed
like years
before
I picked
a bouquet
of kisses
off her mouth
and put them
into a dawn-colored vase
in
my
heart.

But
the wait
was worth it.

Because
I
was
in love.

Richard Brautigan

***********************************************************

***********************************************************

Yes, the Fish Music

A trout-colored wind blows
through my eyes, through my fingers,
and I remember how the trout
used to hide from the dinosaurs
when they came to drink at the river.
The trout hid in subways, castles,
and automobiles. They waited patiently for the dinosaurs to go away.

Richard Brautigan

If you don't get it don't bother

2010-07-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

His name is Harry I think. We haven't really decided. We thought on Leroy, Jr. and the kids thought Chevy sounded right. I'm working on it.

The Great Song Poets

2010-07-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

When loves calls you by your name

You thought that it could never happen
to all the people that you became,
your body lost in legend, the beast so very tame.
But here, right here,
between the birthmark and the stain,
between the ocean and your open vein,
between the snowman and the rain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.
The women in your scrapbook
whom you still praise and blame,
you say they chained you to your fingernails
and you climb the halls of fame.
Oh but here, right here,
between the peanuts and the cage,
between the darkness and the stage,
between the hour and the age,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

Shouldering your loneliness
like a gun that you will not learn to aim,
you stumble into this movie house,
then you climb, you climb into the frame.
Yes, and here, right here
between the moonlight and the lane,
between the tunnel and the train,
between the victim and his stain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

I leave the lady meditating
on the very love which I, I do not wish to claim,
I journey down the hundred steps,
but the street is still the very same.
And here, right here,
between the dancer and his cane,
between the sailboat and the drain,
between the newsreel and your tiny pain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

Where are you, Judy, where are you, Anne?
Where are the paths your heroes came?
Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away,
was I, was I only limping, was I really lame?
Oh here, come over here,
between the windmill and the grain,
between the sundial and the chain,
between the traitor and her pain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

Leonard Cohen

Cohen wrote so many wonderful poems/songs. My favorite is Hallelujah

Dance me to the end of love is truly enchanting

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Suzanne takes you down to a place near the river. Gods I love that song. When I hearda this this morning I had to make some tea from China and eat a very ripe orange.

"In My Secret Life"

I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much.
There’s no one in sight.
And we’re still making love
In My Secret Life.

I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.
And I’d die for the truth
In My Secret Life.

Hold on, hold on, my brother.
My sister, hold on tight.
I finally got my orders.
I’ll be marching through the morning,
Marching through the night,
Moving cross the borders
Of My Secret Life.

Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
And the dealer wants you thinking
That it’s either black or white.
Thank G-d it’s not that simple
In My Secret Life.

I bite my lip.
I buy what I’m told:
From the latest hit,
To the wisdom of old.
But I’m always alone.
And my heart is like ice.
And it’s crowded and cold
In My Secret Life.

Wisdom from 1888

2010-07-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

I found this at a yard sale a few years ago and found it when looking for some old papers. It was published in 1888 by a company called Dr. Price's cream baking powder and is full of the most interesting little recipes.

Southern Corn Bread: sift one quart of white corn meal with two teaspoonfulls of baking powder. Add three tablespoons of melted lard, salt and three beaten eggs and a pink of milk, enough to make a thin batter. Beat all very hard for two minutes and bake rather quickly in a hot well greased pan in which a little dry meal has been sifted. Eat hot.

I love the suggestion to eat it hot.

Rice Muffins: Add two teacups full of cold boiled rice half a pint of milk and three eggs. Sift together one pinkt of flour, one and one half teaspoons of baking powder and one tablespoon of sugar and one teaspoon of salt and mix with the rice, beating into a smooth batter. Grease some muffin pans and fill each to 2/3rds and bake in a hot oven.

I would think a hot oven would be 350 and bake it until it looks done. I haven't tried this yet but the next time I make rice I may just do that.

Vanilla Snow Eggs: beat stiff the whites of six eggs; have ready on the fire a pint of ilk sweetneed and flavored with vanilla; as soon as it boils drop the beaten eggs into it by tablespoons and as soon as they become set dip them out with a tin; slice and arrange them according to fancy upon a broad dish; allow the milk in the saucepan to cool a little, and then stir in the yolks of the egg very gradually. When thick, pour around the snowed eggs and serve cold.

and finally sustenance for the sick...yes it has it's own chapter

Toast water: Brown nicely but do not burn the slices of bread and pour them into boiling water and cover. Let them steep until cold keeping the bowl or dish containing the cost closely covered. Strain off the water and sweet to taste putting a piece of ice into it as drank.

I couild not ever dream of drinking this as wet break freaks me out.

The world keeps turning

2010-07-14T07:03:00.001-07:00

It was a little more than a year ago when I heard the news that would open up my little piece of the world and swallow me. It didn't. It didn't because I wasn't done doing what I was supposed to do I suppose. If you know what that is you could drop me a note I'd like that. I was looking for Bukowski poetry last night to post here to share with you and I found this, it bears repeating:

The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Charles Bukowski

You see even when you are bogged down in sadness or despair or even worry this is the only go around so there is no choice other than to look forward and hope by all means of hope that Emily was right and there is a bird and those feathers will carry the light.

Bukowski loved Ezra Pound. I will write more on Ezra later but I found this and it gave me such comfort that I put it on a note where I work and to this day I can find comfort in it.

As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She laid beside me in the dawn

Ezra Pound

And this I think the imagery is as beautiful as the song. If you want a day of comfort spend the entire day listening to a little Tommy.

and my contribution to all this?

When you have everything you want
God takes this as a sign you need a hurricane
and he moves his finger in a little circle
right near your head and the rain will fall and fall
Don't be shocked when nobody notices
it's not their storm and they have their own dream to chase
All you can do is hold on to what you know
and look to the sky when you are thirsty
and know when it's time to lay your head down
and wait for the day to pass
as they tend to do
Nobody has to remind the sun to come up in ribbons
even when summer is ending when the bugs
sing so loud you think they drown out any possibility
of reasoning
Make your deal with God now
tell him you will be more understanding of the world
more tolerable of fools
you will move more carefully
and perhaps he will be teaching a girl's school in the Sudan
or he will be taking a little nap and just when he's missing your song
he will hear your prayer he will hear the screams
and offer a little solace at the end of the day
on the car ride home
and that will be enough.

Thanks for spending this time with me. I have started a new project and I am excited to share pieces of that as well.

