through the garden gate

on kissing ...

2012-02-01T17:22:00.004-06:00

“To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.”

~ Janeane Garofalo

RDG: Yes, being the rather forward American gal that I am, I kissed him first. If I had to wait for him to make the first move, we'd still be trying to hold hands across the Atlantic .... !

via Assorted
xxx

my superman ...

2012-01-31T23:56:00.004-06:00

Five for Fighting ~ Superman

3 Doors Down ~ Kryptonite

The Kinks ~ Superman

R.E.M. ~ Superman

Gentleman's choice .......
xxx

an elegance observed

2012-01-30T00:05:00.001-06:00

"You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped mid-sentence and said, 'Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.' That's what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it - or my observation of it - is temporary?"

~ John Green
via whiskey river

xxx

the madman

2012-01-28T20:40:00.001-06:00

"You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen - the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives - I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, 'Thieves, thieves, and cursed thieves.'

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, 'He is a madman.' I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time, the sun kissed my own naked face, and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, 'Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.'

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in jail is safe from another thief."

~Kahlil Gibran
from The Madman: His Parables and Poems
via the beauty we love

xxx

letters to my son

2012-01-25T22:54:00.001-06:00

" The commentators excoriating today’s students for studying the wrong subjects are pursuing certainty where none exists. Like the health fanatics convinced that every case of cancer must be caused by smoking or a bad diet, they want to believe that good people, people like them, will always have good jobs and that today’s unemployed college grads are suffering because they were self-indulgent or stupid. But plenty of organic chemists can testify that the mere fact that you pursued a technical career that was practical two or three decades ago doesn’t mean you have job security today.

I was lucky to graduate from high school in the late 1970s, when the best research said that going to college was an economically losing proposition. You would be better off just getting a job out of high school — or so it appeared at the time. Such studies are always backward-looking.

I thus entered college to pursue learning for its own sake. As an English major determined not to be a lawyer, I also made sure I graduated with not one but two practical trades —neither learned in the college classroom. At the depths of the previous worst recession since the Great Depression, I had no problem getting a job as a rookie journalist and, as an emergency backup, I knew I could always fall back on my excellent typing skills. Three decades later, nobody needs typists, and journalists are almost as obsolete.

The skills that still matter are the habits of mind I honed in the classroom: how to analyze texts carefully, how to craft and evaluate arguments, and how to apply microeconomic reasoning, along with basic literacy in accounting and statistics. My biggest regret isn’t that I didn’t learn Fortran, but that I didn’t study Dante.

The most valuable skill anyone can learn in college is how to learn efficiently — how to figure out what you don’t know and build on what you do know to adapt to new situations and new problems."

~ Virginia Postrel
via Reflejos

xxx

kay ryan

2012-01-23T20:31:00.011-06:00

paintings by Odilon Redon

Chinese Foot Chart
~ by Kay Ryan

Every part of us
alerts another part.
Press a spot in
the tender arch and
feel the scalp
twitch. We are no
match for ourselves
but our own release.
Each touch
uncatches some
remote lock. Look,
boats of mercy
embark from
our heart at the
oddest knock.

from The Best of It
xxx

what have i become...

2012-01-21T21:29:00.004-06:00

"Hurt" is a song written by Trent Reznor, first released on Nine Inch Nails' 1994 album The Downward Spiral. In 2002, "Hurt" was covered by Johnny Cash to critical acclaim; it was one of Cash's final hit releases before his death. Its accompanying video, featuring images from Cash's life and directed by Mark Romanek, was named the best video of the year by the Grammy Awards and Country Music Awards.

Just heard this for the first time last night - part of the soundtrack to the movie Columbiana. The movie is forgettable unless you're needing the cathartic release of watching a pretty girl kill all the bad guys. The only two things unforgettable about Columbiana are Zoe Saldana and this cut sung by the late Johnny Cash.

xxx

calendars for good causes

2012-01-20T22:40:00.003-06:00

The Men of the Stacks

Male librarians from around the US have come together to pose for a calendar
that aims to challenge stereotypes and raise funds for charity.

Zack, Housing Works Bookstore, New York

The Naked Muse
A 2012 calendar featuring women's poetry
alongside naked male muses photographed by women.
This calendar is raising funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Poet Antony Dunn, photographed by Naomi Woddis

from RDG:

Gentlemen! Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Instead of the hackneyed box of chocolates or piece of jewelry, buy your beloved a gift that keeps on giving month by month ...
AND gives back to your community!

xxx

the incomparable ...

2012-01-20T21:57:00.005-06:00

“I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, am out of control and at times, hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

~ Marilyn Monroe

quote via Assorted

xxx

Li-Young Lee

2012-01-19T20:35:00.005-06:00

Woman brushing her hair, 1920

~ by Hashiguchi Goyo

Early in the Morning
~ by Li-Young Lee

While the long grain is softening

in the water, gurgling

over a low stove flame, before

the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced

for breakfast, before the birds,

my mother glides an ivory comb

through her hair, heavy

and black as calligrapher’s ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.

My father watches, listens for

the music of comb

against hair.

My mother combs,

pulls her hair back

tight, rolls it

around two fingers, pins it

in a bun to the back of her head.

For half a hundred years she has done this.

My father likes to see it like this.

He says it is kempt.

But I know

it is because of the way

my mother’s hair falls

when he pulls the pins out.

Easily, like the curtains

when they untie them in the evening.

xxx

he's a magic man, Mama

2012-01-18T23:32:00.012-06:00

Yep. This one is for my beloved. Last week he made me sit through 19 minutes of Captain Beefheart, here. Honestly, I had to walk away at the 9 minute mark. He says I have crap taste in music, but he loves me anyway. Without his utter and unerring honesty tethering me to this earth, I'd just be another Red Balloon floating in the clouds of denial. Payback time, baby!

I LOVE Heart !! These two Canadian sisters were my first rock girl idols. I wanted to be Ann or Nancy - it didn't matter which one. Magic Man was the theme song for the summer of 1976. Me, a bespectacled gawky girl on the cusp of adolescence, hanging out with my step-step cousin Tina from Detroit.

Tina was a full-blown voluptuous 16 year-old bad girl: daisy duke shorts, those stretchy tube tops of the '70's (yeah, you boys know what I mean) loads of mascara and bleach blonde hair, sneaking a pack of cigarettes out of the house. I don't know how Tina did it, but she managed to attract every bad boy in our neighborhood. The ones who captured Tina's fancy always had the souped-up car, the long 70's hair, a six-pack of beer and a cool as you please offer to give her a lift. I'm sure it meant: without the little girl cousin by your side.

Tina would toss her hair, give a throaty laugh and a sideways glance at me as she stubbed her cigarette out with the toe of her sandal. So I'd sit and wait on the curb, tossing little pebbles, pretending like I didn't care I was being left behind. Tina would hop in the car and tell me she'd be back in a minute or two. And off they'd go: the bad boy with the bad girl. Damn, I envied Tina. I didn't worship her like I worshiped Heart. I just wanted to figure out her allure and copy it. I wanted to be a bad girl.

You've got to watch at least the first 5 minutes of this video to soak in the cool vibe of the seventies: the hair! the clothes! OMG - MAN NIPS on the dude with the cut out leather vest ... there's two guitar solos and YES a DRUM SOLO. No concert can be complete without a drum solo. I think my mom had a necklace just like the one the drummer is wearing. Sigh. It takes me back.
This one is for you, babe! xxxxx

Cold, late night so long ago
When I was not so strong you know
A pretty man came to me
I never seen eyes so blue
You know, I could not run away it seemed
We'd seen each other in a dream
Seemed like he knew me ... he looked right through me

"Come on home, girl" he said with a smile
"you don't have to love me yet, let's get high awhile
But try to understand ... try to understand
Try, try, try to understand ... I'm a magic man"

Winter nights we sang in tune
Played inside the months of moon
"Never think never ... let this spell last forever"
Well, summer lover passed to fall
Tried to realize it all
Mama says she's worried ... growing up in a hurry

"Come on home, girl" Mama cried on the phone
"Too soon to lose my baby yet, my girl should be at home"
But try to understand ... try to understand
Try, try, try to understand ... he's a magic man, Mama ... ah ... he's a magic man

"Come on home, girl" he said with a smile
"I cast my spell of love on you, a woman from a child"
But try to understand ... try to understand ...
Oh ... oh... try, try, try to understand ...
He's a magic man ...oh ...he's got the magic hands

(solos) OoooOooo's over top

"Come on home, girl" he said with a smile
"You don't have to love me yet, let's get high awhile"
But try to understand ... try to understand
Try, try, try to understand ...he's a magic man ...yeah ... oh ...

ohhhh my, xxx

burning down the house

2012-01-17T07:00:00.003-06:00

The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, 16th October 1834
~ by JMW Turner

"Turner was an eyewitness to the great fire and when we view Turner’s magnificent painting, we ought to keep in mind what it was all about."

“[M]uch of commerce was carried on simply as credits and debits, often recorded in the form of tally sticks. A tally stick was a bit of hazel wood upon which a debt was recorded in the form of notches; the stick was then split in half. The creditor’s half was called the “stock,” which made him the stockholder, and the debtor’s half was called the stub. The stock would circulate as money, and as long as the stub remained it was impossible to change the debt.

Tally sticks circulated in England for 500 years. It is worth noting that when the Bank of England was founded, in 1694, one quarter of its capital was in the form of tally sticks. But the bankers wished to monopolize the creation of money, and immediately set out on a long campaign to get the tally sticks outlawed. And they got their wish when the Liberal party came to power in 1832. One of their first acts was to fulfill the agenda of the Bank of England. All of the tally sticks were gathered together and burned in a stove in the House of Lords. However, the fire got out of hand and burned down the Houses of Parliament.”

~ Excerpted from the essay: Friends and Strangers: A Meditation on Money by John Medaille

via Reflejos

xxx

new year, new YOU

2012-01-15T18:05:00.002-06:00

xxx

the end and the beginning

2012-01-14T23:50:00.003-06:00

The End and the Beginning
by Wisława Szymborska
Translated By Joanna Trzeciak

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

image: the beauty we love
poem: the mark on the wall

xxx

we are not all created equal

2012-01-14T21:38:00.000-06:00

Opportunity and equality just aren't available to all anymore.
Not because of prejudice, but simple economics.

