Viking Zen

2010-06-09T22:49:00.003-04:00

Minxie
June 1998-June 2010

I miss you, kitty. My lap is empty right now. That doesn't feel right.
Thank you for your trust and love.

2010-04-28T00:21:00.013-04:00

Visual Poetry

It's a seat belt campaign.
And...wow. Beautifully simple, incredibly powerful. Someone was able to convey via images that universal desire to protect those we love.

2010-04-26T11:03:00.005-04:00

Movie Night

Monday is movie night chez Zen. Last Monday Sovay and I watched the French classic, "Les enfants du paradis," directed by Marcel Carné. I had watched it years ago while living in Paris. The dialogue was filled with wit, poetry, and musings on life and love...and how could it not be, having been penned by French poet Jacques Prévert?

The movie had a different weight and quality this time around. I first watched it at the end of my teens...and remember sympathizing with the star-crossed lovers- Baptiste and Garance, being mystified by Lacenaire, sorry for the Count of Montray, endlessly annoyed by the pathetic Nathalie. A couple decades later and my allegiances have shifted: Baptiste and Garance said it all (pun intended- Baptiste is a mime) during their scene at the Funambules: they are idealized love- eternal, endless...but such epic love is only sustainable in small doses, for as Nathalie states, it's the day-to-day that challenges romance. Nathalie seems almost heroic, persevering in her need to show Baptiste the beauty and joy in that difficult day-to-day life. The Count of Montray: puts the boo in boor. Lacenaire? The catalyst: the trickster who is behind the great shifts in the plot.

The changes in my opinion and perspective were surprising to me and also something of a relief. I have to say, though, that the biggest surprise I had watching the movie was the fact that I found it so lovely, so dream-like that I had carried scenes of it with me all these years in my mind... in brilliant color.

The official trailer (which has that dramatic 'old-timey' vibe to it) to the movie here (I recommend watching without volume):

2010-04-04T21:21:00.006-04:00

I've been listening to this song a lot since I heard it on the radio and had to scramble for Shazam on my phone to tag it.

It's a joyful song. A big happy noise.
I love discovering new stuff to love.

Robert Pinsky is not a new love. When I used to work in the dungeons of grad school as an assistant to the then-treasurer of the traditional and esteemed Dante Society, I used to get a geeky high anytime I sent the former US Poet Laureate an envelope to pay his membership dues... It led to the following exchange, which always makes me grin. There seems to be a pattern of odd celebrity crushes in my life...and that's the way I like it.

Happy Bunny Day to all who celebrate.

Paschal

by Robert Pinsky

Easter was the old North

Goddess of the dawn.

She rises daily in the East

And yearly in spring for the great

Paschal candle of the sun.

Her name lingers like a spot

Of gravy in the figured vestment

Of the language of the Britains.

Her totem the randy bunny.

Our very Thursdays and Wednesdays

Are stained by syllables of thunder

And Woden's frenzy.

O my fellow-patriots loyal to this

Our modern world of high heels,

Vaccination, brain surgery—

May they pass over us, the old

Jovial raptors, Apollonian flayers,

Embodiments. Egg-hunt,

Crucifixion. Supper of encrypted

Dishes: bitter, unrisen, a platter

Compass of martyrdom,

Ground-up apples and walnuts

In sweet wine to embody mortar

Of affliction, babies for bricks.

Legible traces of the species

That devises the angel of death

Sailing over our doorpost

Smeared with sacrifice.

2010-03-23T11:05:00.002-04:00

Religious Doubt

Snicky has recently begun to ask a lot of questions about religion, so we've dedicated time to reading some stories for kids about Easter, Christmas, and so forth. This has led to some hilarity... Such as reading about Jesus' arrival in town during Palm Sunday, during which people yelled "Hosanna" as he passed by. After reading this particular story, she paused and looked pensive. I have to note that she was getting over an ear infection and wasn't hearing at 100%. It was later on in the day that she came up to me and asked,

"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"Remember the story of Jesus riding into town?"
"What about it?"
"Why were are the people yelling 'iguana!' at him?"

Palm Sunday will never be the same.

2010-03-20T17:56:00.003-04:00

Movie Night

On Mondays I meet up with my dear friend from Myth Happens and we watch a movie. We share titles we love, titles we're intrigued by, and series that just kick butt (Avatar- the Last Airbender, we're looking at YOU). Last Monday we watched one of her favorite titles, Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal.

I didn't know what to expect because it's one of those movies that has become iconic and, if this makes sense, knowledge of it precedes ...it. (Wow. Such elegantly put insights.) I had the same thing happen when I approached Joyce's Ulysses. I had heard so much about the novel before I actually read it that I felt like I had almost already formed an opinion of it before. Maybe not even an opinion- mostly a feeling: it's gonna be hard, dense...boring? And guess what? Magic: I read it and owned it: meaning that I made it mine by establishing my own interpretation and vision of it. I loved it. So much so that it was one of the novels I wrote my dissertation on. So there.

Although I should have learned the lesson taught by my experience with Ulysses, you really can't expect much from someone who is about to spend her evening at the Roller Derby...SO! I had those little prejudiced shadows sitting on my shoulder saying things like..."Dense...boring? SWEDISH!"

And they were promptly shooed away soon after the Knight meets Death and Death turns out to be a tad amused by the Knight's nonchalant chess challenge...

The Seventh Seal

Make sure that if you watch this, you get the most recent version released by the Criterion Collection (which the nerd girl in me is drooling to own in its entirety). Which is the correct version? The version that doesn't translate Joff and Mia's name as Joseph and Mary, which is really terrible and sloppy translation leading to all kinds of interpretative mischief probably contrary to Bergman's vision.

Next on our viewing list: Babette's Feast- one of my favorites.

2010-02-16T09:55:00.002-05:00

And You Are?...

Ok, so I brazenly walk in as if nothing had happened...In fact, nothing terribly newsworthy HAS happened, which would explain why I haven't really been posting- but anyway, bla bla...I haven't posted in a really long time and I have always enjoyed my reader(s?), so I am sorry and won't make any promises I can't keep but will make a bigger effort to post more often.

Here's a link I discovered by accident: Care2 is a great website that allows you to send some original e-cards while doing some environmental and social good. Go ahead, they're legit- featured in several news stories.

And now...back to the Tuesday that feels more like a Monday...

A tout-a-l'heure!

