'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.
WELCOME. Take a moment to kick off your shoes, relax, and refill your cup. Enjoy some poetry and a bit of art. Browse through the assorted offerings, and hopefully you'll find something helpful, informative, or just fun. Oh, And chocolate!
Monday, March 31, 2014
BOOK REVIEWS. Sort Of.
"All these things and so many others you've described, Mr. Parsky, have made me weep. You have no right to be bitter. In your books have been hundreds of moments like eternity."
I loved it: a dialogue, both internal and spoken, between an author and his reader.
Would you really want to meet and get to know your favorite author?
Do you think being disillusioned by the author would affect your enjoyment of her/his work?
"Everybody counts or nobody counts."
"It means I bust my ass to make a case whether its a prostitute or the mayor's wife. That's my rule."
Somebody's just a little bit cranky.
And if you're going to go after the truth, you'd best best ready for what you find.
"What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe."
Well, I didn't see that coming!
I'm not upset about it, mind you, just a bit surprised.
"To these detractors he was the scum of the legal system, a courtroom magician who could reach into the deck at any place and pull out the race card."
Sometimes your train is going up. Sometimes your train is going down. And sometimes that sucker is just sitting there, refusing to move.
Life huh?
"She had parked the Renault on the outskirts of Weldisham, a village on the outskirts of the South Downs that looked from the outside as if it hadn't changed much since the days when Agatha Christie might have set a murder there."
Oh, the complications of remote village life.
People who live in bustling cities just don't know how good they have it!
"There was no point in letting her parents know that the unsavory side of Spike's life was in the ascendance."
It definitely pays to be able to think on your feet while building your curriculum vitae - and solving murders.
Sometimes we are absolutely sure we know what we want . . .
"There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at."
Two bracing plots are drawn inexorably together.
All we can be is who we are. No?
Shades of Richard III (and all the rest)."True it is,
That these are not the droids for which thou search'st."
- Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi
All you really need is an appreciation of Shakespeare and a sense of humor.
"On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other."
I really want to like the poetry of Maya Angelou. I believe in her basic message, and her desire for justice and equality. I really do. Some of her pieces are breathtaking and move me greatly, but most simply do not. My guess is that this is a lack on my part. So, periodically, I pick up another book and try again.
One of the wonderful things about poetry, my friends, is that there is so much of it. Search, experiment, try and discard, until you find your fit.
It's okay if you don't like a certain poem, or poet, honest. There are many more from which to choose.
"The purpose of Buddhism is not to convert people. It is to give them tools so they can create greater happiness. So they can be happier Catholics, happier atheists, happier Buddhists. There are many practices."
"It is the wonderful paradox that the best way to achieve happiness for oneself is to give happiness to others."
This is a gentle exposition of Buddhist ideals, narrated deftly by the Dalai Lama's cat, HRH. Who says cats are cold and stand-offish!
It put me in mind of Virginia Wolf's Flush. (also worth a read, though on a different topic)
"As roads go, the road home is as good as any."
I have read all of these stories, and I've seen the entire BBC series. It was still a pleasure to listen to a good historical murder mystery told by none other than the steadfast Brother Cadfael, himself. (Sir Derek Jacobi)
"L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning."
Definitely not light reading: a murder wrapped in a mystery, surrounded by a city at war. Compelling.
"Being in our element depends on finding our own distinctive talents and passions. Why haven't most people found this? One of the most important reasons is that most people have a very limited conception of their own natural capacities."
In the book, the author says that society (through it's agents: parents, teachers, doctors, etc.) tells us that our individualistic impulses are wrong and we must conform.
He then gives example after example of famous people who were lucky enough to have someone believe in them so that they could escape their programming and succeed.
Just follow their examples!
He also offers ideas to revamp the school system so that the problem might be fixed.
It's more of a pep talk than a how to.
"God. Life's bloody unfair. Get born with a tassell and you've got an advantage for the rest of your life."
Some problems are the same wherever you go: neighbors, repair men, murder.
Mrs. Pargeter is inquisitive, independent, and quite sprightly for her age. I may have mentioned this before, but I so want to grow old like this woman.