We Are Not All Created Equal
The truth about the American class system
Stephen Marche

There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here's one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility. But nobody wants to admit: If your daddy was rich, you're gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you're gonna stay poor. Every instinct in the American gut, every institution, every national symbol, runs on the idea that anybody can make it; the only limits are your own limits. Which is an amazing idea, a gift to the world — just no longer true. Culturally, and in their daily lives, Americans continue to glide through a ghostly land of opportunity they can't bear to tell themselves isn't real. It's the most dangerous lie the country tells itself....(more)

~ from wood s lot

xxx

for man, no circle is ever closed. we walk ever in spirals. ~ R. Scott Bakker

2012-01-14T21:00:00.004-06:00

I have a 'thing' for spirals. I'm not sure why or when this particular 'interest' of mine began. But ever since I've had an innertent to swoop around in, I've collected images of spirals. Spirals have dozens of meanings, are found everywhere in life, the universe. I like the idea of our lives being a journey along the path of a spiral. We seem to pass the same point over and over again but from a different perspective each time. I like the idea that I have more than one opportunity to learn a life lesson ~ because, knowing my stubborn, mulish self, it takes more than one loop around the spiral to get it right.

xxx

falling behind the crowd

2012-01-12T23:40:00.000-06:00

I am of conflicted minds when it comes to surrendering the lovely page by page turn of a book to a technological gadget such as the Kindle. I fear I will become like the dinosaurs, extinct, while the rest of my herd travels forward without me in this brave new world. I love the feel of a book in my hand. The smell of the paper. The naughty habit of turning down the corner of a page to mark my spot. I like reading all the little notes before and after the story, attempting to glean more insight about the author and publishers. I even like the dedications. I don’t write my poetry on a computer. I still write in graphed paper schoolbooks, folding the pages in a complicated origami as I revise poems again and again. Only when I am done and happy with the result, do I copy the poem into a computer document, later to post to my poetry blog. And that I do only to keep multiple copies of my work in case I lose one form or the other. For those of you who have succumbed to a Kindle (or similar gadget) I say, " Brave new you to leap forward with the trend." I fear it is here to stay.

xxx

the skin between ourselves

2012-01-09T22:21:00.002-06:00

"There's a skin or hide between ourselves and our inner being. And in the West that skin is very thick. Inside us there's a sea and that sea is your inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses - everything you've gotten from the memory stores of evolution. Then there's the outside world made of buildings and automobiles. And these two worlds can't rub against each other. It's too painful. Therefore you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide. You don't want her guts to rub against the barn."

~ Robert Bly
spoken to Lewis Hyde in an interview
taken from Robert Bly - In This World

via the beauty we love

xxx

God says Yes to me

2012-01-06T22:23:00.002-06:00

my churlish self

"I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes"

~ by Kaylin Haught
from The Palm of Your Hand

stolen from cowboy's blog
xxx

perceptions

2012-01-04T22:58:00.003-06:00

"I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."

~ Augusten Burroughs

(Source: quote-book) via Assorted

xxx

a picture is worth a thousand words

2012-01-02T19:22:00.002-06:00

Caption this one ...

xxx

thoughts for the new year

2011-12-31T18:40:00.003-06:00

Resolutions? bah, humbug! I resolved last year to not be such an ass. I did pretty well until December rolled around. Then all that pent-up 'assness' just came roiling out and about. So instead of resolving to be a better person, I'm sharing with you a few thoughts to take into this new year.

(photo via Soubry)

“Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”

-Chogyam Trungpa
(via Assorted)

Be yourself: your unashamed, truly awesome, who you are, Self.

Even if it means you like to smoke cigars
and wear flowers in your babushka.

"Masturbation in the library toilet is a violation of the
University of St. Andrews Library Regulations"

Some rules are meant to be broken.
Enough said.

Read the signs as you go along. If you don't understand the signs,
ask someone who does. Sometimes two heads are better than one.

(see cowboy's post here, for clarification)

Chew your way into a new world.

Munch leaves. Molt. Rest. Molt
again. Self-reinvention is everything.

- Amy Gerstler
Advice from a Caterpillar
Dearest Creature

(via WhiskeyRiver)

"We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are."
- Dean Koontz
Life Expectancy

(via WhiskeyRiver)

xxx

...and at once i knew i was not magnificent

2011-12-31T13:55:00.004-06:00

As most of you know, I live under a rock and rarely get out to see what's new in the world. Having a day off, I did wander around the innertent and stumbled over the grammy nominations for 2012. I don't listen to music much. But I decided to go and take a listen to all the songs nominated for record of the year. Here's the list:

Rolling in the Deep
Adele

Holocene
Bon Iver

Grenade
Bruno Mars

The Cave
Mumford and Sons

Firework
Katy Perry

I do love Adele and think she's fantastic. Grenade and Firework are pop music anthems that I can take or leave. I thought The Cave was interesting. But it is Bon Iver and Holocene that keeps me coming back to listen again and again. Bon Iver is up for the following 4 grammy nominations: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, Best New Alternative Music Album.

I'm not sure why Holocene has captivated me. I have not a CLUE as to what the lyrics mean. (If you have any ideas, please share.) The music is haunting, one of those melodies and set of sounds and rhythms that keep repeating in your head long after the song ends. I found an interview with Justin Vernon where he talks a little about Holocene specifically:

JG: Relating to your lyrics, your song titles. I want to say they're all places. But what is "Holocene"?

JV: Yeah, yeah. Holocene. Holocene is a bar in Portland, Ore., but it's also the name of a geologic era, an epoch if you will. It's a good example of how all the songs are all meant to come together as this idea that places are times and people are places and times are... people? [Laughs.] They can all be different and the same at the same time. Most of our lives feel like these epochs. That's kind of what that song's about. "Once I knew I was not magnificent." Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there's a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song.

from an interview with Justin Vernon, here

All I can add is that recently I have met my own insignificance and realized how un-magnificent I really am.

Lyrics:

"Someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me."
you're laying waste to Halloween
you fucked it friend, it's on it's head, it struck the street
you're in Milwaukee, off your feet

...and at once I knew I was not magnificent
strayed above the highway aisle
(jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

3rd and Lake it burnt away, the hallway
was where we learned to celebrate
automatic bought the years you'd talk for me
that night you played me ʻLip Paradeʼ
not the needle, nor the thread, the lost decree
saying nothing, that's enough for me

...and at once I knew I was not magnificent
hulled far from the highway aisle
(jagged, vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright
above my brother, I and tangled spines
we smoked the screen to make it what it was to be
now to know it in my memory:

...and at once I knew I was not magnificent
high above the highway aisle
(jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

Happy New Year to all!
xxx

fleeting

2011-12-30T18:30:00.000-06:00

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower

plucked from a river of lava

and held aloft on a tightrope

strung between two scrawny trees

above a canyon

in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don't drop it, Don't drop it, Don't drop it - ,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it
everywhere, for years,
while right behind you,
the footprints you are leaving

will look like notes

of a crazy song.

- Tony Hoagland
from How It Adds Up
What Narcissism Means to Me

xxx

birthdays!!

2011-12-30T13:07:00.002-06:00

Happy Birthday, Dave !!

To the coolest skateboarding guy I know!
Hope your day is full of good wishes.
xxx

the morning after

2011-12-25T12:52:00.003-06:00

I'm wrecked !

It's been an intense holiday season this year, and the week leading up to Christmas was the crucible! Having procrastinated horribly this year, a week ago today found me feverishly ordering Christmas presents for the kids via the Intertent. Yep. I paid the outrageous shipping fees for expedited shipping and even MORE outrageous fees for gift packaging. My oldest mulette arrived home from college and promptly threw the family into Christmas Cheer: (using mom's credit card) he and his girlfriend went to Wal-mart and purchased a Christmas tree and Yuletide trimmings for the house. On the one day I had off this past week, Monday, we spent time decorating the tree and home. Finally, Christmas arrived.

On the work front, the last shopping weekend and week before Christmas was met with hoards of Christmas shoppers. Lines formed outside our store an hour before we opened EACH DAY and the stream did not stop until we closed the doors at 10pm. (We work extended hours during the Holiday season 8am to 10pm). On Friday we had a record breaking sales day of over $100,000 !! The economy might be struggling, but people are still buying jewelry for Christmas. I worked 8 hours on Friday, closing the store and not leaving until well past 10:30pm. Only to wake up at 6am Saturday, Christmas Eve, to open the store by 8am. Business was steady on Christmas Eve, the majority of shoppers being MALE. Half of our workstaff has some sort of sickness, including yours truly, the Mule. (Thank you Adullamite for blessing me with your illness. A true indication of my unrepentant soul :)

Christmas Eve was wet and dreary with temps in the 40's (cold for us southerners) and steady rain. Home by 5pm with the expedited packages awaiting me to open. Time well spent Skyping my sweetheart, wishing him a very Merry Christmas. Late night up, wrapping of last minute gifts and stuffing Christmas stockings. I no sooner had fallen asleep when the kids busted into my bedroom to wake me for present openings!! Why is it the unwrapping always takes less time than the wrapping ??? For mom, a surprise! A new uber sleek vacuum cleaner (as I had mused on Christmas tree day that I really could use a decent cleaner to sweep up all the dog hair in the house!) My morning has been spent picking up all the wrappings and packaging, bagging up all for trash, the washing of the dishes, and general tidying. Eldest made a late breakfast of pancakes. We plan to grill steaks for dinner tonight.... fingers crossed as it's still cold and dreary and lightly raining.

I'm back in bed, slowly loosing my voice (second time this fall) and facing an early morning opening of the store tomorrow. Life goes on no matter what time of year it is. And our after-Christmas shoppers are just as demanding as before: returns, exchanges, and SOLDERING charms onto their charm bracelets. By the end of this coming week, we will have taken in close to 1000 charm bracelets to be soldered (if past years are any indication.)

All appear to be happy with their new gifties. The dogs received a Christmas bath - hahaha. And kids will leave to go to their dad's house for the second half of their winter break. Christmas all over again! Meantime, I will be providing excellent customer service with a smile, dammit, no matter how shattered I am feeling. And donning my new cool slipper booties, I shall be happily vacuuming the house on my day off ........ Righhhtt .....!

Here's hoping your Christmas was full and merry. And if you must venture out to the shoppes, please remember a kind smile or word for the overworked, exhausted, holidayed-out shoppe girl who is assisting you. She will deeply appreciate the gesture.

xxx

i almost forgot the best part: the kissing ball !!

2011-12-24T00:08:00.003-06:00

a big MWAAAA to all the boys

(and girls ;)

xxx

Merry Christmas to all ....

2011-12-23T03:42:00.001-06:00

and to all a Peaceful New Year !
xxx

today i'm lighting a candle for you, my friends

2011-12-22T10:00:00.001-06:00

Today is the Winter Solstice.
I'm lighting a candle and thinking of each one of you, my blogging friends.
Blessings to all.