Carrie.

On Having A Best Friend

2010-07-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

So one day awhile back I was watching Oprah. She had on a woman who was complaining that her Best Friend slept with her husband. This is the point where Oprah leans in and says quiet seriously, "Um, she wasn't your best friend." No shit. Best Friends don't do these sort of things. I was reading a blog recently where someone was saying truly strange things about her friend and I kept thinking, friends don't treat friends like this, they just don't. How do I know this? I have a Best Friend. I've had a Best Friend for a long time. Know what Best Friends Never do?

They never fuck your man. It doesn't even occur to them and if you love your Best Friend for a long time you know the other's weakness and how a man would fill that void and therefore you can't be attracted to him. Just how it works.

Best Friends never tell anyone where you were if you don't want the world to know where you are. There is no excuse for telling, not even if someone is worried. When you want to be away from the world, you tell your Best Friend and they field the nonsense but they don't tell, they just can't so don't ask.

Best Friends never put you down to others unless of course the put down is so blatant it's comical and everyone already knows about it. I can tell people my Best Friend is picky because if you've ever ordered in a restaurant with her you know. She has ordered something on the menu that will have to be set up in a fashion they've never encountered and you know what? She just likes it that way. She tells the world I've had 14 emotions today. That's a good day.

Best Friends don't lie to you. They never ever lie. If they start bullshitting you what separates them from men? Nothing. Best Friends tell you when the dress is stupid, and not working for your hips or ass. They mention that lipstick gives them a tumor, they laugh and point at you when you wear lime green crocks. (Don't ask me how I know this stuff for certain.) Best Friends knock on the door when you've been away from the world too long. Best Friends are always invited to your house, it's just a given. Best Friends don't lie.

Best Friends know your weaknesses and don't play on them. They know you're an emotional girl, or perhaps not emotional enough. They know you won't put the cap back on the bottle and do it when you aren't looking just so they can sleep and they don't nag at you to do it. They can finish your sentences but delight in hearing them. They know you for the worst and best of what you are and who you are and love love love you anyway.

If you want a Best Friend, be one. It's just that simple. Love someone without boundary, love them at the bookstore and love them late at night when they call because they had a strange nightmare about chickens. You can sleep when you die.

Why do I love MY Best Friend?

This is easy.

She's always on my side. If someone calls her bitching about me her first response, "what did you do to her?" hahaha

We are two totally different people, different views on most things but I can see her point of view and respect it and she always respects mine even when she's laughing and pointing.

She's the rational to my not so rational side. If I overly excited about something she will put her hand on my shoulder and say "girlfriend this has no power." She's usually right about this.

She says things that make me laugh days after she says them. Things like "If you weren't dressed like a bumble bee and I wasn't dressed like a gypsy hooker, we'd be eating dinner at Trump Tower tonight." Ha, we ate BBQ at a hole. Figures.

She shares her family with me. Because of her love and her generous spirit I have another sister and a brother and nieces and nephews I love as much as I love my own children. I can have a separate relationship with each of them and she gave me a whole another family to love. Love multiplies when you share it, she's proof.

On a road trip, she always drives. I hate to drive. I am in control of the temperature, the radio, what we eat, and what I read to her. The rest is hers and I am glad it is.

I will never have to do anything in my life alone ever again. Imagine that. We are born alone, we spend time alone, we die alone. Not when you have the Best Friend I do, I don't ever have to do anything alone again. When you have a Best Friend you never have to take someone you can barely tolerate to a family wedding. They will expect your Best Friend because she's the person you want to be with, all the time.

My Best Friend can turn an ordinary afternoon up by Northwestern into an adventure. We stop at the Jewel, make a lunch, get a few really stupid magazines and one really smart one. We take the quilt from the trunk and sit in the grass ans paint each other's toe nails and read magazines and eat melon balls and laugh. Those days are the best days of my life.

When you have a Best Friend life is lighter, easier and so full of joy. Any burden is half and any happiness doubled. I know. I have one.

He will always be the first love of my life

2010-07-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

The first time I read Bukowski I was with my Best Friend. Actually I was at her little apartment up on Barry Street and I pulled the orange copy of Love is A Mad Dog from Hell from the bookcase and I was done, smitten and fully in love with each line. I loved even some more than others. When he wrote sad you could taste sad like humidity and when he wrote content you just wanted to take a nap, content with the whole world.

Yes Yes

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

-Charles Bukowski

and the gods wait to delight in you. Gosh, oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh. What kinder thing could you say to someone? This wasn't just a drunk. He wasn't just a mad who hid behind a face he thought was ugly, even hideous. He was pure poetry, hate and pain and love and joy the pendulum swings and you die in each line.

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

Charles Bukowski

The images of Bukowski are beautiful. If you read Ham on Rye you will read that he didn't care what clothes he wore, all he cared about was the poems and the women and the beer, the escape of the reality of life and living for this moment, right here.

For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know
her dress upon my arm
but
they will not
give her back to me.

Charles Bukowski

If you are going to try go all the way! How many times do we have to hear this in our lifetime before it's our mantra? How many times? Anything he endured was this gift, the lover of life. If you are going to try go all the way there is no other feeling like this and you will be alone with the gods. I've read it a thousand times and when I read it again it will make me cry. He believed it and we wait around to hear it to inspire us even now, even now that he's dead, buried in the ground and the worms are eating his bones.

The rich are not good to the rich, the poor are not good to the poor. We are afraid. More haters than lovers and people are not good to each other. Perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad. I love that he turns it in his head to figure a way for us to be kinder, easier to make life more about watching out for one another even in a poem.

It reminds me of a Joseph Conrad poem about love and war and the way men who wage work work it out in their head.

I think I'll add more soon. I've had enough of his sadness tonight and I have to sleep soon. You can find him on YouTube, all over the net, in a bookstore, a library, and somewhere near your 3rd rib.

New Garden Photo

2010-07-12T09:32:00.001-07:00

I made the wreath from some old silk flowers I found on sale and the twigs that fall down from the trees outside and a little bit of wire. The peppers are insane now, 9 different kinds, all fun shapes and colors, thinking about gathering a bunch up for a painting for the kitchen, some inspiration. The herbs have taken over especially the cat nip, next year i'd grown much less of it. I find such joy in the garden, I can't begin to tell you.

Dirty White Boy's nap partner

2010-07-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

Yes Dirty has broken down and taken to loving one of the kittens. He may come around for the others. I'm not sure if he's feeling brotherly love or just wanted a nap partner.