"Bosch nodded in a way he hoped conveyed that he understood and agreed with her thinking at the time. It didn't matter that he did not. It didn't matter that his own mother had faced the same hardship of having a child too soon and under difficult circumstances but had clung to and protected him with a fierceness that inspired his life."
Sometimes the hidden scars can leave us far more debilitated than those we see.
"The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy."
The ability to relax is an invaluable skill, and definitely one worth cultivating.
"They felt absolutely confident that they had produced a product with enough confusing words in it to make people think they were learning something."
Good friends are a very important asset in life, as is a good self-image.
"He was a great philanthropist, your husband, Mrs. Pargeter."
Have you ever noticed that many people who have no sense of humor, think they have a great one?
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Stet Stet Stet
- Ange Mlinko
Where the curve of the road rhymes with the reservoir's
and cleared of the leafy veils that for six months
obscured it,
the landscape's wet chestnut
in the gray descended cloud
intones You're lucky to live in a watershed
so no vast tracts of tacky drywall
turn the land into peremptory enclosures.
You've bought in.
The venial sin:
being exceptional.
Reading Hölderlin.
And the natural hallucinogen of joy
helium-cum-oxygen
leaving wordy outputs
hanging on piney tenterhooks
while all the wild protected liminal woods
contrive a blind.
from: Shoulder Season. Copyright 2010.
Where the curve of the road rhymes with the reservoir's
and cleared of the leafy veils that for six months
obscured it,
the landscape's wet chestnut
in the gray descended cloud
intones You're lucky to live in a watershed
so no vast tracts of tacky drywall
turn the land into peremptory enclosures.
You've bought in.
The venial sin:
being exceptional.
Reading Hölderlin.
And the natural hallucinogen of joy
helium-cum-oxygen
leaving wordy outputs
hanging on piney tenterhooks
while all the wild protected liminal woods
contrive a blind.
from: Shoulder Season. Copyright 2010.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
This Summer
- Liam Rector
Sitting in the chair that is somewhere
between the chair of a barbershop and a beauty parlor,
chemo dripping into the catheter
surgically implanted into my chest, into body,
I resolve to smoke at least a half-ounce
of marijuana when I get home.
Perhaps I'll smoke a pound.
Dizzier than hell must be dizzy,
I'm still able to drive
(though will I be able next week?),
and after getting my ticket punched
I roar out of the Farber Clinic
(how splendid to have cancer in Boston
and fall heir to the astute care
available here)
in the silver sports car I sport
during this debacle,
and heat roars into me
with humidity so deep
it is a theological offense
which I cannot help
but take personally.
I think I may die without god,
my single comic integrity
that I have remained
an atheist in the foxhole,
though I am ready
to roar through the gates
if there are gates.
This summer I've joined the grown-old,
the infirm, the shut-ins, and the bald-headed young
(they the hardest to bear), this summer
starting with chemotherapy and ending,
by god it seems almost an ending,
with thirty radiation treatments
which have brought me to my knees.
The marijuana works. It clears things.
How lovely!
How lonely it is sometimes to have cancer.
The grass is as good as it was
when I was sixteen and found grass made the grass
a bit greener over yonder.
Almost as good
as the music I listened to that summer.
This summer I rejoin
the ever-new and always refreshing
"Get naked and stay stoned," Baudelairian crowd
as I plop stoned in the many rocks
of a river in Vermont
next to my friend's house
where we have for so many summers
worshipped the backroads
with the sports cars the two of us have driven
since we got the money to get them.
In a sports car I have worshipped this summer
the songs I've recorded on tape
driving and listening incessantly,
thinking this may be my last summer
this summer. This summer
I have conversed with death every minute
and found out I have the talent
to submit, to leave, even to flee,
and, in this, there's nothing exceptional
about me. Why, the sidewalks around Farber
are populated with so many about to die,
many of great courage and grim humor and great shuffle
getting ready, as they can, to go,
looking like they do, like the wounded of Atlanta
lying around in Atlanta just after the burning
of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.
I am among them.