2009-11-22T14:49:00.003-05:00

Classic

Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bête," 1946, did not have the benefit of cutting edge special effects, and yet the imagery is ethereal and hauntingly beautiful. Black and white, filled with shadows, shades, and shimmer, like the print off a story book page. One of my favorite fairytales and movies. I love when the Beast crosses the room's threshold and Beauty's humble attire is transformed into a regal gown. After all, the beloved is transformed in the eyes of the lover...Enjoy!

2009-11-22T10:49:00.002-05:00

Good Stuff

The other night I watched Volver, by Almodovar. Watching Spanish movies or movies depicting some facet of life in Spain always affects me because Spain has always been, for me, a fabled land. My maternal grandfather hailed from Madrid and passed away before I could get to know him better, ask him questions, perhaps even practice the language. Watching movies from Spain always feels a bit like research, as in I have a link to a place I have not yet visited. Sometimes, as in the case with Carlos Saura's movies, it's pride and celebration of a lovely aspect of the culture: flamenco, the typical music, the artistry of dancers and actors like Antonio Gades, my first eternal crush, and Laura del Sol. Sometimes it's complete heartbreak and sadness, like it was in Pan's Labyrinth, with the backdrop of the civil war and a child walking between two worlds. The other times it's something satisfying and moving, which was exactly what I needed: Volver is filled with the most interesting and strong female characters who deal with absurd realities in almost mythical and whimsical ways. Can't say much without spoiling the plot, but I can say that it is worth the time: every minute.

2009-10-14T23:32:00.003-04:00

Why Paris When We Can Always Go to Madagascar!

Watched The Curse of the Jade Scorpion tonight. Hadn't seen it in several years and it made me grin. I know there are a lot of complaints regarding this film- one being that Woody Allen was too old to cast himself as male lead- but I enjoy the repartee and whole humorous homage to the detective/ Damon Runyon genre. Only Woody Allen would have been able to deliver some of the lines in this film or infuse so much hilarity into certain scenes.

Some favorite dialogue:

"It's a match made in Heaven...by a retarded angel."

"She thinks she’s smarter because she went to Vassar and I went to driving school."

C.W. (Woody Allen) encounters the detectives who are building a case against him standing outside his door: "Did you guys get lost? The mousetraps with the little cheese are in the basement."

C.W. to policeman: You got any witnesses??
Policeman: "Yeah, me!"
C.W.: "And you're gonna take your word over mine?"

Fun stuff to watch curled up on the couch on a chilly night...

2009-09-21T10:29:00.003-04:00

Moving

Yesterday I took Snicky to watch Ponyo, a movie by one of my favorite animators, Miyazaki. He was also behind Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, movies I absolutely love for their storytelling and gorgeous and surreal imagery.

It was so wonderful to share the experience with Snicky and watch her eyes widen with wonder, or have her hide her face against my chest whenever she got a bit scared for the characters. At the end of the movie she turned to me and asked, "Is it all done??" And proceeded to dance to the music rolling during the credits.

What I like about this movie- actually, all of Miyazaki's movies- is the element of mystery. Unlike movies that feel the need to explain every bit of mystery and whimsy introduced, Miyazaki's movies assume that this is how it is, there are magical and mysterious things going on, and we either know what they're about or don't. There is enough for the viewer to build a theory, but he does not step into the story and explain why Ponyo's father is a former human-become-sea-wizard who has children with the Goddess of the Sea, whom the sailors call "The Goddess of Mercy," or what he is doing, and what his elixirs are all about. It is not frustrating in the least and Miyazaki knows that sometimes the story we conjure in our heads is the only wondrous one we really need...

2009-09-11T13:13:00.001-04:00

Poetry Friday

In memoriam.

Shifting the Sun
by Diana Der-Hovanessian

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.

2009-09-10T09:33:00.004-04:00

Who?

So I've been thinking a lot about this blog and the fact that I haven't updated it as I once used to. The main reason is that other social networking applications, like Facebook, offer a kind of "captive" audience and usually very fast feedback. Also, it's feedback over something simpler- like one image or a one-liner. And that is definitely easier for me these days.

I love Poetry Fridays, but the truth is that I didn't have the time to always put in the amount of thoughtfulness into it. It will remain, but perhaps less consistently as intended.

I do miss blogging, I do miss sharing the contents of what Zen refers to as "monkey brain"(mine gets to be Curious George).

So things I'd like to expound on- for real this time:

1) Switching from PC to an iMac (Hallellujah!)
2) True Blood and the yumminess of Stephen Moyer.
3) Political comments filled with personal bias.
4) Books? Yes.
5) Movies I've been watching with my friend Sovay.
6) Stephen Moyer and his yummitude in True Blood.

There! Be glad I am back.

2009-08-01T21:07:00.003-04:00

Poetry...Saturday

Away with pretense. I haven't updated the blog in ages. I am not quitting the blog, although perhaps the majority of my readers has. I'm here right now, whenever the time stamp for this entry is/was.

And here is the poem I chose, by a former US Poet Laureate. Enjoy...and hello?

POEM
Passing Through
—on my seventy-ninth birthday

by Stanley Kunitz

Nobody in the widow’s household
ever celebrated anniversaries.
In the secrecy of my room
I would not admit I cared
that my friends were given parties.
Before I left town for school
my birthday went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren’t for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother’s address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I’d have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as though it signified
distress or disaffection.
Don’t take it so to heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much
as being who I am. Maybe
it’s time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

Have a peaceful weekend, everyone!

2009-07-03T18:13:00.001-04:00

This poem is incredible. The notion of suffering takes an unexpected turn, something Buddhist, when linked to desire.

sorrows
by Lucille Clifton

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2009-06-03T10:40:00.002-04:00

Media Snark

This had me giggling:

Is it just me, or is that little donut tidbit strategically placed? Mwahaha!

2009-05-30T01:27:00.006-04:00

Irony

Ok. So I saw the link on Yahoo's news page. It's regarding a Canadian teen who won the World Beatbox Championship online. Very fun stuff given that she is good...but what amused me was this banner at the bottom of the list of winners on the contest's official website:

Can someone tell me why an ad for Ann Coulter is featured on a Beatbox Competition website?? Or was this some mistake, as in what they really meant to say is that their website's "Ann Coulter Free?"

As John Lennon would say, "Strange days indeed..."

2009-05-17T11:06:00.006-04:00

Poetry

Late, but still heartfelt.