Just Delicate Needles
~ Rolf Jacobsen

It's so delicate, the light.
And there's so little of it. The dark
is huge.
Just delicate needles, the light,
in an endless night.
And it has such a long way to go
through such desolate space.
So let's be gentle with it.
Cherish it.
So it will come again in the morning.
We hope.

translated by Robert Hedin

xxx

a blessed winter solstice

2011-12-21T17:24:00.005-06:00

Winter Solstice Chant
~ by Annie Finch

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

now you are uncurled and cover our eyes

with the edge of winter sky

leaning over us in icy stars.

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

come with your seasons, your fullness, your end.

xxx

just because i like them ...

2011-12-20T22:48:00.003-06:00

Where Are You Going
~ dave matthews band

Where are you going
with your long face pulling down?
Don’t hide away like an ocean
But you can’t see, but you can smell
And the sound waves crash down

I am no superman
I have no reasons for you
I am no hero, ah that’s for sure
But I do know one thing
is where you are is where I belong

I do know, where you go, is where I want to be
Where are you going, where do you go?
Are you looking for answers
to questions under the stars?
Well, if along the way you are growing weary,
You can rest with me 'til a brighter day
You're okay

I am no superman
I have no answers for you
I am no hero, oh that’s for sure
But I do know one thing
is where you are, is where I belong
I do know, where you go
Is where I want to be

Where are you going, where do you go?
[interlude]

Where do you go, where are you going?
Where do you go?

I am no Superman, I have no answers for you
I am no hero, ah that's for sure
But I do know one thing, is where you are,
is where I belong
I do know where you go, is where I want to be.
Where are you going, where do you go?

Tell me where are you going, where do you go?
Where?
Let's go.

xxx

more Kim Addonizio

2011-12-19T19:53:00.009-06:00

Muse

When I walk in,
men buy me drinks before I even reach the bar.

They fall in love with me after one night,
even if we never touch.

I tell you I've got this shit down to a science.

They sweat with my memory,
alone in cheap rooms they listen

to moans through the wall
and wonder if that's me,

letting out a scream as the train whines by.

But I'm already two states away, lying with a boy
I let drink rain from the pulse at my throat.

No one leaves me, I'm the one that chooses.
I show up like money on the sidewalk.

Listen, baby. Those are my high heels dangling from the
phone wire.

I'm the crow flapping down,
that's my back slip

you catch sight of when the pain
twists into you so deep

you have to close your eyes and weep like a goddamned
woman.

More about Kim Addonizio, here
and at her website, here.

xxx

sunday sermon

2011-12-17T20:40:00.011-06:00

Pietro Cavallini, Detail of mosaic in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, 1291.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~ Teilhard de Chardin

from: please don't squeeze the shaman

" I’m not a big fan of anyone pushing religion or atheism in people’s faces. Just like anything personal, there’s a time to share what you value and know and there’s a time when it’s just not helpful. It’s like when I was a kid and spent a couple days at my cousin’s house. I went to her kindergarten class with her, but because I was already in 2nd grade, I would yell out all the answers, RED! 5! and the teacher said, 'That’s nice you know the answers already but the others are younger than you and need to learn.'

If someone likes believing that life is a Disney movie, you get a treasure chest in heaven if you don’t use birth control or that science is a demon, there’s not much you’re probably going to be able to do to convince them otherwise until their brains or hearts or cultures grow big enough to get it, and the way we grow is usually through patient dialogue and living examples. If we live an atheist or religious life that seems meaningful, connected, intelligent and caring instead of shouty, hatey and eye-rolly, it will influence others. Right now I’m enjoying the belief that somehow we are reunited with people we love after death. Someone insisting to me that this won’t happen might be correct, and maybe this belief is holding me back, but if they know me, they’d just shut up and let me do my own learning, just like 2nd grade me in that kindergarten class. "

xxx

on what women want, part II ...

2011-12-16T14:54:00.000-06:00

"What do Women Want?"
~ Kim Addonizio.

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

xxx

2011-12-16T11:00:00.000-06:00

On my sweetheart's christmas wish list ...

(I'll be establishing a paypal site for all who wish to donate to the cause)

xxx

2011-12-15T21:45:00.004-06:00

on Adullamite's christmas wish list ...

A lassie who irons !!

xxx

on my christmas wish list ...

2011-12-14T21:06:00.010-06:00

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. -Lindo”

~ Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

xxx

Men become impotent because of women's low-cut dresses and bare legs

2011-12-14T00:07:00.009-06:00

"... women dig a grave for men’s health with their bare legs and low-cut dresses. Every nice girl going on a date with a sexy top on will make only one man happy and a dozen men on her way will suffer from her revealing looks. In this case strippers are weapons of mass destruction; they have already turned the Western civilization into the society with limited erection."

Read the full article HERE

xxx

Letters from Granada

2011-12-12T08:08:00.005-06:00

For my fortieth birthday, a few years back, my ex-husband and I traveled to Spain, specifically to the city of Granada. It was a lovely trip including visits to the magnificent Alhambra and the Palacio de Generalife, where we toured the famous moorish gardens. We rented a small apartment in the historical district of the Albayzin and spent our days walking the streets and soaking in the local architecture and culture of this beautiful city.

Imagine, then, my delight and surprise to discover a new blogging friend from Granada, Senor Alberto Granados. He recently posted a delightful poem and photographs of a walk through Granada featuring a famous species of tree, the Ginkgo biloba. The post brought back my fond memories of his home town.

With Alberto's permission and help, I am re-blogging his post,
Imagenes de Granada. 11: Nuestros ginkgos biloba.
Thank you, Alberto for help in translating Dona Elena's poem and providing the images.

Ginkgo Biloba

(Millennial Tree)

A tree. Good. Yellow
of autumn. It opens up
to the sky brilliantly, eager
for more light. Screams its splendor
into the garden. And natural,
free, it scatters its colour
straight against the blue. It grows
like a flame, blazes, illuminates
its ancient blood. Dominates
all the air branch by branch.

All the air, branch by branch
aglow with the yellow abundance
of the tree. Shines
that, only blue, lights
with a golden fire: Oriflamme.

Not flag. Joyful fountain
of colour: it nails up
its golden pole towards the sky.
Its eagerness of many centuries
reaches us. Light from the East.

Yellow. The wind does not
imagine yet, the flight
of its leaves, its brightness
already faded. The gloomy
evening approaches. Not even foretells
its loneliness, that sorrow
of its branches.

It was certitude,
joy - autumn! Beacon
of open light.

Helplessness
afterwards. Where is your beauty?

~ Elena Martin Vivaldi

xxx

notes to my daughter

2011-12-09T23:40:00.002-06:00

“The perfect man? A poet on a motorcycle. You know, the kind who lives on the edge, the free spirit. But he’s also gotta have the soul of a poet and a brilliant mind. So, you know, good luck.”

~ Lucinda Williams

xxx
via assorted

2011-12-09T22:47:00.000-06:00

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

xxx
via assorted

2011-12-09T21:51:00.000-06:00

“It’s never too late - never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.”

~ Ms Jane Fonda

xxx
via assorted

ode to a jack - an rdg poem

2011-12-08T21:24:00.002-06:00

My stomach aches, and a cool drink of water numbs the pains
My sense of hedonistic feasting on toast and porridge
Or, empty-bellied, napping amidst the opiate of poppy-hued linens
Three minutes past one, and forgetfulness keeps me dangling:
'Tis not because I'm unhappy that you are happy,
But your happiness makes my happiness almost unbearably happy.
That thou, fleet-hoofed martian of the fields,
In some dulcet trick
Of stacked hay golden, and shadows fled,
Singest of the mule days of summer with ease.

O for a sip of that rare vintage! It has been
Cool'd eons ago in the depths of assam earth,
Tasting of passion-fruit, and lemon cheesecake,
Scrabble, and Shaun the Sheep - what mirth!
O for a potter's pitcher full of thy sunny smiles!
Full of the true, thy Three Graces,
With gurgling bubbles and barking spiders,
And rich ale-stained mouth;
That I might slurp, and slip this earth, unseen,
And with thee, my jack, fade away unto the sea.

(preferably with a life jacket for me)

my sincerest gratitude and most humble of apologies
to John Keats
whose ode I have thus, magnificently mangled.

xxx

on my christmas wish list ...

2011-12-07T00:15:00.000-06:00

The great question that has never been answered,
and which I have not yet been able to answer,
despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is

"What does a woman want?"

~ Sigmund Freud

Christian Louboutin's

xxx

2011-12-06T21:29:00.001-06:00

a moment with Leonard Cohen ...

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

thanks to Soubriquet for the lyrics

xxx

on public decency

2011-12-04T22:25:00.015-06:00

The following is a guest post written by goatman. Its genesis was a discussion about a girl in Egypt, Aliaa Elmahdy, who chose to present herself in a naked pose on her blog. The discussion evolved, as discussions do, to include the larger question of public decency and our 'cultural' perceptions of nudity.

(More about Aliaa Elmahdy can be found here at the Daily Mail Online)
http://moonbeams8.blogspot.com/2011/12/drifting.html#links

Hot Spring

"I think it was Tommy who first took us to the hot spring (details on Tommy will have to follow, perhaps on a future blog post) when we lived in Albuquerque.

The Jemez hot spring in the Nacimento mountains was a drive through the Jemez Pueblo -- a dusty place of adobe huts and pickup trucks -- up into the heights of the rocky piney forests. The spring hung off of the side of a mountain with views down into the valley and eventually the pueblo if you follow the stream. After a hike from the parking lot, we strip down and slowly enter the water, too hot really to just sit fast -- its more of an easing-into motion . . . slowly. Lie back with the others -- really not strangers at this point, and drift for hours. Someone invariably had oranges or wine or candles at night.

Once a Hopi fellow was above the spring chanting : hioo hee hee hee heeee hioo hioo hee loudly over and over . . . it just went on and on. What to make of this? We were told by a spring regular that the summer solstice ceremony was upcoming and that when the wives in the pueblo could hear his chant, he was ready to sing at the affair.

The only run in with "decency" occurred when a girl scout leader decided to lead her troop on a hike on the trail above the spring. Girl scouts and small minds were aghast and reported their apoplexy to the newspaper in Albuquerque after which were many letters to the editor and reports from those who had to check it out.

It was determined that a sign would be posted below the spring informing that there may be naked people above and to bang on the metal sign hung from a tree if they required a moral experience upon continuation up the trail (now I am being snarky!!). Upon hearing the signal we were to exit the water, dress appropriately, and wait until they passed (or decided to join in).

As the last person left the spring at the end of the day or night he would turn the sign around to a blank side --- the coast is clear. This worked very well and, as far as I know, still is the setup to this day. All were accommodated without grief or trepidation.

Attached is the exact Jemez spring of which I spoke. I am disillusioned, it has been domesticated by prudes -- too many damned people, in my opinion. "

thank you, goatman
xxx

choices

2011-12-04T15:21:00.005-06:00

Alice came to a fork in the road.
“Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” responded the Cheshire cat.