Breadcrumbs

2010-07-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Even when I'm angry I will leave a trail
of bread crumbs to find my heart
I can't shut doors, never could
the brave will find their way
and what would I drop?
if I knew you were hungry I'd drop
french baguette with a little melted cheese
if I knew you were hungry intentionally
avoiding food, avoiding any comfort because
you like the challenge of seeing if you can
push the 20 percent if you can push and push
and oh how I love when you push

If I thought you were bored I'd leave a trail
of poetry
little snippets of this and that
Eliot's lost afternoon of hysteria
or the mermaids of Prufrock
Perhaps little pieces of Emily
and you'd know it was her because she wrote of hope
and the birds
and butterflies
She waited like I do, winding the months in little balls
letting the days pass as days tend to do
and wishing and loving you

And if you thought fun had passed you by
I'd create a game and leave the pieces strewn
like love letters all over the pavement
you could be Romeo and I will be Juliet
and we can be on the porch
playing a game of romance
where the only prize is this girl's heart

If I believed for a moment you had given up hope
in mankind and nature
I'd leave you a trail of flowers
flowers in every shape and size
flowers from the islands
and flowers from Paris
not just their pedals, their brilliant colors soon to die
instead I'd plant a row of flowers, all in blues
and greens one for each eye to see
in rows forming a path to where my heart would be

If you were feeling love had slipped through your hands
the hands that can jerry rig a radio to work
without a battery but just a potato from some child's lab
I would cut hearts from the red red paper
I'd cut them with a child's scissors so I wouldn't
cut myself on the tips
and on every heart I'd write something I love about you
I'd write of your gentle spirit
of your laugh like thunder
or the way you will throw rational aside
just to love me, the wonky girl with a crooked heart

If i thought you were weary, weary from a world
that moves like a carousel around and around
so fast you are afraid to touch your foot to the ground
for fear you'd fall
not afraid of the pain of falling
afraid that someone would notice and wonder
then I'd leave a path herbs
herbs grown by the Gods in heavens we cant see
herbs of such intoxicating scent you'd fall
under their spell and perhaps under mine
and over me

and when you were fed and reminded of love's possibility
when you were covered in flowers and
taking a rest on my left breast
with a heady head full of poetry and stolen time
I'd whisper to you thoughts to make you forget about duty
the world would stop and the clouds would linger
we could live life in those few moments
every dream at the tip of your finger
each thought understood before you spoke it
every fear banished when love broke it
and there for a moment or a hundred years
you'd be mine
with a belly full of bread
and a heart full of rhyme

Surfing

2010-07-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Men are a constant source of entertainment for me.

So I found the unemployed poet when surfing:

http://unemployedpoet.blogspot.com/2010/06/i-only-said-one-of-these-things.html?showComment=1278437692817_AIe9_BGl07_

This is an amusing fellow to say the least. The rant on what you will never find in a Mexican resort made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

I've read Dan Savage for years and years and this made me laugh out loud

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=4362335

he's worth reading and years ago when I first found him he wrote an article about a woman watching her grandmother jerk off a parrot and found it disturbing. If I find it again I will send it along.

You can always find a summer laugh at Lemon drop

http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/05/12/your-three-step-guide-to-having-a-filthy-summer-fling/

Summer is about life being a little less serious, eating watermelon, summer romance, writing a love letter and listening to music in the park waiting for fire works. I live on the south side of Chicago so the fireworks go on and on and on. Don't get me started. Summer defines our time when we are healing, when there's not worry of shoveling the drive way with no end and your biggest worry is which new flower will be blooming in the garden. Summer summer summer.

Food For A Summer Pic Nic

2010-07-06T10:22:00.001-07:00

Inspired by Ina Garten and feeling like I wanted to eat something that wasn't about meat because the meat thing gets so old. I was missing Best Friend and our afternoons eating Greek. They closed down the little greek place I love so much, made it a mundane lunch and dinner place full of nothing special. So if you are looking for something summer to eat that you can eat cold as well as hot and is beyond simple, this is it.

The best part of this is that you don't need to measure anything really. I started with some fillo dough sheets, two different kinds, two different thicknesses, the thick on the bottom. No need to butter a cookie sheet, nothing to measure here. Just start with a few sheets of dough, and then a little misting of melted butter and a little olive oil, and some defrosted frozen spinach that you will have to squeeze the water out of with your hands. On top of that a little crumbled feta and a smidge of garlic and chopped dill (mine from the garden) and scallions both the white and green cut up. Now sprinkle all the layers except for the top layer with a little bread crumbs to bind it together. Now if you are full of adventure you can add sun dried tomatoes, or some roasted red pepper. The sky is the limit here I wouldn't add more than a few extras because you don't want to hide the spinach of the feta.

Then you'll need a few more sheets of the filo and another layer of the spinach/cheese fun. Don't add too much dill, it will destroy everything and if you are feeling especially summer, cut a lemon and squeeze some of that juice over the top, another layer of the fillo dough a few sheets and some more melted butter. I take the top layer and spread a little of the melted butter and then some egg wash to give it some color as I do not like the fillo dough too crunchy.

Bake at 350 for about 36 minutes you are just really cooking the dough, everything else is already cooked. Ina mixes in some turkey sausage and makes a wonderful dipping sauce but I wasn't in the mood for a summer heavy sauce or rolling it up. I am going to put her recipe below though because she is the mother of all good cooking and watching her is a sublime way to spend a summer afternoon.

Ingredients
nocoupons

* 1/2 cup olive oil
* 1 bunch chopped scallions, white and green parts
* 2 (10-ounce) boxes frozen chopped spinach, defrosted
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
* 3 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten
* 7 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
* 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 40 sheets (1 box) frozen phyllo dough (such as Pepperidge Farm), defrosted overnight in the refrigerator
* 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
* 1/2 cup plain dry breadcrumbs

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan and add the scallions. Cook for 5 minutes or until soft. Meanwhile, squeeze most of the water out of the spinach and place it in a bowl. Add the scallions, dill, eggs, feta, salt, and pepper and mix together.

Keep the phyllo dough sheets covered with a damp kitchen towel. Unfold 1 sheet of the phyllo dough. Brush the sheet with melted butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Repeat the process by laying a second sheet of phyllo dough over the first sheet, brush it with melted butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs until all 10 sheets have been used. Spoon 3/4 cup of the spinach mixture into a sausage shape along one edge of the phyllo dough. Roll it up. Brush the top with butter and score the roll into 1-inch rounds. Place it on an oiled baking sheet. Repeat until all the pastry and filling have been used.