This poem reminds me of the awe of being before something meaningful, in her case, of something that anchors a story, a legend of some kind. I remember that while I was in Florence, I went to the Museo di Storia della Scienza, a repository for various tools and equipment used by sailors and budding astronomers, alchemists, physicians, etc. The ancient astrolabes impressed me tremendously and evidenced a desire and tenacity I occasionally wonder if we've lost. I remember the captain of a cruise ship once telling me that part of their test as sailors was knowing how to navigate without all the modern-day technology. What really moved me and helped me relate to this poem, was coming across one of Galileo's telescopes. Here I was before an instrument used by someone whose ability to interpret what he saw in the sky made history. How many hours did he spend gazing at the stars? What went through his mind? What joys, what disappointments? I remember bending and contorting around so I could have the privilege of staring out the same eyepiece as Galileo, even though the telescope was cocked upwards and secured behind a glass display. Some people recall meeting a famous actor, a singer, perhaps a politician.
I looked through Galileo's telescope.

Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Have a good week, everyone.

2009-05-06T21:10:00.002-04:00

Ergo...

Last night while the household peacefully slept, Minxie, the fastidious groomer, coughed up a hairball. While making breakfast, I was interrupted by Snicky who was tugging my arm and asking machine gun style, "What is THAT?" Minxie has the occasional hairball and ALWAYS coughs it up on one of the rugs. Always. We have hardwood floors, but she will seek out the rug to do her dastardly deed.

"That's a hairball," I explained.
"Do we need to take Minxie to the cat doctor?"
"Noooo...Sometimes cats get too much fur in their bellies and they cough it up."
I did not add, "On my freaking rugs."
"Oooh."

And that was that.

As we were getting ready to hop into the car, I started coughing a bit because my throat was so dry. Snicky looked up at me warily and asked:

"Mom, do you have a hairball?"

2009-05-01T14:03:00.000-04:00

Poetry Friday

Orfeo
by Jack Spicer

Sharp as an arrow Orpheus
Points his music downward.
Hell is there
At the bottom of the seacliff.
Heal
Nothing by this music.
Eurydice
Is a frigate bird or a rock or some seaweed.
Hail nothing
The infernal
Is a slippering wetness out at the horizon.
Hell is this:
The lack of anything but the eternal to look at
The expansiveness of salt
The lack of any bed but one’s
Music to sleep in.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.

2009-04-22T10:24:00.005-04:00

Glory Days

When I was a kid in Brazil (*cues epic-sounding music*) anytime an international pop or rock star came into town, we had already been informed of it, ad nauseam, weeks and weeks before thanks to endless radio and TV promos. That's because big names usually were still few and far-between. There was no way you could not know that Tina Turner and even more alternative folks like Siouxie and the Banshees were coming to town.

When I moved to Paris, I remember going to the area where they sold concert tickets at Virgin Megastore and slapping my forehead in disbelief when I saw all the big names that had been scheduled to play there- slapping my forehead because there were so many and there were no endless TV and radio promos making a big deal about it.

Same thing happened to me in Boston. I always felt I was the last one to know when a big name sauntered into town, which meant I never managed to get tickets (yes, U2, I'm talking to you!). Never a big concert-goer, I did manage to catch a few random concerts- usually with my good college friend Maarten, aka "Mr. Dutch Treat," who always knew what the haps in town were and ended up dragging me to the Steve Miller Band and Lenny Kravitz. Yes, kinda mellow, but the boy was from Amsterdam, so give me a break.

I decided that needs to change. There is great pleasure and joy in watching someone whose music you enjoy perform live. That's why last night I found myself with a bunch of fans at the Bruce Springsteen concert in Boston.

It was awesome. Patty wasn't there, though. But Stevie and his do-rag made up for it.
Here's the set list and a summary of the show from Backstreets.com :

April 21 / Boston, MA / TD Banknorth Garden
Notes: From the West coast last week now back to the East, Bruce and the E Street Band are bad, they're nationwide. And that was the clear highlight for this first night in Boston, a cover of ZZ Top's "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide"—which Bruce seemed to think was an E Street Band premiere: "They don't know this one." Somewhat legendarily among aficianados, though, this one celebrated/poked fun at newfound superstar status in Philly on the Born in the U.S.A. tour, on 9/15/84. But okay, just once, 25 years ago... we'll let it slide. And his memory wasn't all hazy: "I think I used to play this in the bars." A well-made sign for the song included lyrics and chord changes, but it was still a challenge to rise to. Bruce: "Can they do it? Fuck yeah, they're the E Street Band!" And they did, it kicked ass, with a postscript: "Don't try to stump the E Street Band!"

Otherwise, a setlist very similar to night one in L.A. Also played by request were the directionally contradictory "I'm Goin' Down" and "Growin' Up." The sign for the latter included an addendum: "...and a story to tell." But no such luck. It was the guitar that talked tonight, Bruce playing searing leads on "Adam Raised a Cain," "Seeds," and "The Ghost of Tom Joad"—Nils smoked on that one, too. And speaking of smoke: the Superbowl LCD screens were gone, with some new smoke-machine action providing a different effect in their place.

Patti was again absent, not "home with the kids" as with last week's L.A. shows, but this time because of an accident: she "took a spill" while horse riding on Saturday, Bruce told the crowd. "She wasn't riding with Madonna—it wasn't a Madonna-like spill," he joked, but the spill itself sounds like no fun at all. Springsteen described multiple contusions and bruised ribs, "and whiplash, from me driving her to the hospital." He said she'd be back after a few shows, and in the meantime, "she asked me to play this for you," going into "Kingdom of Days."

Jay Weinberg was behind the kit for the final four songs of the main set, "Radio Nowhere" through "Born to Run." And more offspring were in the house as "Hard Times" was sent out "to my handsome son Evan and my lovely daughter Jessie." Patti, hope you're feeling better soon.

Setlist:
Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Outlaw Pete
Out in the Street
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
The Ghost of Tom Joad
I'm Goin' Down
Raise Your Hand
I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide
I'm Goin' Down
Growin' Up
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
The Wrestler
Kingdom of Days
Radio Nowhere (w/ Jay Weinberg)
Lonesome Day (w/ Jay Weinberg)
The Rising (w/ Jay Weinberg)
Born to Run (w/ Jay Weinberg)
* * *
Hard Times
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Land of Hope and Dreams
American Land
Rosalita

And here's some of my very own footage, courtesy of my iPhone. I'd like to say that the "Zippo" application on it was very handy during ballads, even as McGyva and Doctor F. rolled eyes at my geekitude...