“I don’t know,” Alice answered.

“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

~ Lewis Carroll. (1865). Alice in Wonderland

xxx

via Assorted

because my daughter asked me, "What is the purpose of our lives?" and i didn't know how to answer ...

2011-12-01T23:41:00.012-06:00

“And then sometimes a day would come, a gray one (or a sunny one) when she missed him so fiercely she felt empty, not a woman at all anymore but just a dead tree filled with cold November blow. She felt like that now, felt like hollering his name and hollering him home, and her heart turned sick with the thought of the years ahead and she wondered what good love was if it came to this, to even ten seconds of feeling like this.” ~ Stephen King

via Assorted

xxx

"But cats to me are strange, so strange I cannot sleep if one is near." ~ W. H. Davies

2011-11-30T00:45:00.006-06:00

Growing up in the country, we always had a barn cat or two. They were not particularly domesticated. They liked to kill things and leave the carcasses by the back door. I wasn't exactly fond of cats, but I did not 'dislike' them either. Until I took a kitten to college with me during my third year. That cat destroyed my plants, tortured my roommate (who later confessed she often pulled the cat's tail) and failed to win over the affections of an erstwhile boyfriend. So the kitten was shipped back home to the country to become, yes, a barn cat. I heard she ran away.

From that point on, I became a dogs only person. My younger sister also disliked cats. This fact became a huge joke between us when my sister entered a veterinary program. She vowed she would never treat cats. We even re-wrote the Eagles hit "Hotel California" - it became "Hotel Catifornia" and the lyrics said something like: 'you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave .....!' We made up false sympathy cards for clients whose beloved cats 'mysteriously grew ill and died' whilst being treated at her 'Hotel Catifornia.'

I know. All you cat lovers are hissing and booing me. That's okay. This tail has a twist.

In need of additional income to open her own veterinary clinic, my sister took a second job working for ...... Yep. A cat clinic. A cat - loving clinic. I don't know what they did to her there, but she changed. Oh yes. My cat-hating sister decided she would treat both dogs AND cats at her newly opened clinic. It's a slippery slope my friends. Stray cats were brought in needing food and care. No one wanted them. My sister bought a farm. The farm has a number of barns. You can see where this is going: barn cats.

When I visited her this past summer, my little cat-hating sis, the veteranarian, had FOUR, yes 4 BIG CATS wandering in and out of her HOUSE ?!! Oh, and one barn cat who stays at the barn. Sigh. Okay, maybe I petted one of her cats just to prove that I could be the bigger (dogs only) person.

But I still think cats and their people are strange !

xxx

the poem that started it all ...

2011-11-28T00:02:00.008-06:00

Summer of 2006, I purchased from a charity shop a slim volume of 'modern' poetry, illustrated with the works of modern artists. I believe it was published in the late 1960's/ early 1970's. I still have it - my very first book of poems - somewhere packed in a box with all my other books. And this poem, this was the poem that began my love affair with poetry ...... inspiring me to take red crayon to paper and begin scribbling my own poems. I have not ever found any more works by Jerzy Harasymowicz, but I wish I could. My searching led me to Wislawa Szymborska and Czelaw Milosz, contemporaries of Jerzy, and from there to a larger world of words and rhythms and ideas. As Thomas Gray, English poet, states: "Poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn."

The Bicycle

once

forgotten by tourists
a bicycle joined
a herd
of mountain goats

with its splendidly turned
silver horns
it became
their leader

with its bell
it warned them
of danger

with them
it partook
in romps
on snow covered
glade

the bicycle
gazed from above
on people walking;
with the goats

it fought
over a goat,
with a bearded buck

it reared up at eagles
enraged
on its back wheel

it was happy
though it never
nibbled at grass

or drank
from a stream

until once
a poacher
shot it

tempted
by the silver trophy
of its horns

and then
above the Tatras was seen
against the sparkling
January sky

the angel of death erect
slowly
riding to heaven
holding the bicycle's
dead horns.

~ by Jerzy Harasymowicz

(trans. from Polish by Edmund Ordon)

** There is more Jerzy Harasymowicz on the web these days - thankfully! Here is what poet Czesław Miłosz writes about his contemporary in his book, Postwar Polish poetry: an anthology :

"Harasymowicz's first volume published in 1956 bore the title Wonders and it defines his work quite well. His poems are surrealistic fairy tales. His is a world of murky cats swearing in slang, trees acting as princesses, saints from old paintings reciting prayers on the choir loft of an abandoned country church, kettles wearing red tailcoats, carpets with masochistic inclinations. His metaphorical inventiveness seems unlimited, and he builds his tenderly or cruelly humourous stories in verse on the sensuous qualities of the simplest things he observes.

I see a basic difference between such a poet as Harasymowicz and the poets of America or France: his imagination is not urban and, consequently, he can name an astonishing number of plants, trees, birds, often playing with those names and inventing images by mixing nature with the history of art. The medieval city of Cracow, where he lives, is often present in his poems, but the woods and remote villages of the highlands are particularly close to his heart.

His stubborn clinging to poetry conceived as the realm of personal myths protects him from those who ask for 'meaning' and he always maintained a complete indifference to ratiocinations. It is a pity that the musical quality of his poetry cannot be rendered in translation."

xxx

a poem

2011-11-24T22:10:00.005-06:00

WHEN THE YOUNG GENETICIST WAS ASKED, "AREN’T YOU WORRIED ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF YOUR WORK?" WITH A TOSS OF HER SUN-STREAKED HAIR, SHE DECLARED, "NO, NOT AT ALL. I CAN’T WAIT TO FUCK A CLONE."
　
Oh flawed species,
who has fashioned spears from saplings,
notched points of flint, sliced
the coral flesh of the salmon,
pounded tapa from the inner bark of the mulberry.

With heavy brains balanced
on slender stalks of spine, we have gazed
through ground glass, listening
for the music still humming
from the violent birth of the universe.

Deeply imperfect species, soaring
into the noon sky like a silver god, bursting
the four-chambered hearts, the humble intestines,
of people we've never shared a cup of tea with, breath
of steam rising between us.

Wondrous species riddled with greed,
steeped in cruelty, still stitching
one life to another with bone needle.
After all these voyages around the sun
we continue to lie down together, swim

in the small oceans of each other's irises,
mothers drunk on the fragrance
of one damp scalp. Strangers break down
the doors of fiery buildings for each other,
siphon blood from their own swollen veins.

Meanwhile, flounder genes have been slipped
into strawberries to keep them from freezing,
a bit of jellyfish glows in rabbits in the dark.
Now we are poised to alter our children.
First, to cure.

Then a fine glass needle to inject
a helix of intelligence. A purified sequence
of perfect pitch. Double-stranded necklace
of permanent beauty. Or maybe just
eliminate sadness.

You get the embryo out
where you can work on it,
make some copies,
tease apart the cells, flick a gene
on or off like a light switch,
pack it all up into an emptied-out egg case.

Life stretches back in a single
history for three and a half billion years,
and change has been glacial.
Hubris, an individual sin, a king's downfall.
Death wiped up the stage after each tragedy.

My heart breaks—can I say this?
Am I an archaic cliché to be broken
open with grief? Who will mourn
Homo sapiens? I can hardly
comprehend the loss of animals I've never seen—

silver trout, leopard frog, Pyrenean ibex—
each flame extinguished darkening the earth.
Now this terribly human species—did we ever imagine?
Can you bear it? Doesn't it
make you crazy? Doesn't it?

~ by Ellen Bass
via How a Poem Happens

xxx

public service announcement

2011-11-19T20:52:00.004-06:00

A spanish blogger, Alberto Granados, left a message on one of my blogs requesting information about this painting. I traveled to his blog, entitled Alberto Granados, and with my piece-meal spanish managed to deduce that he has been searching the net high and low looking for the name of the painter and any additional information regarding the painting. I've done two image searches: one at Tineye and one using Google's Reverse Image search engine. They led me to 3 other Spanish speaking blogs - all using the image but none with any specific info about the painting.

So I am posting his request here on my blog. Feel free to pass the word along to other bloggers.
If you find anything about 'La Mer' as he has titled it, you can leave a comment at his blog (he understands English) or email him at: quequereisqueosdiga@gmail.com

Good luck!

xxx

beautiful collision

2011-11-17T23:26:00.005-06:00

The heart breaking makes a sound I never knew
Could be so beautiful and loud
Fury filled and we collide
So courageous until now, fumbling and scared
So afraid You'll find me out
Alone here with my doubt

Here it comes, a beautiful collision
Is happening now
There seems no end to where You begin and
There I am now
You and I collide

Something circling inside
Spaciously you fly, infinite and wide
Like the moon and sky, collide

Here it comes now

lyrics: A Beautiful Collision
David Crowder Band

xxx

love, love, love ........ all we need is

2011-11-17T00:38:00.007-06:00

"When someone loves you,

the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."

Billy - age 4

Via Soubry via Miss Cellania
xxx

happy birthday, soubriquet !!!

2011-11-14T00:01:00.001-06:00

I Want

to shove my clothes
to one side of the closet,
give you the bigger half.
Quietly I'll hide most of my shoes,
so you won't know I have this many.

I will
rearrange furniture to add more,
find space on my shelves
for your many books
nail up the placard that says
poets do it, and redo it, and do it again.

I want
to share a laundry basket,
get our clothes mixed up,
wait for the yelling
when my reds run wild
into your whites
turning them a luscious pink,
your favorite color of me.

I will
move my pillow
to the other side of the bed,
lay yours next to mine,
your scent on the fabric
always near me,
even on nights you're away.

I will
buy a new bureau to hold your
thousand and one gray socks,
find a place for all those work boots,
the ones I refer to as big and ugly.

I want
more pots and pans to wash,
piles of them leaning high
from late night meals
cooked naked and drunk,

red wine pouring into
a sauce of simmering
tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil,
kisses bitten between bites,
and platefuls of our late hours,
stacking up into dawn.

I want
to stock cupboards, closets, and pantry,
fill the house with us.
I want to gain weight with you
because our love,
our love makes me fat.

~ by Kim Konopka

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
xxx

for the man who gave me Eliot ... xxxxx

2011-11-12T23:46:00.004-06:00

Turner: Norham Castle Sunrise

Turner: Blue Rigi Lake of Lucerne

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

excerpted from Burnt Norton

(No. 1 of The Four Quartets)
by T.S. Eliot

xxx

madame bovary ...

2011-11-08T23:32:00.006-06:00

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written and is hailed as Flaubert's masterpiece. It is a prime example of Realism which depicts the banal activities and experiences of everyday life, instead of a romanticized viewpoint.