They are mine, and I am theirs.
Our motto: Fight to live; prepare to go.
This summer it is so good
to hear from friends (one of whom I hear
just died: brain tumor) before I drive on out
for another burn of radiation
before I suit myself with another week of chemo
tied to a portable belt so I can go out
easily to the ocean, to remaining
friends there, before I lean into another joint,
a late century life afloat on a sea of loans,
and hear over the telephone my sixteen-year-old
daughter in Virginia saying she now thinks
she will never ever smoke marijuana
because it is, after all,
just another "gateway drug."
from: The Executive Director of the Fallen World. Copyright 2006.
Sitting in the chair that is somewhere
between the chair of a barbershop and a beauty parlor,
chemo dripping into the catheter
surgically implanted into my chest, into body,
I resolve to smoke at least a half-ounce
of marijuana when I get home.
Perhaps I'll smoke a pound.
Dizzier than hell must be dizzy,
I'm still able to drive
(though will I be able next week?),
and after getting my ticket punched
I roar out of the Farber Clinic
(how splendid to have cancer in Boston
and fall heir to the astute care
available here)
in the silver sports car I sport
during this debacle,
and heat roars into me
with humidity so deep
it is a theological offense
which I cannot help
but take personally.
I think I may die without god,
my single comic integrity
that I have remained
an atheist in the foxhole,
though I am ready
to roar through the gates
if there are gates.
This summer I've joined the grown-old,
the infirm, the shut-ins, and the bald-headed young
(they the hardest to bear), this summer
starting with chemotherapy and ending,
by god it seems almost an ending,
with thirty radiation treatments
which have brought me to my knees.
The marijuana works. It clears things.
How lovely!
How lonely it is sometimes to have cancer.
The grass is as good as it was
when I was sixteen and found grass made the grass
a bit greener over yonder.
Almost as good
as the music I listened to that summer.
This summer I rejoin
the ever-new and always refreshing
"Get naked and stay stoned," Baudelairian crowd
as I plop stoned in the many rocks
of a river in Vermont
next to my friend's house
where we have for so many summers
worshipped the backroads
with the sports cars the two of us have driven
since we got the money to get them.
In a sports car I have worshipped this summer
the songs I've recorded on tape
driving and listening incessantly,
thinking this may be my last summer
this summer. This summer
I have conversed with death every minute
and found out I have the talent
to submit, to leave, even to flee,
and, in this, there's nothing exceptional
about me. Why, the sidewalks around Farber
are populated with so many about to die,
many of great courage and grim humor and great shuffle
getting ready, as they can, to go,
looking like they do, like the wounded of Atlanta
lying around in Atlanta just after the burning
of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.
I am among them.
They are mine, and I am theirs.
Our motto: Fight to live; prepare to go.
This summer it is so good
to hear from friends (one of whom I hear
just died: brain tumor) before I drive on out
for another burn of radiation
before I suit myself with another week of chemo
tied to a portable belt so I can go out
easily to the ocean, to remaining
friends there, before I lean into another joint,
a late century life afloat on a sea of loans,
and hear over the telephone my sixteen-year-old
daughter in Virginia saying she now thinks
she will never ever smoke marijuana
because it is, after all,
just another "gateway drug."
from: The Executive Director of the Fallen World. Copyright 2006.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Books
- Gerald Stern
How you loved to read in the snow and when your
face turned to water from the internal heat
combined with the heavy crystals or maybe it was
reversus you went half-blind and your eyelashes
turned to ice the time you walked through swirls
with dirty tears not far from the rat-filled river
or really a mile away—or two—in what
you came to call the Aristotle room
in a small hole outside the Carnegie library.
Copyright 2010.
How you loved to read in the snow and when your
face turned to water from the internal heat
combined with the heavy crystals or maybe it was
reversus you went half-blind and your eyelashes
turned to ice the time you walked through swirls
with dirty tears not far from the rat-filled river
or really a mile away—or two—in what
you came to call the Aristotle room
in a small hole outside the Carnegie library.