Although we arrived fairly on time, people were only starting to trickle in. I blame Nathan's Famous for that as it seemed everyone was going for hot dogs.

BRUUUUUUUCE!

Next on the agenda: getting tickets to U2 in September...

2009-04-07T17:45:00.003-04:00

Feeding the Habit

Because I have been going into the office more these days, I am required to stay on top of things on the weekdays I am not there. And because I am not perpetually tied to a computer when I am not at work, I may need to access e-mail/phone/the internetzzzz whilst on the go.

So, courtesy of work, I am now the grinning user of an iPhone.
Let me just say this: It's. So. FUN!

The applications rock the Casbah and now my obnoxiousness is more ubiquitous than EVER! I can update my Facebook and Twitter on the go (I think I have two followers- one doing it probably just out of politeness. Why wouldn't you want to know I am having a bologna sandwich??)! And in case some kind soul felt the need to remind me that this a work phone, I'd like you all to know that my boss was the one telling me to jot down the name of all the cool applications I just HAD to have, such as this essential one...

This is technological crack for the gadget grrl...

2009-04-03T14:35:00.000-04:00

Poetry Friday

I Am Not Yours
by Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.

2009-03-29T11:49:00.002-04:00

Come to Think of It, I've Never Been in the Same Room with the AP or The Onion...

I'd find it VERY hard to resist making these kinds of puns too. But then I know better than become a journalist with access to the public's minds.

Ok... straight from the Associated Press: "Diners can 'have a ball' at testicle festival."

Wait! Wait! It gets better!

"OAKDALE, Calif. – The fundraising idea may seem a little nuts "

Love it. Bravo! Finally, a journalist with...cojones.

2009-03-27T14:46:00.000-04:00

Poetry Friday

Love Worn
by Lita Hooper

In a tavern on the Southside of Chicago
a man sits with his wife. From their corner booth
each stares at strangers just beyond the other's shoulder,
nodding to the songs of their youth. Tonight they will not fight.

Thirty years of marriage sits between them
like a bomb. The woman shifts
then rubs her right wrist as the man recalls the day
when they sat on the porch of her parents' home.

Even then he could feel the absence of something
desired or planned. There was the smell
of a freshly tarred driveway, the slow heat,
him offering his future to folks he did not know.

And there was the blooming magnolia tree in the distance—
its oversized petals like those on the woman's dress,
making her belly even larger, her hands
disappearing into the folds.

When the last neighbor or friend leaves their booth
he stares at her hands, which are now closer to his,
remembers that there had always been some joy. Leaning
closer, he believes he can see their daughter in her eyes.

Peace, everyone.

2009-03-20T16:50:00.005-04:00

Sweet Dreams Are Not Made of These

I decided recently that I wanted to change our bed's comforter for something of a similar shade.
Forget about it.
The color du jour is blue.
Anything else is plain ugly.
Or doesn't go with the rest of the room, which is a very light green.

Who knew this would be such a time-sucking horrid experience? I did not want to spend so much time of my life hunting for the right bedding set.

Care to see how I wasted precious minutes of my life?
Allow me to cut to the cream filling:

Do people really buy bedding like this? I mean, there are leopards hiding in the bushes. Nothing yells "comfort" and "rest," like sleeping in the jungle and being stared at by leopards. Especially when wearing Bambi pajamas.

Bed crowns. Someday, when my bedroom ceiling soars over its current 6 ft and a little bit height (we live in a Cape), I will have one and I shall roll around in my luxurious bed as I sleepily cackle, "Let them eat cake! HA!"

Bluebeard Special. 'Nuff said. I mean, goes well with brushed steel walls.

Ok, this is called the "The Peri" set. I think they should change it to "The Pipi" set. Seriously. Look at those colors and hope you can hold it in all night. The description of this set read, "The Peri bedding set flirts with fashion." Flirts with fashion and gets nowhere, not even a phone number.

I am so doomed.
I hate this. I hate this.

2009-03-20T12:38:00.003-04:00

Poetry Friday

Beautiful and devastating. I love the image of all the birds acting as messengers, scattering like rain drops. You can see it in your mind's eye.

I Love You
by Sara Teasdale

When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.

When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.

Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
Beside his window-pane.

O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep.

Peace, everyone.

2009-03-15T16:47:00.005-04:00

Not Such a Dull Place After All

Sometimes I am surprised that I don't feel like arguing with Mellencamp anytime I hear him belt out: "Oh yeah, life goes on...Long after the thrill of living is gone." Before you gingerly ask me if everything is OK, let me answer that all I mean by that is: I am less apt to argue with people who have that point of view, who feel that ho-hum about life. Who am I to preach about these things? Besides, I believe in showing rather than saying.

Every once in a while, though, something unexpected fills me with wonder and I can't help thinking, "life is fascinating, and I have only scratched the surface.

The two following things have really amazed me. How fascinating. I believe it was Jungian scholar Robertson who wrote something like we dream a world into being that in turn dreams us into being.

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which people may perceive numbers as having specific colors, or sounds as having particular textures...Basically, the senses color outside their lines and fuse themselves into an incredible experience.

Oneirology may have been around in different guises since dreams have existed(oneiromancy). I think of ancient Oracles interpreting dreams, or biblical figures like Joseph deciphering messages in dreams told him...But oneirology is not fortune-telling. It's the scientific study of dreams and how the body is affected by them.

Interesting.

2009-03-13T18:29:00.003-04:00

Ruh-Roh

One of the earliest cartoons I remember watching is Scooby-Doo. In Portuguese. I can't, to this day, get used to Scooby in English. It turns out that admiration for all things Scooby is hereditary because Snicky has loved him since she was tinier. We watch certain episodes again and again- so much so that recently, when I got all arts and crafty and decided to make t-shirts for her, she specifically requested I make her a Scooby-Doo one.

While Googling images for the shirt, I came across some very fun art of those meddling kids:

The original gang, circa 1969. Perfection.

Some fan art found at Japanator.com
Apparently it's by someone called "Osy." Very cool! I have a crush on this Shaggy.

Scooby meets Anime. This found at Deviant Art. It's by someone called Daekazu.

And because these are dark times, someone thought it would be great to revamp Scooby for the new generation: it seems that there is a show called "Get a Clue, Scooby-Doo," which features mostly Shaggy and Scooby with occasional cameos by the rest of the gang. What the...?