Place in the oven and bake for 12 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned. Serve warm.

bon appetite!

She Blooms

2010-07-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

And she blooms

He loves her through the whole winter
because he sees something in her
even she's forgotten
He stands over her in the rain
and when the sizzle of lightning fills her head
she can hear him whisper in low tones
and she knows anything uncomfortable is temporary
and you grow and grow and grow

He sighs when she's wonky
because a wonky girl is finding her way
and he will be there to celebrate when she's home
and he can figure twenty one grams on a bike
and she grows

He has the power to make her wet
to let his sun shine down on her
and convert all that divine wetness to food
and by God's design
love can change an afternoon and even a flower
for the rest of her life
love love love

So today he kept a promise like a sacred flame
turned a few forgotten days
into the tender rain
and she remembers that if you drink and drink
you can also drown
but she can swim and loves when he's around

when no one noticed
when the wind blew just right
when he tells her she's perfect
when he whispers good night
it didnt make a noise
not even a sound
she closed her eyes
she held her breath
and when his hand slipped around her neck
she bloomed

***************************
The rose is from my garden and it's thorns tore my thumb to shreds.

carrie

Mundane Summer

2010-07-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

I was in the garden this morning
and not one but two monarch butterflies appeared
they were dancing and drinking fruity drinks
from the flowers awaiting their arrival
and I was listening as you always should
when the winged marvels of nature appear
and one said to the other
"I miss you terribly"
the other just sort of carried on her
business of garden visits
and she said "I don't think you do."
The other approached her quietly
"I think of you every day a hundred times a day."
"I think of you, thinking of me."
The queen the color of a pumpkin couldn't believe
what she'd heard so she pretended not to hear him
and he would tell her a few more times
so that this courting ritual of one not trusting
flutter of this way and that
and the one so wanted to be trusted danced
and they danced and they danced
and I was witness to their love
when he kissed her the wind was so cool
I was certain the Gods of summer winds
and beautiful purple flowers
stopped and sat with me
in my garden
of mundane summer

New Garden Photos

2010-07-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

The garden is coming along nicely this year. Everything is filling in and I have picked about 30 tomatoes and more sprigs of basil and sage than I can count. The cats love the cat nip which is growing in like mad and I love the colors of the flowers. I even added a wind chime and finally finished the light pole to hang some flowers. The new blue bell looking flowers are called chinese lantern flowers. The blooms are delicate and lovely. I am going to plant some packages of seeds tomorrow for some late september surprise and am still looking for a rusty bench. I think anything new will spoil the victorian feel I love about it so much.

Oh Baby oh Baby oh Baby

2010-07-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

These are the new photos of the kittens. There are six, I have a few here but will add more later as they get a little bigger and easier to take photos of. Their aunt Sheba has decided to hide them all over the house which sounds like 6 little fire alarms going off when they are missing their mother and moreover her milk. I haven't been able to pick a favorite yet but that little white one in the photos steals my heart.

What is old is made new again

2010-07-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

I have this old gas light pole outside the house and for a few years it was just an eyesore. I didn't want to tear it out because I love the bird on top and I wasn't sure what to do with it. This year it was my little project so I sanded the whole thing, spray painted it and then started painting flowers here and there when I'd have some time at the end of the day. I sealed it in a spray, a matt spray and then headed over to the hardware store to find a dowel. The hardware store adventure was serious fun because this is a place full of really helpful men. They cut the dowel for me and then drilled a hole in each end so I could hang a few plants from this new creation of mine. The rest as they say is history.

Why I Grow A Summer Garden

2010-06-23T10:05:00.001-07:00

It's finally summer and the living is easy and having put the time and work into the summer garden it's time to take in the benefits. I grew every herb I could find this spring along with vegetables and flowers and mixed them all up so it looked like something that would just grow naturally, some some organized English garden. And I have been experimenting with some flavors and wanted to share them here with you. The fish thing, couldn't be easier. I have been experimenting with new kinds of fish and the formula seems the same for success. As I do not like cooking fish in the house, the grill is more than perfect for this and wrapping a filet in a piece of foil with some herbs from the garden, (I used sage and chives here with some slices of lemon and a smidge of olive oil just works) I rubbed the foil with olive oil first so when it sits on the medium heat of the grill it browns the bottom of this fish to perfection. It was so good I couldn't get enough. Cooking a few filets at a time makes for a nice variety of left overs for fish tacos the next day and cuts down cooking time to a mere minimum. Take the filet off the grill a minute or two before you'd expect to as it cooks when its off the grill also.

Now for the really fun stuff...The asian not so rolled up spring rolls. I love the tastes in spring rolls but I am so not a fan of the roll itself. It looks a little like a condom and the texture freaks me out. These rolling rice wrappers are not hard to find however and they store up to 3 months so if you are having impromptu summer guests its a super easy go to food. I deconstructed the recipe and made a noodle bowl fill of those same tastes without the time consuming wrapping deal.

The basis for the bowl? Well rice noodles or bean thread noodles even sometimes I will use egg noodles. The rice and bean noodles don't even need to be cooked, you pour some boiling water over the top of them in a bowl and let them sit for 15 minutes and then a quick cold water bath to chill them.

The proteins?
You can use anything here, shredded chicken, some slices of left over steak from the grill, big cooked shrimp, even scallops. I almost always use some scrambled egg. Egg is a mainstay in most asian dishes and when mixed with some sauce, it's truly lovely.

The Vegetables?

Go insane here, cucumber, carrots, summer squash all julienne with a peeler. The textures are wonderful, pea pods, cabbage, cooked or not, lettuce leaves, soft or crunchy, the sky is the limit here. I even use some lemon juice or slices of lime to give that cool summer citrus feeling.

The Herbs?
Thai basil, basil, mint, cilantro (my all time favorite), sage, any onion of any sort, but chives seem to be the mildest form, sometimes rosemary in small quantities works for me also.

The Sauces?

Oh golly, go to your local asian market and here you will find a multitude of tastes, hoisn, fish sauces, soy, Tahini (ground sesame seeds), peanut sauce (which is really easy to make on your own) and even hummus for a summer taste, mix them, try dabbles of a few and of course some finely ground peanuts for the top to give you a little crunch and depth.