This novel, if read when I was a twenty-something, would have thrilled me. I can see myself sitting around with my girlfriends discussing the oppressive paternalistic society that subjugated poor Emma Bovary. I would empathize with Emma's ennui, her flight into romantic fantasies, her constant search for meaning in a meaningless life. I would blame her culture for her lack of self-actualization. I would cite pro-feminist works such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and essays by Gloria Steinham illustrating how women have been pressured to conform to society's expectations of them. I would not lay the blame for Emma's trials and tribulations on Emma, but on the society at large. It would have made for a great thesis in a "Women's Studies" class.

Alas. I am no longer a twenty-something. Instead, I am late forty-something who has 'been around the block' a time or two. And I just could not relate to Emma Bovary. Or her husband, Charles. I found not a single sympathetic character in this novel. I wanted depth and perception. Instead, I found a novel that glorifies the shallowness of its characters and their lives. Surely, as women, by the time we hit our forties, we've lived out our own version of Emma Bovary: the fairytale wedding, the delusion of 'happily ever after', the endless spending of trying to keep up with the Joneses, the pursuit of beauty and sex to define our self-worth, the foray into motherhood ... And, hopefully, we've reached a place where we can say "Enough." These things do not define me. And so begin our truer journeys into self and the creation of an authentic life (one in which we establish parameters based upon our experiences, trial and error, and self wisdom.) This novel taught me nothing new. It did not stretch me mentally, emotionally. I found its prose (lauded as perfection) to be tedious.

**Alain de Botton summed Madame Bovary as thus:

" It's about a shopaholic adulteress who swallows arsenic after credit fraud."

And that's all I really needed to know.

xxx

** Thanks to Dave for the link /reference

choices

2011-11-04T07:54:00.004-05:00

"We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle
and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer
and finally meet at the centre:
rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two,
and each of those in two again,
and at each fork you must make a decision."

-C.S. Lewis

xxx

from the vault: an rdg poem

2011-11-02T12:58:00.000-05:00

Our household is under siege: we've all come down with some sort of hacking cough, laryngitis, feverish colds. So I am cheating and pulling up an oldie but goodie poem of yore. I've finished reading Madame Bovary (or Madame Bovine as I have affectionately renamed it) and want to write about it, but I'm having trouble stringing coherent thoughts together.... Enjoy!

nursing sweet sin

On a night drenched in rain,
I heard a tap on my door and
let sin come into my house.

Thin boned and starving,
I dried her with fine linen
and served her warm milk
in my finest china bowl.

She folded herself up in
my favorite chair,
the one right next to the fire.
She fell asleep,
pacified.

In the morning, she cried
to be let out.
I watched her from my window
stalk her prey.
She always returns
home
at dusk.

She grew larger and sleek:
no longer the sweet bundle
I had nursed.
A jump on the counter
sends fine china flying,
shattering on hard tile floor.
She is eating me out of house
and home.

At night she now sleeps in my bed.
Her watchful, yellow eyes
bind me to her each night.
Like a lover,
she kneads my body
with large paws,
lightly claws skin off my back.

In the morning, I cry
to be let out.
Curled up in her window,
she smugly watches
me escape down the street.
Knowing,
I always return home
to her house
at dusk.

11/2006
rdg

xxx

groovin' with Tom Petty, among other things

2011-10-30T23:04:00.005-05:00

It's been ages since I've listened to the music in my iTunes library. Two years and some days to be exact. I was waiting up for my 16 yr old muletta to return home after a friday night football game. So I started browsing through the library. It became a sort of 'walk down memory lane'-ish activity. Each song I listened to reminded me of 'time and place'. When my muletta checked in with me, I was listening to this song by Tom Petty:

"Mary Jane's Last Dance" has a laid-back, groovin' vibe to it. My daughter started dancing. I started dancing. We both were doing our funky groovin' moves (hers being more modern and up to date than mine!) And truthfully, without thinking about consequences, parental responsibility and all that goes with it, I took an IMAGINARY toke on my 'mary jane' and passed it over to my daughter. She didn't even miss a beat. She took her own hit and handed 'mary jane' back to me.

Then we both broke down into a fit of giggles.

There was no "Gee Mom, I can't believe you just did that" recriminations from her. Instead, she propped herself up on my bed and so began a frank discussion of pot smoking (her friends that do / those who don't); her admission of curiosity about trying it; which led to a larger conversation about growing up, college, what she wants to be in life (she doesn't know yet). I let her talk. And I listened. I listened to the words behind the words, as well. When she asked, I answered as truthfully as possible. I dipped my oar into the waters here and there, but for the most part, I let her steer the boat.

It was a rare and wondrous moment.

xxx

happy halloween

2011-10-28T19:42:00.001-05:00

All Souls
by Michael Collier

A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,

Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through

the kitchen window at a raccoon perched

outside on a picnic table where it picks

over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.

Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more

dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody

screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble

of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy

to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,

“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count

whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,

and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one

the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”

“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”

Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt

and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,

wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.

Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on

the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs

abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room

turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”

the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.

The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.

We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.

xxx

inspiration

2011-10-25T11:19:00.001-05:00

Just because you're down doesn't mean you're out!

Heather Dorniden wins a 600m sprint

from Nothing to do with Arbroath via TYWKIWDBI

This girl is AMAZING!!

xxx

Sun's Bad Day

2011-10-23T10:10:00.002-05:00

Another guest post from the youngest mulette

SUN'S BAD DAY

The sun just had a nasty day,
refused to smile or shine.
It stayed behind the dark gray cloud,
a mottled, grim design.

But shortly after dinner time,
one ray poked through the gray.
A spark of golden yellow warmth
reminded us of day.

If you want to please us, Sun,
(don't take this as a warning)
If you're going to pierce the clouds,
please do it in the morning.

10/2011
~ by the youngest mulette

xxx

Best Bumper Sticker of the Week

2011-10-20T22:33:00.002-05:00

One of the things that I admire about Soubriquet is his attentiveness to the odd and humourous details of the world around him. He always catches on to something quite funny or eccentric long before I catch up to him and see it too. So, as I tend to spend the better part of my life in my car, I've started trying to be more attentive to funny bumper stickers. Unlike Soubriquet, however, I do not even know where the camera is on my new cell phone, much less use it as I'm driving and THEN upload the photos onto my laptop. Instead, I just repeat the funny line over and over to remember it and then go and GOOGLE the bumper sticker!! How did I ever live without the ability to GOOGLE ???

I saw this bumper sticker on my way to work this evening, next to an IMPEACH OBAMA sticker and TEXANS FOR ARIZONA: supporting the new illegal immigration laws. I decided fairly quickly that I wouldn't want to tangle with the driver of that truck! But this bumper sticker made me smile:

And last week's best bumper sticker winner was found on a car at my psychiatrist's office. It made me laugh, which is always helpful before seeing your shrink:

xxx

abraham verghese: the power of human touch

2011-10-19T20:23:00.005-05:00

Whilst I might have wished to listen to Abraham Verghese
discuss his novel, Cutting For Stone, I found his lecture on TED
to be as poignant and moving as his fiction. He is, first and foremost, a doctor.
This lecture is for all who encounter a medical system that sometimes fails us,
leaving us to feel as though we are just another number,
another data point in the system.
I know of a few doctors to whom I would like to forward this video ...

Please enjoy!

xxx

Monster: a simile poem

2011-10-18T20:36:00.004-05:00

A guest post written by the Youngest Mulette

MONSTER

Teeth as black as coal,
And a nasty, scary soul.

Hair as long as sticks,
And nails like tooth picks.

A body size like a king sized bed,
And feet like Mighty Joe Young's head.

Eyes as red as devil's blood,
And muscles as hard as a metal stud.

Ears as big as saucepan lids,
And a mighty roar like screaming kids.

~ by the youngest mulette
10/2011

xxx

re-tales from retail ...

2011-10-14T20:52:00.008-05:00

Setting: The mall, early autumn, 96 degrees F outside and sunny....

I promise, if you walk into my store with THIS hat on:

and THESE furry boots:

with a pair of SHORT denim shorts:

AND THEN you tell me that you live on HOBBIT LANE ....

I WILL LAUGH at you when you turn your back to me. In fact, as you walk out of my store, I will get a case of the uncontrollable GIGGLES, and I will be giggling and CRYING at the same time. And soon, my co-workers will be laughing and crying with me, and I will have to retreat to the back offices to compose myself. Later that evening, at our ladies' dinner,
we will ALL start LAUGHING AGAIN, as the story is re-told.

Yes, sometimes we are bad people.
xxx

Jane Austen meets The Bachelor

2011-10-11T23:24:00.007-05:00

"She gave up pink drinks and took up tea long ago.
Chloe Parker, even after her divorce, still dreamed of a more romantic era. An age when a lady, in her gown and gloves, would, for sheer amusement, banter with a gentleman in his tight breeches and riding boots, smoldering in a corner of the drawing room."

And so opens the first chapter of my chick-lite read entitled, Definitely Not Mr. Darcy: Pride takes a hit in this Austen misadventure.

from the back cover:

"What Chloe thinks is a documentary turns out to be a reality dating show set in 1812. Eight women are competing to snare Mr. Wrightman, the heir to a gorgeous estate - and a one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize.... no cell phones, indoor plumbing, or deodorant to be found..."

This story reminded me of a couple of videos Mr. Soubriquet sent to me, long ago, that spoofed Jane Austen. Here's Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters:

I promise I do have some 'serious literature' in the current book rotation.
Really. I do.
Honest.

xxx

how the west was really won ...

2011-10-11T20:10:00.001-05:00

thanks to Soubry for the cartoon!
xxx

I've been mummified!

2011-10-09T19:38:00.013-05:00

Hello friends and faithful readers! My apologies for not responding to the last few posts or even posting that much this week. I'm on a new (old school) med for depression, and I feel like I've been wrapped in cotton gauze. The random crying spells are gone, but the random witticisms are gone as well. I feel like the best I can do is go around and drop a stone (o) in everyone's blog pond just to let you know that I AM reading. Gray. I feel gray and foggy.

A few thoughts that have filtered through the fog:

My oldest mulette came home from college last weekend for the first time. He spent a night and half a day with me before he went on to his dad's house. I really enjoyed his visit / listening to him talk about a typical college day and weekend. My greatest feeling was one of relief. He's adjusting well to life in a dorm; making new friends; doing well in his classes; and enjoying the social life of college: house parties, football games etc. He's even found a new passion: racketball! I'm very happy for him and will probably worry less about his well being now that I have seen him.

I read this passage in a book, The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs, about how it feels when a child leaves for college:

"When a child leaves for college, it is the end of something. Other than birth or death, leaving home for any reason is the most extreme of life transitions. One moment we're a family of three. The next, we've lost a vital member. It's a true loss, only people don't understand your grief. They don't send you sympathy cards or invite you to join a support group. They don't flock to comfort you. They don't come to your door bearing tuna casseroles and bottles of Cold Duck and platters of cookies on their good chintz china.