2009-03-13T14:58:00.000-04:00

Poetry Friday

Hand Shadows
by Mary Cornish

My father put his hands in the white light
of the lantern, and his palms became a horse
that flicked its ears and bucked; an alligator
feigning sleep along the canvas wall leapt up
and snapped its jaws in silhouette, or else
a swan would turn its perfect neck and drop
a fingered beak toward that shadowed head
to lightly preen my father's feathered hair.
Outside our tent, skunks shuffled in the woods
beneath a star that died a little every day,
and from a nebula of light diffused
inside Orion's sword, new stars were born.
My father's hands became two birds, linked
by a thumb, they flew one following the other.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.

2009-03-12T17:04:00.004-04:00

Masterpiece Lyrics

Every once in a while I'll run across unexpectedly interesting lyrics that force me to pause for a moment and marvel, especially when I consider where they have sprung from.

For example- does this not have Shakespearean angst all over it?

"What have I done?
What lies I have told?
I've played games with the ones
Who rescued my soul."

Or how about this, which has Rimbaudesque flair:

"You'll never get to heaven with a smile on your face for me..."

Or Sylvia Plathitude:

"Cut my wrist on a bad thought."

I'll reveal the sources in due time, but would anyone like to venture a guess as to the origins of these quotes?

2009-03-11T00:12:00.004-04:00

Something In the Air

Recently, Sovay and I decided to put all eclectic movie titles on hold and watch the series "Avatar: The Last Airbender" on DVD. I remember seeing the promos for it on Nickleodeon ages ago and being intrigued by this beautifully drawn series. Because it was on Nick, I assumed it was geared towards a younger audience and never really watched it...but after running into it on the shelves of stores and being intrigued by the images, I decided to rent it. One night, while trying to decide what to watch, I casually mentioned to Sovay I had rented the first DVD of the series and she was all for it, having heard fabulous things about it.

We watched the entire first disc and were completely enthralled by Aang, Katara, and Sokka, by flying buffalo, their complex world that becomes richer with each episode. Yes, kids can enjoy it, but there is definitely something there for all ages. Because that's what a good story can do. I am enjoying it so much I've decided I will someday own the entire series. You know: for Snicky...*cough cough*

2009-03-10T15:03:00.003-04:00

Now Photoshop Free!

I remember back when I used to deck the blog with my own html-inspired Photoshop induced madness. I no longer have the time to play around, so I went to The Cutest Blog on the Block , which I discovered over at Talking to Myself, a blog that AWAYS looks so put together, kind of like the girl who always looked awesome in homeroom, from her perfect hair to her manicured nails and shimmering lipgloss while you were like, so sorry you had tattooed "Milli Vanilli" on your hand with black markers during Biology glass (it seemed like a great idea at the time because watching Paramecium gets sooooo boooring) and your hair was tucked under a goofy crochet cap because your sister did not succeed in giving you a brooding Chrissie Hynde look...

Tons of great layouts for free. I might be shaking it up more often...

2009-03-10T13:37:00.004-04:00

A Post on Education Changes

Because someday I would like jump back into teaching, I was especially interested in what President Obama was going to say about the money earmarked in the Stimulus Package to promote changes to education. I know that unionized teachers have opposed a merit-based system, but I'd like to understand why. I have always felt that if we want to attract some great and passionate minds into the teaching profession, we must be willing to make the challenge rewarding. That isn't to say that most of the teachers who are already doing the job aren't dedicated and great at what they do- it's just that teaching should be a viable career option for many professionals who are knowledgeable, ambitious, and -why not?- competitive. Competition does not need to be a destructive element per se. Competition has led to some amazing innovations and I think it can be a great motivator within certain limits. I think all this is necessary because we know that nowadays, a teaching career in the US does not command a great salary nor does it command great respect.

While I believe that teaching is a vocation, I also feel it's a calling many people choose to forgo because of issues such as low pay and teaching to standardized tests. It was exciting to read Obama's address regarding proposed ideas and goals. I especially liked this passage:

So let there be no doubt: the future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens - and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation. We have the best universities and the most renowned scholars. We have innovative principals, passionate teachers, gifted students, and parents whose only priority is their child's education. We have a legacy of excellence, and an unwavering belief that our children should climb higher than we did.

And yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. In 8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place. Singapore's middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our thirteen and fourteen-year olds can read as well as they should. And year after year, a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy, and unacceptable for our children - and we cannot afford to let it continue.

And I also found this lovely: "[T]oday, I am calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms." Because along with educating, teaching is a form of serving, and while the speech emphasizes patriotic duty, I like to view it from the human perspective: Teaching is a gift to a student and an honor for the teacher; what a beautiful way to show esteem to another person: sharing knowledge you've accrued in this life.

2009-03-06T13:28:00.002-05:00

Poetry Friday

Yesterday I went to the nearby Zen Center. It was wonderful. We talked about stories, and how stories, responsible for shaping our lives, can also be the source of great frustration and pain. Have to learn how to be a better author to my own story.

Patience
by Kay Ryan

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.

Peace, everyone!

2009-03-03T11:12:00.004-05:00

An Account

This winter has been the worst. This past February takes the cake for being the most miserable. The days are long and tumble into each other with their repetition... and the cold- so very cold. Snicky keeps my heart warm, but at the end of the day I am tired. I read books, they keep the mind running somewhere else. I call my friends, and they are gracious in stepping away from their own busy lives for a moment and offering their warmth. I talk to my mother and I have to crack a smile anytime she sympathetically says, "You know, it's cold here too...It was in the 50s..."

I finished reading The 19th Wife, by Ebershoff, and had dreams of being in a polygamous marriage, and, like Ann Eliza's mother, widened my eyes when my husband announced the arrival of a third wife. In my dream I pointed at the second wife and grumbled, "I'd rather direct all my angst at her!"

I am currently reading The Somnabulist, by Jonathan Barnes, and wondering where it is all going, but still enjoying the ride. Mr. Moon intrigues me, his good looks fading, his boredom corrosive to his soul, and the Somnabulist himself...a study in spectral whiteness...or purity?