Copyright 2010.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Nothing Stays Put
- Amy Clampitt
In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985
The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes--a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom--
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics--
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested, standing like troops at attention,
these tiers, these balconies of green, festoons
grown sumptuous with stoop labor?
The exotic is everywhere, it comes to us
before there is a yen or a need for it. The green-
grocers, uptown and down, are from South Korea.
Orchids, opulence by the pailful, just slightly
fatigued by the plane trip from Hawaii, are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor's buttons. But it isn't the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it's
a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk red poppies,
in my grandmother's garden: a prairie childhood,
the grassland shorn, overlaid with a grid,
unsealed, furrowed, harrowed and sown with immigrant grasses,
their massive corduroy, their wavering feltings embroidered
here and there by the scarlet shoulder patch of cannas
on a courthouse lawn, by a love knot, a cross stitch
of living matter, sown and tended by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.
But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above--
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.
from: The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt. Copyright 1997.
In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985
The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes--a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom--
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics--
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested, standing like troops at attention,
these tiers, these balconies of green, festoons
grown sumptuous with stoop labor?
The exotic is everywhere, it comes to us
before there is a yen or a need for it. The green-
grocers, uptown and down, are from South Korea.
Orchids, opulence by the pailful, just slightly
fatigued by the plane trip from Hawaii, are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor's buttons. But it isn't the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it's
a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk red poppies,
in my grandmother's garden: a prairie childhood,
the grassland shorn, overlaid with a grid,
unsealed, furrowed, harrowed and sown with immigrant grasses,
their massive corduroy, their wavering feltings embroidered
here and there by the scarlet shoulder patch of cannas
on a courthouse lawn, by a love knot, a cross stitch
of living matter, sown and tended by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.
But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above--
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.
from: The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt. Copyright 1997.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
- Dylan Thomas
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
from: The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Copyright 1952, 1953.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
from: The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Copyright 1952, 1953.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The Orchid Flower
- Sam Hamill
Just as I wonder
whether it's going to die,
the orchid blossoms
and I can't explain why it
moves my heart, why such pleasure
comes from one small bud
on a long spindly stem, one
blood red gold flower
opening at mid-summer,
tiny, perfect in its hour.
Even to a white-
haired craggy poet, it's
purely erotic,
pistil and stamen, pollen,
dew of the world, a spoonful
of earth, and water.
Erotic because there's death
at the heart of birth,
drama in those old sunrise
prisms in wet cedar boughs,
deepest mystery
in washing evening dishes
or teasing my wife,
who grows, yes, more beautiful
because one of us will die.
From: Dumb Luck. Copyright 2002.
Just as I wonder
whether it's going to die,
the orchid blossoms
and I can't explain why it
moves my heart, why such pleasure
comes from one small bud
on a long spindly stem, one
blood red gold flower
opening at mid-summer,
tiny, perfect in its hour.
Even to a white-
haired craggy poet, it's
purely erotic,
pistil and stamen, pollen,
dew of the world, a spoonful
of earth, and water.
Erotic because there's death
at the heart of birth,
drama in those old sunrise
prisms in wet cedar boughs,
deepest mystery
in washing evening dishes
or teasing my wife,
who grows, yes, more beautiful
because one of us will die.
From: Dumb Luck. Copyright 2002.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Saturday Farmer's Market - It's Official! Spring is here!
Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.
Good morning
&
Happy Spring to you.
It's finally here, officially. But I'm sure the season will still have a few surprises in store for us.
UPDATE(s) from Last Week:
The cold frame is up and running, nice and sturdy.
No wayward veggies will be escaping from this structure!
In fact, it has seen it's first graduates.
This week cucumbers and zucchini squash moved out and into the garden.
So far, they're doing fine.
Next, there is my high-tech, state-of-the-art irrigation system.
We are, after all in the midst of a drought, and I have a newly planted orchard, not to mention my vegetable and herb gardens.MATERIALS NEEDED:
gallon milk jugs (with caps)
TOOLS USED:
shovel
large nail
With the nail, poke two holes one about halfway down an one at the bottom. Do this facing each plant.
In the ones pictured buried with my snow peas, there are four holes, two on each side.