Instead, the journey to college is a rite of passage we mark as a joyous occasion, one we celebrate by buying luggage and books on how to build a fulfilling life. But really, if you ask any mother, she'll tell you that deep down, we want to mark it as a loss, a funeral of sorts. We never show our sorrow, though. Our sadness stays in the shadows like something slightly shameful."

This passage spoke true to me and how I felt when he left this summer. Now I'm adjusting to the loss but still mourn his presence in my everyday life.

~~~

My step-daughter is in town with her baby girl, visiting my ex. We had a girls' lunch out last Thursday with her, the baby and my 16 year old mulette. It was fun catching up on her life and holding the baby, who will be a year old next month!! Plus, I was grilled about my 'significant other's' visit to Texas .....!!! This luncheon, however, sparked a long text session with my daughter who longs to come home. (She and the youngest mulette have been staying at their dad's house while their sister has been visiting). So it's been a lonely 2 weeks around Chez Mule. And after the initial relief of not having to do laundry, wash dishes, cook dinner ..... I've been missing my mulettes! A few more days, and they will be back home.

~~~

I haven't been to see Kirsten Stingle's exhibit yet. However, she posted on her blog that this piece entitled "Down the Rabbit Hole" was sold opening night here in Houston:

My favorite piece is "Nourish":

I wonder how much her pieces are selling for ???
In the thousands, I am certain.

~~~

The origins of the word "Embiggen" (this is for Goatman who claimed
I made it up) According to Wikipedia, in the sixteenth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season called "Lisa the Iconoclast:"

the episode features two neologisms: embiggen and cromulent which were intended to sound like real words but play on the fact that they are completely fabricated. Embiggen, coined by Dan Greaney, has seen use in several scientific publications. Embiggen is also featured in Wikitionary and the Urban dictionary.

~~~

For Adullamite who wrote a post, oh a week or two ago, regarding the sorry state of today's children and their lack of manners, I found this quote:

"Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners
contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders,
and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now
tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no
longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict
their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their
food and tyrannize their teachers"

~Socrates (399 B.C.)