I watched Chunhyang, a movie based on the epic Korean love story. Young man from a prominent family secretly marries the beautiful and innocent Chunhyang, daughter of a courtesan. When his family is moved to Seoul, he must follow or risk being disowned. He asks his beloved to wait for him, until he can pass his exams and stand on his own. And she does. For several years, she waits for him, longing for him, all in the pain of secrecy, no words exchanged between them. Then one day the new governor arrives in their province. Of course he's a despot. Of course he has heard of Chunhyang's beauty. Of course he assumes that because she's a courtesan's daughter, she is a courtesan too. So he wants her. But she is steadfast, loyal to her far away husband. Even when beaten. Even when condemned to death. Is it loyalty to a man? Or loyalty to herself? The husband, the governor tells her, mockingly, is gone. But he fails to understand that the husband is just a part of the equation. She is loyal to herself, to her feelings, to love. Beautifully told story, with a traditional storyteller singing it in the background, the original words, a narration complementing the film.

I am planning on attending events at the nearby Zen center and looking for a martial arts class somewhere that will allow me to fullfill my Jackie Chan aspirations. I am signing up for writing workshops through Grubb Street to shake up my bag of writing tricks and drumming hard and loud- picking up gigs whenever possible. Anything. Anything at all. Anything to chase away these blues.

2009-02-27T09:54:00.001-05:00

Poetry Friday

I am so tired. For the shortest month, February has felt long, interminable.

Rebus
by Jane Hirshfield

You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.

Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.

This rebus—slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life—
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.

The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.

How can I enter this question the clay has asked?

Peace, everyone.

2009-02-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles
by Billy Collins

It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.

Peace, everyone.

2009-02-13T12:08:00.002-05:00

Poetry Friday

The images, the flow, vivid and lovely, filled with tones of life and...change.

Girl
by Eve Alexandra

Be careful if you take this flower into your house. The
peony has a thousand lips. It is pink and white like the lady’s
skirt and smells sharp and sweet as cinnamon. There are a
thousand ants living inside but you will only see one or two at
a time. I am like that down there--pink and busy inside. The
dark is a bolt of cloth, crushed and blue, and I unfurl against it.
If you lie down on the floor of the closet the hems of silk will
lick you. My own gown is thin as the skin of dried grass so I
can see the ants dancing down there. The night has big paws.
I imagine the wool of the bears, the cloth of monkeys. the night
smells like vetiver and cedar. His mouth is cool with mint and
warm with rum, and I am not afraid as he rubs his wool against
me. I saw the bear dancing at the circus when I was small. He
was wearing a green felt cap with gold bric-a-brac and kept by
a thin wire thread. My brother bought me a sucker for the train
ride home, and I am like that now on the inside, burning soft
with lemon. What fruit do you like best? I like tangerines.
And the night leaves me these. A small paper bag on the bedside
table. The wrought iron and roses like an altar. I am glowing now.
My teeth are stitching kisses to my fist. I go to the river. My legs
are frogs legs. Tiny wands, see how they glisten. A thousand fish
swim through me. I am a boat now. I know no anchor. My hair
unfurls, copper and cinnamon. Look how it opens, beautiful world.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2009-02-06T21:17:00.001-05:00

Poetry Friday

I think this poem is so wonderfully heartfelt:

Your Catfish Friend
by Richard Brautigan

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

Happy Friday, everyone!

2009-02-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

Sweet Dreams

Sometimes dreams can be so vivid that you are more tired when you wake up than when you first put your head down on that pillow. Dreams can set the tone of the day in the way they make us feel: anything from anger and fear to wonder and elation.

I really liked this video:

2009-01-31T11:25:00.002-05:00

Poetry and Literary News

Quilts
by Nikki Giovanni

(for Sally Sellers)

Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold

I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection

I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

I offer no apology only
this plea:

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm

And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers

And cuddle
near

Have a good weekend, everyone!

* * *

John Updike has joined the cast of celestial writers, making encyclopedia entries everywhere obsolete.

I never knew his work that well. Have heard of the Rabbit novels and In the Beauty of the Lilies is sitting on our bookshelf unread- one of McGyva's few books that doesn't involve diagrams, and the maddening mixing of numbers and letters... I did watch The Witches of Eastwick, but never read it and a friend who read Brazil used to like pesking me about the proper way of saying one of the character's name: Tristão

I might have to read something now, after reading this:

His standing within the literary community may never have been greater than in 2006 when he delivered a passionate defense of bookstores and words, words on paper, at publishing's annual national convention. Responding to a recent New York Times essay predicting a digital future, he scorned this "grisly scenario" and praised the paper book as the site of an "encounter, in silence, of two minds."

"So, booksellers, defend your lonely forts," he concluded. "For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity."

Amen, and thank you, Mr. Updike.

2009-01-23T10:58:00.001-05:00

Poetry Friday

It's Charles Simic, whose poetry I've been reading more and more of. It's wonderful. You should too!

The White Room
by Charles Simic

The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.

They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me--
And then didn't.

Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild

Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.

There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.

The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn't leave her room.

The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,

Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as "perfect."

Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn't it.

Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light--
And the trees waiting for the night.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2009-01-16T12:47:00.002-05:00

Poetry Friday

And just like that- no explanation, no excuses, just a post, as if nothing had happened...

A Hand
by Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin's smoothness, not ink. The maple's green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

Happy Friday, everyone!
And happy all the stuff I missed because I was participating in aforementioned stuff...

2008-11-27T22:22:00.002-05:00

Turkey Trot

Happy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating.

I feel so full I told a friend, who is visiting tomorrow, that I might modify the lunch menu I had planned for us: from a Brazilian-style black beans and rice to something lighter...like...air.

On another note: some poetic stuff the kiddo came up with:

Upon feeling a dry leaf blow over her head: "The air is full of trees..."

I recently bought Snicky a pair of mittens with little white dots on it. She looked at the mittens with great delight and yelled: "Snow-kadots!" That made me smile. Ah well, still does.

And now I will enter my food-induced coma...

2008-11-24T11:11:00.003-05:00

Poetry!
(See, no hypocrisy- No Friday in that. I am done insulting my readers' intelligence...)

Autumn Sky
by Charles Simic

In my great grandmother's time,
All one needed was a broom
To get to see places
And give the geese a chase in the sky.

•

The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.

•

Oh Cynthia,
Take a clock that has lost its hands
For a ride.
Get me a room at Hotel Eternity
Where Time likes to stop now and then.

•

Come, lovers of dark corners,
The sky says,
And sit in one of my dark corners.
There are tasty little zeroes
In the peanut dish tonight.

Have a good day, everyone!