Right now, I fill them up about every three days, and everybody is happy.As the Weather gets hotter I will have to increase the frequency with which I fill them.
For the veggies I have buried the jugs to get the water directly to their roots and avoid any evaporation.
Digging around the trees is bad for them so the jugs sit on the soil above the roots.
A circle of ribbon keeps them from blowing away when they are empty.
Finally, how about my designer mulch!
I've been sorting our junk mail and shredding for the garden.
As long as it's not the shiny paper and has veggie based inks . . . they say it's good to use.
You pile it on like regular mulch then wet it down good so it goops together and doesn't fly away.
We'll see.
It looks like confetti in the garden.
It seems like almost everyday now there is something new to look at.
Here is the first California Poppy of the year,
and the first of the Lavender,
Look! A Lady Bug is making her way along an Onion leaf
The little Azalea is happy.
These two little ones are Pieris Japonica. I always called them 'Lilly of the Valley' trees because their flowers look so much like them. I don't know the cultivar of the white one, but the one with the red leaves is Mountain Fire.
Irises
New Daffodils and California Poppies getting ready
I don't know what these are. Do you?
At Baia
- H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"
or
"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."
Copyright 1982.
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"
or
"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."
Copyright 1982.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Ithaka
- C.P Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
The Satyr's Heart
- Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Now I rest my head on the satyr's carved chest,
The hollow where the heart would have been, if sandstone
Had a heart, if a headless goat man could have a heart.
His neck rises to a dull point, points upward
To something long gone, elusive, and at his feet
The small flowers swarm, earnest and sweet, a clamor
Of white, a clamor of blue, and black the sweating soil
They breed in...If I sit without moving, how quickly
Things change, birds turning tricks in the trees,
Colorless birds and those with color, the wind fingering
The twigs, and the furred creatures doing whatever
Furred creatures do. So, and so. There is the smell of fruit
And the smell of wet coins. There is the sound of a bird
Crying, and the sound of water that does not move...
If I pick the dead iris? If I wave it above me
Like a flag, a blazoned flag? My fanfare? Little fare
with which I buy my way, making things brave? The way
Now I bend over and with my foot turn up a stone,
And there they are: the armies of pale creatures who
Without cease or doubt sew the sweet sad earth.
from: O Blessed Dark. Copyright 2004.
Now I rest my head on the satyr's carved chest,
The hollow where the heart would have been, if sandstone
Had a heart, if a headless goat man could have a heart.
His neck rises to a dull point, points upward
To something long gone, elusive, and at his feet
The small flowers swarm, earnest and sweet, a clamor
Of white, a clamor of blue, and black the sweating soil
They breed in...If I sit without moving, how quickly
Things change, birds turning tricks in the trees,
Colorless birds and those with color, the wind fingering
The twigs, and the furred creatures doing whatever
Furred creatures do. So, and so. There is the smell of fruit
And the smell of wet coins. There is the sound of a bird
Crying, and the sound of water that does not move...
If I pick the dead iris? If I wave it above me
Like a flag, a blazoned flag? My fanfare? Little fare
with which I buy my way, making things brave? The way
Now I bend over and with my foot turn up a stone,
And there they are: the armies of pale creatures who
Without cease or doubt sew the sweet sad earth.
from: O Blessed Dark. Copyright 2004.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Quote of the Day
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
- Jane Goodall
The Public Garden
- Robert Lowell
Burnished, burned-out, still burning as the year
you lead me to our stamping ground.
The city and its cruising cars surround
the Public Garden. All's alive—
the children crowding home from school at five,
punting a football in the bricky air,
the sailors and their pick-ups under trees
with Latin labels. And the jaded flock
of swanboats paddles to its dock.
The park is drying.
Dead leaves thicken to a ball
inside the basin of a fountain, where
the heads of four stone lions stare
and suck on empty fawcets. Night
deepens. From the arched bridge, we see
the shedding park-bound mallards, how they keep
circling and diving in the lanternlight,
searching for something hidden in the muck.