If you find something that works for you, drop me a note and I'd love to try it. Summer food doesn't mean cooking, just some prep work, chopping mostly. The noodle bowls make for perfect pic nic food, chopping everything into zip lock bags with a few jars of sauce and zip lock bags with some ice cubes keeps everything cold in a summer bag and all of it goes in the trash when you are done, nothing to carry home. I am planning a pic nic with the best friend soon. Pic Nics with her have been some of the best days of my life. Take care,

Carrie.

Yard Sale Finds

2010-06-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

For me, the ritual of summer has to involve perusing your neighbor's junk to find out what they've been hiding away thinking they had to throw this or that out and now it's yours. So last Saturday after breakfast with Richie I stumble across a couple of neat finds, an old old typewriter for $3, with the coolest case. I would have paid that for the case and now I get the joy of tearing the machine to pieces and creating some art. The really great find though was the doll house. It's something circa 1950 made by Marx in tin. The furniture is that wonderful plastic colorful stuff we played with as a kid. I never had a tin dollhouse but my mother and I had a wood house we played with often. It was yellow because yellow was her favorite color and one year for my birthday my father wired it for lights. I think being close to Father's Day and missing them both so much made me want it even more. She wanted $60 and I was sort of sure she'd take $40 and finally traded her a piece of jewelry I was wearing, that I made myself so I get a piece of her history and she gets a bit of my art, perfect trade. I haven't decided where to put it but I did bid on another similar house on Ebay this morning so perhaps when Richie leaves in the fall I can turn one of the empty rooms into a tiny neighborhood. I kept thinking this is one of those finds you just can't pass up, or I'd kick myself for not taking it home. i love that it's loved a little by some child, that the awning is missing and I still have to figure out how to hang the plastic climbing vines or perhaps I will just fashion a few of my own. i want to crochet little bed spreads for the bed and even made a few hand made mini oval rugs like my mother and I did when I was a child.

If you have a box of the old plastic furniture and you are looking to trade a piece of jewelry or some box of beads I have here, drop me a note and let me know and I'd love to do that. I was thinking of having a garage sale this summer but rather than do a money exchange, exchange for something you wanted to get rid of. There is a website online for free things, freestyle.com. I am going to sign up today to see if there is someone who could use boxes of books or a large mirror I have sitting in the garage for something fun.

While stumbling through the garage I found an old book on issak Dennison that beloged to my brother. I may one day give it back to him after I have destroyed it with notes of my own. It's the true story of Out Of Africa, a delightful read, full of factoids and a photo of Dennys Finchatton. He was a delicately handsome man and a true romantic. When I finish it, I will fill you in on the details.

Carrie.

Dirty White Boy and Hallelujah

2010-06-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

******************************************************************
Yes these are my babies about 8 months after they were born. Being brother and sister they do most everything together. They even look for each other to get into trouble. I am posting below some fun you tube simon videos.

*******************************************************************

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

2010-06-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

I received a few hundred emails asking for more photos of the garden so here they are. I have yet to take more photos of the vegetables but you can see the vegetable and herbs are growing well in the flower garden as well.

Luck

2010-06-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

Luck

I found a penny and picked it up
and wished and wished and wished for luck
it sat in my pocket and when I had three
you were there again reminding me
that if you wake in the middle of the night
you get an extra night's sleep because
you see we have no real concept of time
as it overlaps from me and then to you
and we are set into the universe floating there
your love, my gravity
your passion the only velocity ever measured
in the push of your hips
and then then time filling up life
until I fall again

A heart doesn't really beat
it wrings itself out when its full
expelling what it's known to the end of our fingers
then opens up to take in something new
and when you were through my arotic valve
my love
you changed it's sound
and I can't get enough of your song
so find me in this dream
wake me now and let me have another night with you
alone, just us two on the edge of a star
turning star dust to red wine

When I am uncertain that love is real
I can hear the words we shared last night
a conversation nobody else in the world was having
nobody could
and I wonder what is pushing my blood
this way and that because I know
I lost my heart to you all over again
and again
with just a sigh and I wonder why
more people aren't doing it
falling that is when it seems as though
love is all around us you almost have to look past it
not to see it

Put a seed in the ground and it nourishes the world
like that little seed you put in my head
late late at night when you crept in my room
found the kitten key came upstairs
and planted yourself right under my skin
filling any quiet moment with you, just you
warming winter snows and when spring finally arrived
filling my world with such color

********************************************

The photo is of a rainstorm recently outside my bedroom window. The video below just makes me happy and wanted to share the music and the images.

2010-06-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

And while looking for flowers in the nursery, he calls. I was lost in the call happier than I could remember being happy. He told me he loved me. I believed him. I woke feeling a little tired had an early meeting and found myself among the flowers. I hadn't been to this particular nursery yet and there at my feet was all I needed. I have been just adding a few flowers here and there this year. Among the flowers, I added a few vegetables, some seeds, some herbs, loads of herbs for nurturing, healing foods.

Yes the photos are from my garden. I made the bird bath with an old plant stand and a platter I found at an estate sale that I kept thinking I'd use for something and just sadly didn't. There's a dancing girl in there who dances in the wind, some gem flowers and a really old bird feeder hanging from the pot that I really love. This sort of garden is easy because the ground is soft and I can fill in with mulch around the annuals. I really love the little ivy and the herbs here and there that add shape and form around the colors. I picked blue and purple and pink as a color start this year because I love pansies it makes everything feel victorian. I planted some morning glory seeds and as soon as they produce a flower I will post some photos because they are my favorite flower.