Which tells me that teenagers, through the centuries, have been tough going for their parents!!

~~~

Yeah! We have two winners! Out of the last 25 books I've read, I highly recommend the following two:

Room by Emma Donoghue (you don't realize how creepy it is until you've read the last page!)
and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Cutting for Stone left me in tears; it was so beautiful, but you have to work hard to get through the medical terminology as it is written by a doctor about a family of doctors in post WWII Ethiopia. Stunning.

Ok. Those were my random thoughts over the last week or so. Let's hope the fog clears a bit in the coming weeks. Enough to let some sunshine in .... !

xxx

PS For those of you who like to read funny church signs, Cowboy sent me this link to a VERY funny set of signs: All rocks go to heaven ...

an old favorite

2011-10-06T00:20:00.006-05:00

The Tyger
by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

xxx

the wonderfully surreal world of kirsten stingle

2011-10-04T21:07:00.009-05:00

Collecting All the Tender Things

Our local ceramics studio, Mossrock Studio and Fine Arts Gallery, hosts an artist's opening once a month called First Fridays. This Friday, the wonderfully gracious Andy Sankowski, owner and ceramicist, (who spent much time conversing with Soubriquet) is introducing our bubbletown to the surreal world of ceramics artist Kirsten Stingle. Kirsten's pieces are mixed media works utilizing ceramics, found objects, discarded elements from the past (and expert welding) to tell stories about ourselves. In Kirsten's words:

"Storytelling connects us to one another and explains who we are. In an age in which the individual is often alienated, my work attempts to cut through the isolation by presenting common threads of the human experience....

While each piece is instantly approachable, closer inspection reveals a world in which the story and inner psyche of the character slowly emerges. The ultimate goal of my work is to create honest depictions of the human quest toward self-revelation and a contemporary identity."

Ms. Stingle will be opening her gallery show with a short lecture Friday evening, and unfortunately, I have to work Friday night. But the exhibit will continue through the month, and I hope to stop by Andy's studio to take a look. I'm so intrigued! Here is a sampling of Kirsten Stingle's work:

note: each piece stands approximately 5 feet tall or more ....

Memory's Song

Nourish

Domestic Bliss

Nice Kitty

Heart's Desires

My Own Limitations

xxx

living on the buckle of the bible belt

2011-10-03T18:36:00.007-05:00

Living in the Bible Belt, I tend to not notice such things as message boards in front of churches - there are so many! But on the way to Brenham, TX with Soubry, we passed a church right outside of the Woodlands that had on its sign the following message:

Don't Worry!
Moses was a Basket Case Too!

We both thought this was pretty funny, but I couldn't slow down fast enough for a pic, so Soubry wrote the message down in his little notebook. About 30 minutes later, we passed The Cowboy Church. I've heard a lot about this church since its beginnings, but I've never visited it. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the cowboy church phenomenon:

"Cowboy churches are local Christian churches within the cowboy culture that are distinctively Western heritage in character. A typical cowboy church may meet in a rural setting in a barn, metal building, arena, sale barn, or old western building, have its own rodeo arena, and a country gospel band. Baptisms are generally done in a stock tank. The sermons are usually short and simple. Some cowboy churches have covered arenas where rodeo events such as bull riding, team roping, ranch sorting, team penning and equestrian events are held on weeknights."

Not surprisingly, there are over 750 cowboy churches in the state of Texas alone, according to the website Cowboy Churches Net.

One of the things Soubry noted whilst driving around the Woodlands was the fact that there was a church on every street corner .... practically! Which is true. Whatever your flavor, we even have a new Hindu Temple. The following pix are culled from the intertent. I'm certain many have been seen before, but I thought these to be pretty funny. A good church should have a correspondingly good sense of humour! (Though I wonder if these messages were MEANT to be amusing or were accidental ....!)

xxx

look ma - no hands!

2011-10-03T01:06:00.004-05:00

We ladies from work had dinner together this evening at a local Italian restaurant.
This photo was on the wall in the room
where they sat us...!

Appropriate - yes ???

xxx

this is what we discussed at dinner

2011-10-02T20:18:00.000-05:00

hahahaha!

xxx

bits and pieces

2011-09-29T21:07:00.007-05:00

These are a few 'leftover' photos from Soubriquet's trip to Texas this summer. He's behind the camera on all; I just did a wee bit of editing! They remind me of happy times.

Tucked away behind the high rises of downtown Houston ...

He always manages to spy a dragon or two for me!

You can take the man out of England, but the curious boy travels!
Pipes? Really?

A good selection of lassos to round up yer mule in Brenham.

And a warm blanket for yer mule on a cold Texas night!

The broken pot cemetery at the Antique Rose Emporium, Independence, TX.
'Rest in Pieces' 'Cracked Up' 'Died Broke'

MORE rusty trucks .... Independence, TX

downtown Brenham, TX, very quaintly western

Newnan, GA - my home town!

I love the varied architecture of my home town.

The county courthouse in downtown Newnan, GA.
It survived the War of Aggression ...

Newnan skyline at dusk. I just liked this pic.

xxx

on depression

2011-09-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, I struggle with bipolar depression. What most of you don't know, is that I've been living medication-free for the last 3 months, with the permission of my doctor. We (doctor and I) had come to the agreement that current medicative therapies weren't working, and we've gone through the gamut of what's available/what I can afford (as in, I cannot afford electro-shock therapy or the new magnetic therapy) so ...... why not stop all medication and see what happens. In my doctor's words, "The worse that can happen is you'll crash and burn."

At first, I felt .... euphoric. Then the panic attacks started. And slowly, my world has been caving in on me. I've soldiered on because frankly, starting a new med is not what I want to do. What I want to do is get better and hoped the depression would begin to lift / hoping for a little bit of bipolar mania to step in and save the day. As my luck would have it, my doctor is now doubting that I'm bipolar at all (as I've had no manic spells in the last two years.)

What does this mean for me? Well, I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland - I've fallen down into a deep rabbit hole and I'm not sure how to find my way out. Did Alice get embiggened? I'm not sure that will work for me.... But the signs are here: I skipped my last doctor's appointment, and then I called in sick to work today which I've NEVER done except for when the little one runs a fever.

This is what depression does, it carves the hope right out of you until there is nothing left but empty despair.

In "The View from Here" by Kay Redfield Jamison, she states,

Depression, which is bloodlessly, if accurately, described by the DSM as, “depressed mood or the loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all activities,” is more humanly conveyed by William Cowper, in lines he wrote after a suicide attempt:

encompass’d with a thousand dangers,
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
...........................................................................
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb am
Buried above ground.

Kay also writes, "I have found a kind of solace in poetry that I cannot find elsewhere. Perhaps it is because poetry so astutely conjures moods; moods, in turn, have determined so much of my life;" (she is bipolar and a doctor)

So today, I want to share this poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He describes how I'm feeling so poignantly:

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

~ from In Memoriam A.H.H.

xxx

on the bookshelf

2011-09-25T21:30:00.000-05:00

I've been stumbling about trying to find something INTERESTING to blog and well .... sometimes inspiration is lacking. BUT, I did find in my intertent travels today this wonderful tumblr site called Bookshelf Porn which has THOUSANDS of photos of books and shelves and bookstuff. Some of my favorite book photos are on this site. It's overwhelming, I confess, to be confronted with so many images at one time of something that you love. Well, it's a bit like porn, I suppose ....

Recently, I've gone back to actually READING books, rather to just listening to them on tape. (Long convoluted story on why I stopped reading which I won't share.) So far I've read 18 books during the last two and half weeks. Most have been rather forgettable reads. Jodi Picoult's House Rules was an interesting look at Asperger's syndrome and its legal ramifications. Plus she had a great joke about a psychiatrist in it that I wish I had dog-eared to blog because it was very funny! The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins has been getting a lot of hype as it is being made into a movie (which will either be a really interesting thing or a train wreck of a motion picture). It's geared towards the Young Adult market and wasn't as gory and grim as I expected it to be. I'll probably wait for the video to come out. Jury is out on whether I will continue reading the entire series.

I want to amend this to say, "I HAVE a boy who will build me bookshelves."

A surprising read was The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton which turned out to be sort of a grown-up's version of my favorite childhood book, The Secret Garden. Lots of plot twists and turns! I'll probably look for another one of Morton's books next time I'm at the bookstore. I was disappointed with Rescue by my favorite author, Anita Shreve. It wasn't up to her usual standards. And similarly felt the same about State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, another fav author.

I've heard that Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is excellent, so it's on the list to read. If you have any additional recommendations, please feel free to comment. I'm always on the look-out for a great read.

all photos from Bookshelf Porn

xxx

through the garden gates

2011-09-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

These are a few photos of gates we've discovered and liked during our travels together. As a former landscape designer, I tend towards simple farm gates because their lines are pleasing to most customers (and cheaper to build as well.) The first three photos are from Soubry's recent trip to Texas. The rest of the gates are from 'somewheres in England.' The photos span a 4 year period.

Thank you to Soubriquet for providing such lovely anecdotal tales about these gates. You should read them in the comments. ~ RDG ~ oh heck, I'm just going to add them to the post. They are THAT good!

Gay Hill, TX - I designed this front gate for a client 7 or 8 years ago.
Nice post....

gate the first, I like this, its geometry, I like the way it frames the house beyond, echoing the roofline of the porch. I like the way it form a clear boundary, like the gatehouse of a mediaeval castle, or a church, it seems to offer sanctuary, a pause, a place to kiss goodnight, hello, goodbye, a place to rummage for your keys in the pouring rain, a place to square your shoulders and ready yourself for whatever comes next.
A place to stop, and smile, as you walk out of one world, and toward another.

Independence, TX

The second gate, Independence, Tx, the house looks abandoned, looks as though nobody's lived there for a while, but as though someone keeps an eye on it, drops by every now and then. But once, oh once it was new. Once it was a home. I can only guess, there's a barn with a gas pump. Next door. By that gate.
Maybe, long ago, before at road was straightened, and traffic dwindled, maybe the man from the house, and his son came through that gate in the morning, to work on cars and trucks, to pump gas, sell tyres and fanbelts, oil and grease, sparkplugs and paint. Maybe the garden within rang to the sound of children playing. Maybe the men waited for the squeal of that gate, heralding the smiling woman who brought a can of coffee, and told them not to be late in, because she was cooking, and if they were late, the little ones would get it all..
Back then, that gate was a big deal. It could have been a simple wooden one, but she said "No, Joe, I want one that's pretty, one like we saw at that house in town, we may live out here in the middle of nowhere, but we're not nobodies. " And he smiled. He'd be happy with anything that worked, but he said "Give me a kiss, and on saturday we'll go into town and order your gate."
Which they did, and it would come, next week, on the train to the little station in town. And when it did, the store would load it onto Hank's truck, along with the drums of oil, and the tyres, and the boxes of parts, and it would come, some day. With the little can of bright paint. And she'd sit, in the hot sun, painting it, looking proudly at the entrance to her home, wondering if that gate would outlive her, who would paint it when she and Joe were just names on a stone? Would they think of her, wonder who chose that fancy metal?

Arch made out of stacked terracotta pots at the Antique Rose Emporium,
Independence, TX

Gate the third. I had to photograph it. hundreds, maybe thousands of plantpots, coiling like a terracotta wisteria around the gate to a rose-garden. I loved it. I wonder who thought of it, who did it, were they all old redundant pots, that someone said... "get rid of them, we don't use them any more"?
They make an unforgettable portal.

I think this is in Masham?

Next We're in England. a gate of splendour, guarding an archway off a little town square. Oh, it's in a stone arch, but its exuberant steel foliage hints at the leafy garden beyond.
(Masham, North Yorkshire. Where I own shares in a brewery...)

Broadway in the Cotswolds

Now we come to a solid oaken farm-gate, in the Cotswolds, Broadway is the village. A place of beautiful old houses, warm creamy limestone, lots of flowers, very expensive houses, the moneyed classes supplanting country folk.

I love this gate. Estate in Leeds - Harrowood

Harewood. Harewood House, a gate into a paddock, very fancy, because it can be seen from the stately home, Arts and Crafts period, William Morris era. Heaven knows what this gate would have cost. Wrought iron. Hammered glowing metal, bent and twisted in the forge. Wreak, wrought.
Close to this gate, by the steps to the formal garden, there's a tree. Evergreen, laden with sweet scented white flowers, Eucryphia. The bees get drunk on fermenting nectar, I think of this place, smile a smile. You know why.

somewheres in England - Riveulx

We're moving on, to a gate from the beechwoods onto the lawn of Rievaulx Terrace, a landscaped overview on the edge of the North York moors. Beyond this gate, we pass out of the beechwoods onto a grassy sward, at each end of which, is a classical building, an ionic temple at one end, a tuscan temple at the other. They've been here since the 18th century, when they were built by the owners of Duncomb Park, as a banqueting house and summer pavilion, a private fantasy, a few miles from the great house, overlooking the romantic ruins of a far older place, Rievaulx Abbey.
A plce for romance, I think.

somewheres in England - Leeds, Oakwood

The last gate in your photo-odyssey is on Montague Place in Oakwood, Leeds. Or it was. I think it's gone now. I think the house it belonged to was sold, the buyers built an extension. ans the gate's gone. I think. I'll look for it on monday, as I drive to work.
You liked the gate, and the old garages at the back of the houses. I quite like it, but it's the product of a guy with an arc welder and a scroll-forming jig, and he's gone overboard on scrolls...

xxx

for gz

2011-09-23T20:45:00.000-05:00

We Are Living
by Brendan Kennelly

What is this room
But the moments we have lived in it?
When all due has been paid
To gods of wood and stone
And recognition has been made
Of those who'll breathe here when we are gone
Does it not take its worth from us
Who made it because we were here?

Your words are the only furniture I can remember
Your body the book that told me most.
If this room has a ghost
It will be your laughter in the frank dark
Revealing the world as a room
Loved only for those moments when
We touched the purely human.

I could give water now to thirsty plants,
Dig up the floorboards, the foundation,
Study the worm's confidence,
Challenge his omnipotence
Because my blind eyes have seen through walls
That make safe prisons of the days.

We are living
In ceiling, floor and windows,
We are given to where we have been.
This white door will always open
On what our hands have touched,
Our eyes have seen.

xxx

a gate poem

2011-09-23T17:20:00.000-05:00

Misery and Splendor
by Robert Hass

Summoned by conscious recollection, she

would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,

before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,

the window has many small panes, and they are on a couch

embracing. He holds her as tightly

as he can, she buries herself in his body.

Morning, maybe it is evening, light

is flowing through the room. Outside,

the day is slowly succeeded by night,

succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly

and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the room

does not change, so it is plain what is happening.

They are trying to become one creature,

and something will not have it. They are tender

with each other, afraid

their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment

when they fall away again. So they rub against each other,

their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.

They feel themselves at the center of a powerful

and baffled will. They feel

they are an almost animal,

washed up on the shore of a world—

or huddled against the gate of a garden—

to which they can’t admit they can never be admitted.

xxx

the curious case of missing frogs' legs

2011-09-22T21:11:00.000-05:00

Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs' legs.

Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution.

However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause.

The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles.

for the sisterhood: a fairy tale

2011-09-21T22:03:00.001-05:00

"Once upon a time, in a land far away,
a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess
happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues
on the shores of an unpolluted pond
in a verdant meadow near her castle.
The frog hopped into the princess's lap and said:
'Sweet Lady, I was once a handsome prince,
until an evil witch cast a spell on me.
One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back
into the dapper young prince that I am.
Then, my sweet, we can marry
and set up house in yon castle
where you can prepare my meals,
clean my clothes, bear my children,
and forever feel grateful and happy doing so.'
That night, dining on a repast of lightly sauteed frogs' legs,
The princess chuckled to herself and thought:
I don't f**king think so."

from I Don't Know How She Does It
by Allison Pearson
xxx

the elephant

2011-09-20T18:58:00.000-05:00

The Elephant
by Dan Chaisson

How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel

that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.

Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion,

once I was not the elephant I find I am.

My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched

trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was

somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness

and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me

to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it

in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind

I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man

of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers

breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments

with balance, the high-wire act and cones.

We elephants are images of humility, as when we

undertake our melancholy migrations to die.

Did you know, though, that elephants were taught

to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves?

Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs,

tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer.

That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys:

it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.

xxx

ponderin' life's small questions

2011-09-19T22:16:00.001-05:00

How come when you're young, people tell you
'An apple a day will keep the doctor away,'

But NOW it takes an entire orchard ??!!!

xxx

street sign furniture

2011-09-18T21:25:00.001-05:00

from RDG:
Okay, Okay. It might not be the most comfortable looking of furniture, but think about what a conversation piece it would be in the garden, on the patio - a place where it would weather and age like all good road signage does. Plus I personally like the bowls and spoons and could see myself happily munching my cornflakes out of them each morning. The bright colors make me smile!

From his website:

"Boris Bally's award-winning work is both witty and innovative employing the use of jeweler's skills on non-precious materials. His current body of work transforms recycled street signs, weapon parts, and a wide variety of found materials into objects for reflection. These pieces celebrate raw American street-aesthetic in the form of objects, often useful, for the home and the body."

by Boris Bally

go green!
xxx

for you ...

2011-09-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

I consider this to be the sexiest song written of all time. Go ahead. Prove me wrong. I wish I had written these lyrics:

You've got your ball
you've got your chain
tied to me tight tie me up again
who's got their claws
in you my friend
Into your heart I'll beat again
Sweet like candy to my soul
Sweet you rock
and sweet you roll
Lost for you I'm so lost for you

You come crash into me
And I come into you
I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream

Touch your lips just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I'm bare boned and crazy for you
When you come crash
into me, baby
And I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream

If I've gone overboard
Then I'm begging you
to forgive me
in my haste
When I'm holding you so girl
close to me

Oh and you come crash
into me, baby
And I come into you
Hike up your skirt a little more
and show the world to me
Hike up your skirt a little more
and show your world to me
In a boys dream.. In a boys dream

Oh I watch you there
through the window
And I stare at you
You wear nothing but you
wear it so well
tied up and twisted
the way I'd like to be
For you, for me, come crash
into me

oh sighhh....xxx

casting pearls before swine

2011-09-14T22:21:00.000-05:00

by Mindy Flexer

xxx

GASP! A serving wench writes poetry!!

2011-09-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

A Poem, on the Supposition of an Advertisement
Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a
Volume of Poems, by a Servant-Maid

By Elizabeth Hands

The tea-kettle bubbled, the tea things were set,

The candles were lighted, the ladies were met;

The how d’ye’s were over, and entering bustle,

The company seated, and silks ceased to rustle:

The great Mrs. Consequence opened her fan,

And thus the discourse in an instant began

(All affected reserve and formality scorning):

“I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning

A volume of Poems advertised—’tis said

They’re produced by the pen of a poor servant-maid.”

“A servant write verses!” says Madam Du Bloom:

“Pray what is the subjectd—a Mop, or a Broom?”

“He, he, he,” says Miss Flounce: “I suppose we shall see

An ode on a Dishclout—what else can it be?”

Says Miss Coquettilla, “Why, ladies, so tart?

Perhaps Tom the footman has fired her heart;

And she’ll tell us how charming he looks in new clothes,

And how nimble his hand moves in brushing the shoes;

Or how, the last time that he went to May Fair,

He bought her some sweethearts of gingerbread ware.”

“For my part I think,” says old Lady Marr-joy,

“A servant might find herself other employ:

Was she mine I’d employ her as long as ’twas light,

And send her to bed without candle at night.”

“Why so?” says Miss Rhymer, displeased: “I protest

’Tis pity a genius should be so depressed!”

“What ideas can such low-bred creatures conceive?”

Says Mrs. Noworthy, and laughed in her sleeve.

Says old Miss Prudella, “If servants can tell

How to write to their mothers, to say they are well,

And read of a Sunday The Duty of Man,

Which is more I believe than one half of them can;

I think ’tis much properer they should rest there,

Than be reaching at things so much out of their sphere.”

Says old Mrs. Candour, “I’ve now got a maid

That’s the plague of my life—a young gossiping jade;

There’s no end of the people that after her come,

And whenever I’m out, she is never at home;

I’d rather ten times she would sit down and write,

Than gossip all over the town every night.”

“Some whimsical trollop most like,” says Miss Prim,

“Has been scribbling of nonsense, just out of a whim,

And, conscious it neither is witty nor pretty,

Conceals her true name, and ascribes it to Betty.”

“I once had a servant myself,” says Miss Pines,

“That wrote on a wedding some very good lines.”

Says Mrs. Domestic, “And when they were done,

I can’t see for my part what use they were on;

Had she wrote a receipt, to’ve instructed you how

To warm a cold breast of veal, like a ragout,

Or to make cowslip wine, that would pass for Champagne,

It might have been useful, again and again.”

On the sofa was old Lady Pedigree placed;

She owned that for poetry she had no taste,

That the study of heraldry was more in fashion,

And boasted she knew all the crests in the nation.

Says Mrs. Routella, “Tom, take out the urn,

And stir up the fire, you see it don’t burn.”

The tea-things removed, and the tea-table gone,

The card-tables brought, and the cards laid thereon,

The ladies, ambitious for each other’s crown,

Like courtiers contending for honours, sat down.

xxx

make love, not war

2011-09-11T23:04:00.000-05:00

xxx

ninja economics

2011-09-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

xxx

9.11.11

2011-09-11T07:02:00.000-05:00

an excerpt from:

Beyond Grief and Grievance

The poetry of 9/11 and its aftermath.

by Philip Metres

" The events of 9/11 occasioned a tremendous outpouring of poetry; people in New York taped poems on windows, wheatpasted them on posts, and shared them by hand. In Curtis Fox’s words, “poetry was suddenly everywhere in the city.” Outside the immediate radius of what became known as “ground zero,” aided by email, listserves, websites, and, later, blogs, thousands of people also shared poems they loved, and poems they had written. By February, 2002, over 25,000 poems written in response to 9/11 had been published on poems.com alone. Three years later, the number of poems there had more than doubled.

Often invisible in American culture, poetry suddenly became relevant, even—and perhaps dangerously—useful. People turned to poems when other forms failed to give shape to their feelings. Some of these poems, certainly, employed the language of faith, a faith that has often been mobilized as a weapon of grievance. Some were desperately angry, in the way Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” promises to put a “boot in the ass” of those that “messed” with the U.S. of A. In Cleveland, I recall hearing some rather salty Osama limericks involving his mama.

Of course, poems that take on subjects as public and iconic as the attacks of September 11th risk not only devolving into cliché and hysterical jingoism, but also, even when most well-meaning, perpetuating the violence of terror, and the violence of grievance and revenge, as mass media did by endlessly replaying images of the planes exploding into the World Trade Center towers. But we cannot be silent. So between the Scylla of cliché and the Charybdis of exploitation, poetry moves."

Photograph from September 11
by Wisława Szymborska

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

xxx

making apple butter

2011-09-09T19:17:00.000-05:00

Apple Butter

An apple sat on the railroad track,
its heart was all a flutter.
Around the bend came number 10,
and smoosh smoosh, Apple butter.

It's almost fall .... well, it's 96 instead of 106 degrees today, and gz over at her blog, "ook?!" got me thinking about apple butter in her Say Cheese post.

One of my best memories of visiting my grandmother in West Virginia was the day she and my great-aunt Violet made apple butter - OUTSIDE!

These two ladies COULD be my grandmother Ruth and her sister Violet, but they are not. Apple butter making was an all day affair starting early in the morning. My grandfather built the fire out in the back garden and laid in a stack of wood to keep it burning nice and steady. He set the tripod up over the fire awaiting the large iron kettle. Once his tasks were complete, the ladies sent him away - this was their pleasure. They started the morning early, peeling and coring bushels of apples. I suspect the apples came from trees on their father's farm which backed up to my grandparents' property. The first batch of the season!

Once peeled and cored, the apples are placed in the large iron pot and seasoned with sugar and spices. My grandmother used a lot of cinnamon and clove in her apple butter plus lemon juice for that yummy sweet /tart flavor. The secret of apple butter is slooow cooking over a low fire for HOURS with constant stirring to keep it from burning (like a custard or pudding). A large wooden paddle was used to stir the apples. Everyone took turns, including me! I think I was 9 or 10 yrs old at the time. Too unwieldly with a knife, but I could stir. Can you imagine how their arms must have ached ???

Meanwhile, my mother and aunt were in the canning kitchen (located in the basement of the house) sterilizing the jars and rims and lids for the apple butter. I'd regularly make trips back and forth from the cooking site to the canning site just to see what was happening. Occasionally, I'd be allowed to throw another stick onto the fire. You knew the apple butter was done when its color turned a deep rich brown, and it was thick and smooth. My grandmother never used a blender or food mill to smooth her apple butter. She did it all by the constant stirring. It was nearing dusk when they decided the batch was ready for canning.

Grandpa's job was to take the iron pot down to the canning kitchen. All the women hustled and bustled to ladle the apple butter into jars and then boil the jars to seal the lids. YUMMY! I loved apple butter best on toast, but it was also great on grandmother's homemade biscuits.

Today, with the advent of slow cookers, you can make your own apple butter indoors, no stoking the fire, no constant stirring. I suppose this makes it easier on the makers, but I will always cherish being a part of the 'old-fashioned' way of making apple butter. Just like my great-grandmother and her mother and aunts used to make it!

xxx

the power of scent

2011-09-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

"I can signal a sequence of events in my life that are instantly recallable in the context of their fragrances, that bring forth the character of those moments in a startlingly clear evocation of that instant. Scent travels from the moment to the mind in the gathering of those touches in time.

Scent is place and memory—it is experience recalled. Every scent, in the microscopic particulate nature of its diffusion, is distinctive, unforgettable to those who are mindful, informing a significant part of our experience. The memory is a story." ~ Tim Girvin

Bergamot
by Justin Chin

In the beauty shop, the saleswoman dabs
a touch of bergamot to my right wrist;
I grind the spot staining
my thin skin and vulgar veins
stretched across my carpus to the left
of its image; the friction
spreads the scent into my pulse
and I bring my newly aromatic
joint to my face.

This was before I knew the name
of that heady scent spilling
from teacups filling cafes
in steam and clink of pastry plates.
Before how the smell of a big pot
of chicken soup cooking in my kitchen
changed. Before I knew how
perfumous desire was, before I knew
the whiff of missing a lover.

xxx

word of the day: Sardoodledom

2011-09-05T22:19:00.000-05:00

A guest post from my 10 yr old mulette.

xxx

an argumentative woman

2011-09-04T20:39:00.000-05:00

I've been getting a lot of feedback lately, here on the blogs, that I'm an argumentative woman. If I follow the lexicon of 'argumentative', I find words and phrases such as 'fond or given to argument', disputatious and contentious. Digging a bit further, disputatious leads me to verbal controversy, discussion and debate. Argument suggests oral disagreement, discussion, differing points of view; a process of reasoning; a statement, reason, or fact for or against a point; or a composition intended to convince or persuade. Am I guilty of discussing differing points of view? Do I state reasons or facts against a point? Do I compose compositions intended to convince or persuade? Well, yes, of course I do.

I admit, I am one of those women who enjoys argumentative play. I like batting around ideas, I like playing devil's advocate, I enjoy being tested by someone else playing devil's advocate. I have a tendency to make bold pronouncements, which sometimes are true and at other times are somewhat fictitious, just to get a debate going. Once under way I usually temper my polemic and attempt to be earnest and reasonable, after I've put up a good fight. I like the tussling of language.

I am not mean-spirited, though I can be sarcastic if provoked. Some may call it 'snarky.' I'm not opposed to a bit of snarkiness as long as the intention is not to harm. The key idea here is 'play' and when a discussion gets personal and critical, then I tend to pack up my toys and go home. It's how we little girls learned to play with one another. Boys push each other down, get up, pat each other on the shoulder and go on to play another round. They playfully trade insults. Sometimes my need to be liked gets in the way of my interpreting remarks and I see them as insults - and not the playful kind. It's a girl thing. In person I tease a lot and argue, but I do not like mean confrontation. There IS a boundary, and we all know when we cross it.

So go ahead, call me argumentative. I AM a mule, after all.

xxx

sleeping with the dictionary

2011-09-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

Bandeau pour la lettre z

Le Grand dictionnaire universel - 1865 - Larousse, Pierre

Sleeping with the Dictionary
by Harryette Mullen

I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are ready to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader. In the dark night’s insomnia, the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language. Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables—all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work. Any exit from the logic of language might be an entry in a symptomatic dictionary. The alphabetical order of this ample block of knowledge might render a dense lexicon of lucid hallucinations. Beside the bed, a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words. In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.

xxx

Nickel Creek

2011-09-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

Whew! After a week like this one, I need to wind down to the mellow sounds of Nickel Creek. My l'il sis introduced me to this band in 2000, and I fell in love with their bluegrass / folk rhythms. Not to mention THE MANDOLIN. I love mandolin playing. I have many fav songs from Nickel Creek - this is just one of many! And besides, what angel doesn't need some solid ground ???

xxx

Don Keyhote

2011-09-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

in Senoia, GA

xxx

soubriquet demands groveling

2011-09-01T16:52:00.000-05:00

He also wants my 20 dancing girls, 40 camels, my first born son and my box of red crayons. I FREELY acknowledge I know NOTHING about physics nor am I inclined to learn more, especially after this skirmish. However, I have made page 1 on Google for "Bernoulli effect and architecture ....... " Oh right, I'm groveling. Ummmmm .... don't believe everything you read on Google ?????

xxx
Just a note: I'm keeping ONE red crayon ....