And now the moon, earth's friend, that cared so much
for us, and cared so little, comes again—
always a stranger! As we walk,
it lies like chalk
over the waters. Everything's aground.
Remember summer? Bubbles filled
the fountain, and we splashed. We drowned
in Eden, while Jehovah's grass-green lyre
was rustling all about us in the leaves
that gurgled by us, turning upside down...
The fountain's failing waters flash around
the garden. Nothing catches fire.
from: For the Union Dead. Copyright 1964.
Burnished, burned-out, still burning as the year
you lead me to our stamping ground.
The city and its cruising cars surround
the Public Garden. All's alive—
the children crowding home from school at five,
punting a football in the bricky air,
the sailors and their pick-ups under trees
with Latin labels. And the jaded flock
of swanboats paddles to its dock.
The park is drying.
Dead leaves thicken to a ball
inside the basin of a fountain, where
the heads of four stone lions stare
and suck on empty fawcets. Night
deepens. From the arched bridge, we see
the shedding park-bound mallards, how they keep
circling and diving in the lanternlight,
searching for something hidden in the muck.
And now the moon, earth's friend, that cared so much
for us, and cared so little, comes again—
always a stranger! As we walk,
it lies like chalk
over the waters. Everything's aground.
Remember summer? Bubbles filled
the fountain, and we splashed. We drowned
in Eden, while Jehovah's grass-green lyre
was rustling all about us in the leaves
that gurgled by us, turning upside down...
The fountain's failing waters flash around
the garden. Nothing catches fire.
from: For the Union Dead. Copyright 1964.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Silence
- Thomas Hood
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush'd—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free.
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyæna, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush'd—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free.
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyæna, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Another Birthday!
Happy Birthday A!
A Birthday
- Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Saturday Farmer's Market - Thingz Iz Astartin' T Happin'
Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.
UPDATE from Last Week:
Yay!
It's finished!
Well, not finished exactly.
It still needs a coat of paint or two on the window, as soon as the caulk is dry on the new panes.
This is one of the original windows from when the house was built in 1955, and it is going to be pressed into service again right away.
The first of my veggies are coming along well. I don't have much planted outside yet.
First, there are the Onions and the Garlic.
The onions are on the left and the garlic is on the right.
And that little feathery mess in between is marigolds.
These are the Snow Peas, and they look good n healthy. There are eight of the little guys.
All the rain is waking the garden up beautifully. Ready or not, Spring is here. I have spots of glorious color and the promise of much more all over. I just wish my camera could capture what I see. I keep saying it's my camera, but let's be honest, it could very well be the photographer.
The first rose buds of the year are getting ready to open. The white is Iceberg, a sturdy bush that will be covered in white blooms soon. Some years you can hardly see the green leaves for the roses. I'm sad to say that I have forgotten the name of the yellow rose (will have to do some research) but it performs similar to the iceberg. Both are florabundas.
If you are looking for beauty with easy maintenance and no need for nasty chemicals in your garden, floribundas and grandifloras are good choices, at least in northern California. I sound like a paid advertisement, but I'm not. Honest. I used to have a beautiful assortment of tea roses, but they were so finicky, and required so much care - not to mention the poison I regularly dosed them with.
A nice big orange Pansy
These are little white and yellow Violas.
This is the Sedum, and the tight little buds you saw before are now opening up wide!
And now, a purple Pansy
My garden beds tend to evolve organically. If I see something I like, I try to approximate it somehow, and I sometimes I also incorporate found objects into the bed.
A few years ago we had to take out some trees and we've been trying to get rid of the wood ever since.
This week I moved three of the more interesting stumps into the front bed with the lavender and lantana.
I haven't decided what to do next.
At the base of the Crepe Myrtle, the Wild Clover vies with the Daffodils & Pansies for attention.
Song of Nature
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.
I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.
No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;
And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.
And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.
I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;
What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.
Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.
But he, the man-child glorious,--
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.
My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.
Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?
Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;
I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade?
I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.
Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.
One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.
I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule;--
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.
Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
from: American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Volume I.
I'm sorry this post ended up being so long, but I hope you enjoyed a little slice of
Spring Time.
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