Simple Tastes

2010-05-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

Simple Tastes

A man recently told me he has simple tastes
and I wanted to pull him close to me
and tell him there is a big difference
in wanting less and expecting nothing
We are our expectations
and it's easy to forget as one day turns to another
as the leaves of fall are crushed under
winter snows and then somehow
disappear when spring approaches
it's so easy to forget who we are
and what we want
And we wait because polite people wait
we wait to hear what we need to hear
believing that want is selfish
like we wait for the tulips to push
and push and push
their arrival expected to help mark another season

And how to tell someone you love
someone you love ferociously
that they are supposed to expect more from the world
and not risk the insult
that if you leave want unwatched
that boiling pot will grow
to a mighty fire and all you will want to do
is scorch the earth

You will wake one day and want everyone
who ever uttered the words I love you
to notice that you haven't been the same
that your blue eye doesn't shine as bright
that you haven't been the same person for quite some time
and while the earth was revolving
inside you were evolving and aren't we we all?
and inside we turn and we twist
just to get to the problem trying to understand the gist
avoiding at all costs
that empty little hole right next to
the aortic valve

In that hole is a little piece of you waiting to hear
"I need you inside me"
waiting to kiss someone who isn't kissing you
to say hello or goodbye
where life is not so polite and so carefully planned
where chaos rules the day
and you can't quite taste the tip of your tongue
you're willing to bite off to avoid any moment of crisis
where wonky girls live to steal your heart
and take it on a picnic near the stream
where there are so many trout that they wave
as they swim by
wave to lovers on a blanket in the middle of a wednesday afternoon
when the whole world is working
pushing one paper into another

It's ok to want the sweetest wine
to run over that thirsty tongue
Our mothers arent watching
and the priest is sleeping
and all that is here is you and I
the gentle reader who steals into my day
to whisper thoughts I dreamed of in my garden
where you and I were having a conversation
years above you ever said hello in a whisper
in a library late at night
while I read you poetry
of a heart's desire

**********************************************************
and if you are wondering why taking what you want in the now is so important, something to remind you...

Mothers Day

2010-05-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Mothers Day was quiet here. Finally Spring was here and Richie was preparing for finals and graduation. My niece sent me a book, The Lady In The Water. When she was here visiting when I was ill, we watched the movie together. I love the movie, the story full of folklore and one of my favorites. She wrote me a card that made me cry. When people who aren't your children treat you as though you are a mothering figure it's quite touching and I love my nieces and nephews each of them as though they were a little of my own. Richie has friends he's had since he was a very young child and they are a little of mine also. Richie sent me a card and flowers and in the card he mentioned that he was sorry he wouldn't be home for the weekend because he was trying to tie everything up before we arrived in a few short days to watch him walk the stage. He tells me that May 15th is not only a celebration for him but for us. When he called it felt like he was close and I was happy he was finishing up there and starting yet another degree somewhere else, something else.

The following Saturday I was in the auditorium for his graduation and in the sea of people in graduation tassels I couldn't find him, not that my vision is all that great to start. I sent him a text, asking him to wave or stand up something so I could see him and he waves, Best Friend could find him, all is well. Then he sends me a text that he loves me and thanks me for all my support over the past few years. It was strange, technology, bringing him to the seat next to me whispering in my ear the way we've whispered since he was a little boy. "I wish dad was here." he sends me. I did too, not for me but to celebrate the day we both stood by as that creature made his appearance for the first time. "I know baby." I send back. On days likes this you want the impossible to be the possible. Yet I could feel his presence, smiling so broad, knowing our son fought for this, this great accomplishment. My family was there around me and I felt loved and I know Richie felt that this was important for all of us to drive and drive and drive.

So for now he's home. I'm not sure how I feel about it other than I do like living alone and have liked it a great deal. Even when the house feels oh so large I do like the space. The cats were kicked from the third floor and they are adjusting, wandering about looking for a new sleeping and hiding place. Leroy is taking up residency in the studio and I like knowing he's close. I am feeling better, stronger, but I think that's due to the garden. The yellow flowers on the tomatoes are already producing fruit. I have a poem in my heart I am working through and I have been playing the violin again. All seems well. I am working on a yard project with an old light that is broken and I am turning it into a bird feeder. When I am done, I will post some photos. I will also post some photos of the flower bed that's new this year. I thought blue and purple flowers seemed appropriate for a spring when the sky always looks like a bruise.

Take care for now..Carrie.

The Human Condition

2010-05-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

The Human Condition

Last night it rained so hard
I thought for a moment my bed
had floated down the stairs and
out to the garden
I reached under my pillow
found the umbrella and read poetry
to the garden spiders
with the rain keeping time those poems
were songs of the poets who knew
so much of the human nature that they walked
into rivers
or blew off their heads in foreign hotel rooms
and just when I think it's such waste
I understand that maybe they knew they had written
all they could write
the world had taken all from them that they had
and rather than be JD Salinger
rather than drink and drink until their livers
looked like Bukowski's weathered face
they just ended it and forever they will be young
and beautiful
and talented
we all will have wished for more and read them
with the color of melancholy written on our souls
Tonight their tears fell and made the noises
when rain hits the leaves of the trees
and if I could I'd conjure Anne Sexton to sit with me
and have her tell me the story of the girl with one eye
and two eyes and of course three
I'd make her tea and drink from very old tea cups
and for a moment I'd carry the burden of her sadness
sometimes I bathe in sadness
when I read of lives lost in the struggle to be human
to have empathy of the condition that is life
and to understand how I fit into any part of it it all

**********************************************

My poem of Anne Sexton is not nearly as wonderful as her own, of course.

Her poetry was madness and brilliant. She was a feminist and a mother and a wife. She reminds me of the movie, Revolutionary Road. She only wrote poetry after she was failed by therapy after an attempt at suicide. Later that attempt would bring her to another world. She won the Prize, she now dances with the Gods and we just well get to miss her.

It Is A Spring Afternoon

Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
as they throb like advertisements.
The small animals of the woods
are carrying their deathmasks
into a narrow winter cave.
The scarecrow has plucked out
his two eyes like diamonds
and walked into the village.
The general and the postman
have taken off their packs.
This has all happened before
but nothing here is obsolete.
Everything here is possible.

Because of this
perhaps a young girl has laid down
her winter clothes and has casually
placed herself upon a tree limb
that hangs over a pool in the river.
She has been poured out onto the limb,
low above the houses of the fishes
as they swim in and out of her reflection
and up and down the stairs of her legs.
Her body carries clouds all the way home.
She is overlooking her watery face
in the river where blind men
come to bathe at midday.

Because of this
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooking flowers.
Everything here is yellow and green.

Surely spring will allow
a girl without a stitch on
to turn softly in her sunlight
and not be afraid of her bed.
She has already counted seven
blossoms in her green green mirror.
Two rivers combine beneath her.
The face of the child wrinkles.
in the water and is gone forever.
The woman is all that can be seen
in her animal loveliness.
Her cherished and obstinate skin
lies deeply under the watery tree.
Everything is altogether possible
and the blind men can also see.

Anne Sexton

**********************************************************

Lessons in Hunger

'Do you like me?'
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

************************************************

When someone takes their own life there is a feeling of loss, helplessness, why didn't she call? Why didn't she find someone who loved her and ask them to save her? Maybe she tried, maybe she was afraid to try. Maybe just maybe all her efforts were in vain and all she was mean to be was a poetess. Maybe.