Today I saw a story on the news about a couple who is fighting over a $25,000 engagement ring. The lovebirds called it quits and now that man wants the ring back...and the woman doesn't want to return it. The panelists included a lawyer and an etiquette expert. The lawyer thought it was an uphill battle, since the ring was a conditional gift (I thought, "If a diamond is forever...then they may be in court for a while..."). The etiquette expert thought the woman should just return the ring. I watched that and felt sorry for...the ring. Yes- because it's a synecdoche for a dream in ruins, a lost love, and were I the woman or the man, I wouldn't want a reminder of it. Yes, it's just an object, a piece of earth, of stone...but that's just stating one part of the obvious and forgetting that other, which we struggle to infuse with meaning.

2008-11-15T10:02:00.002-05:00

Poetry Friday...um...Saturday

I like the little poem below. Sometimes we need to be reminded of who we really are.

Dora Diller
by Jack Prelutsky

"My stomach's full of butterflies!"
lamented Dora Diller.
Her mother sighed. "That's no surprise,
you ate a caterpillar!"

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-11-01T13:06:00.002-04:00

Poetry....Friday (Oh, the GALL!)

Halloween...When I finally made it through the door after being stuck in Boston traffic, I was greeted by Snicky, dressed as a white pink-bellied cat, and her little cousin, dressed as Super Girl. McGyva and Snicky had been rehearsing and were about to show me:

McGyva: What do you say when the people come to the door to give you candy?

Snicky (my child to the core): *Squinting and flashing a trite smile* CHEESE!

Very Gouda.

And now, some poetry:

SEARCHING FOR POE’S GRAVE ON HALLOWEEN,
BALTIMORE, MD
by Jim Doss

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins?
-- Edgar Allan Poe

Not here on Fayette Street
where the dull faces of commuters
stare back at us in their pilgrimage
to nowhere. Not on the sidewalk

where a dingy robin lies
like a broken doll, its missing eye
peering into the next world.
Not in the greasy smoke that braids

the air above Hardees with animal scents,
drifts into the blue haze of power plants.
Not in the used hypodermic needles
that gleam through a sewer grate,

or crushed cans of Colt 45 rusting by the curb.
Not in the red scrawl of graffiti on brick
row houses where home-boys lean
against the wall, peddle baggies of rock or weed

to walk-ups and drive-bys. Not in the purple
and black billboard advertising play by play
for the Ravens’ games. “Perversity,” Poe wrote,
“is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.”

In the end, he lay face-down in the gutter,
delirious with fever, poisoned by madness
and tainted alcohol, bribed to vote
under the names of dead men for shot after shot.

Now, his features carved in garish granite
come alive in stone. Sunlight reflects
off stained glass windows. Roots strain
to topple markers in their slow crawl through soil.

The path we’ve walked from his Amity Street
garret traces Poe’s own footsteps
as he strolled with his pubescent cousin-wife
and her mother on their way to worship.

We read from Tales of Mystery and Imagination
into the sunset’s orange glow, wait for his spirit
to rise through clay to accept our offerings--
this bottle of cognac, and a black rose.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

2008-10-14T10:37:00.002-04:00

Poetry Friday
(Fashionably Late)

In the Meantime
by Lisa Olstein

What seemed a mystery was
in fact a choice. Insert bird for sorrow.

What seemed a memory was in fact
a dividing line. Insert bird for wind.

Insert wind for departure when everyone is
standing still. Insert three mountains

burning and in three valleys a signal seer
seeing a distant light and a signal bearer

sprinting to a far-off bell. What seemed
a promise was in fact a sigh.

What seemed a hot wind, a not quite enough,
a forgive me, it has flown away, is in fact.

In the meantime we paint the floors
red. We stroke the sound of certain names

into a fine floss that drifts across our teeth.
We stay in the room we share and listen

all night to what drifts through the window—
dog growl, owl call, a fleet of mosquitoes

setting sail, and down the road,
the swish of tomorrow’s donkey-threshed grain.

Happy Week, everyone!

----------------
Now playing: Various Artists - Cherry Flowers And Bedroom Songs (Soil & Eclipse Mix) - New
via FoxyTunes

2008-10-05T10:01:00.002-04:00

~~Target~~ Tar-jay Audience

I was checking out a news story about how Apple was able to prevent the price it pays in royalties to record labels from hiking, thus not having to go through with their threat to shut down their online store.

What really had me snickering was a reader's comment beneath the story: "dey betta not cloz da apple itunz sto becuz datz how lyk ova 1 milli pplz git dey muzic."

Somewhere in my desk, a red pen just exploded.

Word!

2008-10-03T01:24:00.005-04:00

Poetry Friday

Whenever I was involved in a school theater production, I always liked the downtime between acts during rehearsals, that languid limbo during which you could simply hang out and share conversation, while waiting to summon whatever emotions or lines you had been entrusted with, weaving in and out of realities... Those hiatuses after which the boy, who playfully placed his head in your lap while you hoped your casually cool laughter masked the pounding of your heart, was transformed, by an act of willing suspension of disbelief, beneath the brightly aimed lights, foe, accomplice, or, in that best-case scenario, love.

The Ensemble
by Floyd Skloot

The actor playing Claudius has worn
the same shirt to rehearsal every night,
a faded royal blue polo with torn
sleeves and grayed message: Ophelia Was Right.
The student of divinity who plays
Laertes has stopped seeking his inner
hothead. He's come to believe the boy stays
calm and affects rage while his voice, thinner
the louder it becomes, gives him away.
That new beard, flecked with white, will have to go.
Meanwhile, the Gertrude whispering her way
through another chest cold still does not know
her speech from Act Three, saying No more sweets,
Hamlet! instead of No more, sweet Hamlet!
Her husband playing her son is two beats
too fast on every line. No surprise. Yet
his quick mouth suggests doubt, a racing mind,
something she has not considered before.
At the bar tonight the Director is kind
in his final notes, knowing little more
to do now, certain it will come together
tomorrow. He orders one more round,
toasts cast, stage crew, opening night weather,
Shakespeare, Denmark. He savors the sound
their laughter makes as it rises and falls.
He's loved them all since the first casting call.

Happy Friday, everyone!

----------------
Now playing: Okkervil River - Lost Coastlines
via FoxyTunes

2008-09-26T15:37:00.003-04:00

Press On

Am I the only gutter-minded person who believes the press should have gone the extra mile and written the state name out on this story?