Missing Someone

2010-04-28T22:12:00.001-07:00

Missing Someone

You can miss someone before you even know them
their absence can leave a hole in your life
and you wait knowing that surely out there
on some twinkling star in the swirl of some blue wind
maybe in a bookstore he'll look up from a book you'd never read
and you could have a conversation you've been waiting
to have since you were old enough to know that someone
out there somewhere
could finish your sentences
You could say "I want your hand"
and he'd whisper "on your throat. I know baby"
and you could get on with the rest of your life
check off finding someone who gets it and who doesnt mind
that you are a silly girl because sometimes
he likes when you're just a little bit silly
and I will always be the girl who wants to fill the
world with silly love songs

In the background you could hear the rain hitting the awning
and later when you hear it again and again
when you try to capture those moments
because when you aren't sure what it is just yet
you want to hold on to each of those moments
and play them again like they were a magical flute
and the song if you heard it again
could conjure love
"I don't know if you will listen to this today
on the way home or five days from now."
and your heart full of stale spring air
just waiting in the garden wringing out blood
minding it's own business
wondering where you'll plant the sunflowers
and tasting the sauce on your tongue from
those tomato plants
Your stale heart
feels this cool breeze blow in and the sky
turns pea green and the air gets very still
before the tornado hits and it's suddenly so cool
you don't need to flip the pillow
you hear a bee buzz and its all changed
the trees are uprooted
the air is clean
wondering if you really did see a cow fly by your head
just being there he fixes it
washes off the dust of winter worries
and if you lean your head back far enough
yes his hand is there
because God made your neck his safe place
or maybe not so safe

It's easier to stand at the edge and look down
when you can feel his arm around your waist
the view is so beautiful
I'll wait to see the green in the sky
for the air to get very still
and somewhere in Indiana an alarm is screaming
people are seeking cover
auntie Em is heading to the storm cellar
I will be waiting feeling my breathing change
and his hand slide over my left hip
his tongue will taste like raw oysters
I am so close to believing if you dream of something
it can happen
if you wait
it will arrive
the appointed hour
when you are in the right place
and room in your heart
hearing your mother tell you stories
about what men are supposed to be
when you can hold them in a whisper
and you just let go

AIDA

2010-04-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

[From Aida]

This is the moment when the gods expect me
To beg for help but I won't even try
I want nothing in the world but myself to protect me
But I won't lie down, roll over and die

All I have to do is to forget how much I love him
All I have to do is put my longing to one side
Tell myself that love's an ever-changing situation
Passion would have cooled and all the magic would have died

It's easy, it's easy

Until I think about him as he was when I last saw him
And how he would have been were I to be with him today
Tender in his manner and my self-consolation
All I ever wanted and I'm throwing it away

It's easy, easy as life

All I have to do is to pretend I never knew him
On those very rare occasions when he steals into my heart
Better to have lost him when the ties were barely binding
Better the contempt of the familiar cannot start

It's easy, it's easy

Until I think about him as he was when I last touched him
And how he would have been were I to be with him today
Those very rare occasions don't let up, they keep on coming
All I ever wanted and I'm throwing it away

It's easy, it's easy as life

And then I see the faces of a worn defeated people
A father and a nation who won't let a coward run
Is this how the gods reward the faithful through the ages
Forcing us to prove that all the hardest things we've done

Are easy, so easy

And though I'll think about him until the earth draws in around me
And though I choose to leave him for another kind of love
This is no denial, no betrayal, but redemption
Redeemed in my own eyes and in the pantheon above

It's easy, it's easy, it's easy as life

*************************************************
Easily, my favorite Opera and of course the Elton John Adaptation my favorite. When Tina sings that song I am lost in it. All she had to do was pretend she never knew him on those very rare occasions when he steals into her heart. It's better to have lost him when the ties were barely binding.

Aida only had to forget that Radames (the warrior) ever loved her and she ever loved him. It's easy right? Aida the capture Nubian Princess is sent to be the handmaiden of Amernis, Radames soon to be wife. Love is an ever changing situation but does passion ever cool and how does magic die? When one tires of another. That can't happen when they are kept apart. It's easy right? When Aida is asked to betray Radames it doesn't seem that easy. The story elaborate as any opera in it's treachery and love and despair.

There is a line when the lovers need to keep love a secret and he tells her you don't have to ask me and I dont have to reply. I love that line. It is the secret lovers share. If you have to ask none of it was real and if you are waiting for a reply you never felt it in the first place.

I love that it's the green mermaid, hooray for the green mermaid. And in her darkest thoughts she wishes she'd never knew love or had it returned. The great stuff of operas. By the time we are old enough to figure out what we want from love we have already built our prison and living there is just so much easier than changing anything. And in any tragic story two lovers give up their lives and like Romeo and Juliet wait lifetimes to find one another again. All life is an italian opera, even one set in Egypt.

Oscar Wilde and his fairy tales

2010-04-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Wilde, an Irishman and a scholar, most known for The Picture of Dorian Gray and his acts of civil disobedience. He found himself in prison, died of his experience there, a tortured soul who loved men very much and admired the human frailties of mankind and wrote of them in fairy tales. I love these stories, one more touching than the other and my favorite below, shared because they are too wonderful not to share. He died poor in Paris at the age of 46. Sometimes I wonder what he would have written had he not been so tortured, had he not gone to prison. I suppose though dying poor in Paris is better than dying rich in London.

"Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow
Speak gently, she can hear
the daisies grow"

*************************************************************

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.

He was very much admired indeed. "He is as beautiful as a weathercock," remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; "only not quite so useful," he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.

"Why can't you be like the Happy Prince?" asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. "The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything."

"I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy," muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue.

"He looks just like an angel," said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their bright scarlet cloaks and their clean white pinafores.

"How do you know?" said the Mathematical Master, "you have never seen one."

"Ah! but we have, in our dreams," answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

"Shall I love you?" said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.

"It is a ridiculous attachment," twittered the other Swallows; "she has no money, and far too many relations"; and indeed the river was quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came they all flew away.

After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady- love. "She has no conversation," he said, "and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind." And certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtseys. "I admit that she is domestic," he continued, "but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also."

"Will you come away with me?" he said finally to her; but the Reed shook her head, she was so attached to her home.

"You have been trifling with me," he cried. "I am off to the Pyramids. Good-bye!" and he flew away.

All day long he flew, and at night-time he arrived at the city. "Where shall I put up?" he said; "I hope the town has made preparations."

Then he saw the statue on the tall column.

"I will put up there," he cried; "it is a fine position, with plenty of fresh air." So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.

"I have a golden bedroom," he said softly to himself as he looked round, and he prepared to go to sleep; but just as he was putting his head under his wing a large drop of water fell on him. "What a curious thing!" he cried; "there is not a single cloud in the sky, the stars are quite clear and bright, and yet it is raining. The climate in the north of Europe is really dreadful. The Reed used to like the rain, but that was merely her selfishness."

Then another drop fell.

"What is the use of a statue if it cannot keep the rain off?" he said; "I must look for a good chimney-pot," and he determined to fly away.

But before he had opened his wings, a third drop fell, and he looked up, and saw--Ah! what did he see?

The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were running down his golden cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.

"Who are you?" he said.

"I am the Happy Prince."

"Why are you weeping then?" asked the Swallow; "you have quite drenched me."

"When I was alive and had a human heart," answered the statue, "I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans- Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot chose but weep."

"What! is he not solid gold?" said the Swallow to himself. He was too polite to make any personal remarks out loud.

"Far away," continued the statue in a low musical voice, "far away in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion- flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of- honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move."

"I am waited for in Egypt," said the Swallow. "My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus- flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves."

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me for one night, and be my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad."

"I don't think I like boys," answered the Swallow. "Last summer, when I was staying on the river, there were two rude boys, the miller's sons, who were always throwing stones at me. They never hit me, of course; we swallows fly far too well for that, and besides, I come of a family famous for its agility; but still, it was a mark of disrespect."

But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry. "It is very cold here," he said; "but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger."

"Thank you, little Swallow," said the Prince.

So the Swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince's sword, and flew away with it in his beak over the roofs of the town.

He passed by the cathedral tower, where the white marble angels were sculptured. He passed by the palace and heard the sound of dancing. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover. "How wonderful the stars are," he said to her, "and how wonderful is the power of love!"

"I hope my dress will be ready in time for the State-ball," she answered; "I have ordered passion-flowers to be embroidered on it; but the seamstresses are so lazy."

He passed over the river, and saw the lanterns hanging to the masts of the ships. He passed over the Ghetto, and saw the old Jews bargaining with each other, and weighing out money in copper scales. At last he came to the poor house and looked in. The boy was tossing feverishly on his bed, and the mother had fallen asleep, she was so tired. In he hopped, and laid the great ruby on the table beside the woman's thimble. Then he flew gently round the bed, fanning the boy's forehead with his wings. "How cool I feel," said the boy, "I must be getting better"; and he sank into a delicious slumber.

Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince, and told him what he had done. "It is curious," he remarked, "but I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold."

"That is because you have done a good action," said the Prince. And the little Swallow began to think, and then he fell asleep. Thinking always made him sleepy.

When day broke he flew down to the river and had a bath. "What a remarkable phenomenon," said the Professor of Ornithology as he was passing over the bridge. "A swallow in winter!" And he wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.

"To-night I go to Egypt," said the Swallow, and he was in high spirits at the prospect. He visited all the public monuments, and sat a long time on top of the church steeple. Wherever he went the Sparrows chirruped, and said to each other, "What a distinguished stranger!" so he enjoyed himself very much.

When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince. "Have you any commissions for Egypt?" he cried; "I am just starting."

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me one night longer?"

"I am waited for in Egypt," answered the Swallow. "To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water's edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the cataract.

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint."

"I will wait with you one night longer," said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. "Shall I take him another ruby?"

"Alas! I have no ruby now," said the Prince; "my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play."

"Dear Prince," said the Swallow, "I cannot do that"; and he began to weep.

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "do as I command you."

So the Swallow plucked out the Prince's eye, and flew away to the student's garret. It was easy enough to get in, as there was a hole in the roof. Through this he darted, and came into the room. The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird's wings, and when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets.

"I am beginning to be appreciated," he cried; "this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish my play," and he looked quite happy.

The next day the Swallow flew down to the harbour. He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. "Heave a-hoy!" they shouted as each chest came up. "I am going to Egypt"! cried the Swallow, but nobody minded, and when the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince.

"I am come to bid you good-bye," he cried.

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me one night longer?"

"It is winter," answered the Swallow, "and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is warm on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My companions are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are watching them, and cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea."

"In the square below," said the Happy Prince, "there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her."

"I will stay with you one night longer," said the Swallow, "but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then."

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "do as I command you."

So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. "What a lovely bit of glass," cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. "You are blind now," he said, "so I will stay with you always."

"No, little Swallow," said the poor Prince, "you must go away to Egypt."

"I will stay with you always," said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's feet.

All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.

"Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there."

So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were lying in one another's arms to try and keep themselves warm. "How hungry we are!" they said. "You must not lie here," shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.

Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.

"I am covered with fine gold," said the Prince, "you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy."

Leaf after leaf of the fine gold the Swallow picked off, till the Happy Prince looked quite dull and grey. Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children's faces grew rosier, and they laughed and played games in the street. "We have bread now!" they cried.

Then the snow came, and after the snow came the frost. The streets looked as if they were made of silver, they were so bright and glistening; long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the eaves of the houses, everybody went about in furs, and the little boys wore scarlet caps and skated on the ice.

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker's door when the baker was not looking and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings. But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder once more. "Good-bye, dear Prince!" he murmured, "will you let me kiss your hand?"

"I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow," said the Prince, "you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you."

"It is not to Egypt that I am going," said the Swallow. "I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?"

And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.

At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: "Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince looks!" he said.

"How shabby indeed!" cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.

"The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer," said the Mayor in fact, "he is litttle beter than a beggar!"

"Little better than a beggar," said the Town Councillors.

"And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!" continued the Mayor. "We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here." And the Town Clerk made a note of the suggestion.

So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. "As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful," said the Art Professor at the University.

Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to decide what was to be done with the metal. "We must have another statue, of course," he said, "and it shall be a statue of myself."

"Of myself," said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they were quarrelling still.

"What a strange thing!" said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. "This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away." So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead Swallow was also lying.

"Bring me the two most precious things in the city," said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

"You have rightly chosen," said God, "for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me."

***************************

Perfect Wilde music for a perfect spring day.