Ky. man claims penis amputated without consent

2008-09-26T15:29:00.002-04:00

Poetry Friday

Now that no one looking
by Adam Kirsch

Now that no one looking at the night—
Sky blanked by leakage from electric lamps
And headlights prowling through the parking lot
Could recognize the Babylonian dance
That once held every gazer; now that spoons
And scales, and swordsmen battling with beasts
Have decomposed into a few stars strewn
Illegibly across an empty space,
Maybe the old unfalsifiable
Predictions and extrapolated spheres
No longer need to be an obstacle
To hearing what it is the stars declare:
That there are things created of a size
We can't and weren't meant to understand,
As fish know nothing of the sun that writes
Its bright glyphs on the black waves overhead.

Happy Friday, everyone!

----------------
Now playing: Autour de Lucie - Island
via FoxyTunes

2008-09-19T10:56:00.003-04:00

Poetry Friday

Joy Harjo is a wonder poet who draws from her Native American identity (Creek) to compose gorgeous visions and metaphors. Her poem She Had Some Horses has been set to music and has so many layers- it's always appealing, thoughtful, and engaging. This is Eagle Poem, which is wonderfully mindful.

Eagle Poem
by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadly growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Happy Friday, everyone!

----------------
Now playing: Pure Drama - The Time You've Spent
via FoxyTunes

2008-09-16T12:24:00.007-04:00

Hamtaro no chimpira!

Labor Day found us at the home of friends savoring burgers and good conversation. While the grown-ups ate, Snicky played with our friends' child, a seven-year old who is exceptionally sweet with younger kids. Here it is relevant and quite essential to the comprehension of this entry that I reveal that aforementioned youngster is a boy. And a fan of Pokemon. And Digimon. And...Hamtaro.

He let Snicky play with a set of little figurines that I initially thought were little mice (I was promptly and vehemently corrected) but were really little hamsters. I, who knew NOTHING about Hamtaro before that day had suddenly been initiated into the world of little hamsters who behave during the day and then run wild at night. Snicky was completely smitten with them. In fact, on the way driving home all we heard was, "Can we go get Hamtaro?"

Now, Snicky is a toddler. Toddlers can be very much like cats, in the sense that while all their being might be focused on one thing, dangling a sparkly object before them will shift focus...a trick that can usually be done again and again. In the past our bait-and-switch tactics have always worked. When we got home, however, no amount of playing with Little People or Legos did the trick. It was Hamtaro nonstop.

So we did what any sanity-loving parents would do: we called our friends and begged them to reveal where they bought their Hamtaro figurines.

"We had to import them."

Huh?

That's right, my friends. Hamtaro are not sold locally. With Snicky's birthday only a week away, I thought I would be really clever and find the elusive Hamtaro. Thus, the following day found me smugly smirking at Cambridge's Porter Exchange as I scoured the little Japanese markets and gift stores.

A bento box, an outrageous pencil case, and two folktales for kids books later, I was bitting my lip as I realized that my quest for Hamtaro was not going according to plan.

The more specialized toy stores didn't have them.
Nor did those comic book stores that carry Manga.

With Snicky's birthday a mere three days away, I caved.
I did a search on Ebay.

A few clicks later, we were on our way to being the proud owners of a set of 18 Hamtaro and...a Hamtaro palace which were coming to us from Hong Kong. For two weeks all Snicky talked about was how her Hamtaro were coming to Boston on a plane from "Honk Gong."

This morning, when Snicky woke up, she walked into the den to find a fully assembled Hamtaro castle packed with little big-eyed hamsters. Her expression of amazement and speechlessness said it all.

I haven't stopped grinning.
But I am sure I will, once my vacuum starts grabbing those little suckers.

"Abandon all hope, you who enter here..."

I think this is Pikkachu trying to beat the paparazzi with this unfortunate wig.

Need I say why this is my favorite Hamtaro? He's. A. NINJA!

Isn't this a Lolcats entry waiting to happen: "Made in China? Can I haz Chinese food?"

----------------
Now playing: Various Artists - Frochot Music - Sonfo - Sekouba Bambino
via FoxyTunes

2008-08-29T12:04:00.002-04:00

Poetry Friday

Now in Technicolor!

The China Painters
by Ted Kooser

They have set aside their black tin boxes,
scratched and dented,
spattered with drops of pink and blue;
and their dried-up, rolled-up tubes
of alizarin crimson, chrome green,
zinc white, and ultramarine;
their vials half full of gold powder;
stubs of wax pencils;
frayed brushes with tooth-bitten shafts;
and have gone in fashion and with grace
into the clouds of loose, lush roses,
narcissus, pansies, columbine,
on teapots, chocolate pots,
saucers and cups, the good Haviland dishes
spread like a garden
on the white lace Sunday cloth,
as if their souls were bees
and the world had been nothing but flowers.

Happy Friday, everyone!

----------------
Now playing: Moonbabies - Take Me To The Ballroom
via FoxyTunes

2008-08-22T10:24:00.002-04:00

Poetry Friday

Yesterday I had the distinct feeling that summer is finally waning. There was a coolness to the air, a lifting of the usual humidity, something crisp and light. It makes me a little sad, as if I were bidding a friend good-bye after a well-spent evening.

Prayer
by Jorie Graham

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

2008-08-07T11:53:00.003-04:00

Recap

Last weekend I had the pleasure of reconnecting with my good friend Jocelyn, author of Je Blague. Jocelyn was not only one of my first friends when I arrived in Paris, but also a founding member of our usual gang of suspects, which consisted of friends who just knew we were hanging out on the weekend before we even knew what we would be doing.

After high school we managed to stay in touch, but when we found out we were pregnant at the same time and our daughters were both born only two weeks apart, we found ourselves checking in a whole lot more.

This weekend she and her posse made it up from North Carolina to Massachusetts to watch a family member's performance at Circus Smirkus. (Circus deserves its own entry because it was that awesome- the performers were lovely, and graceful, and entertaining, and passionate about their art- and the oldest one was 18...Yeah. I kid you not. Pun intended.) I was a bit wary because Snicky is a bit unpredictable at perfomances and around other kids. She had met Marley before...but who can remember names and small talk when you are 10 months old? I shouldn't have worried because, despite an "I AM ALL DONE! LET'S GO!" shouted towards the last half of the performance (quickly drowned out with Sesame Street cookies), Snicky and Marley picked up where they had last left off and were as thick as thieves.

The following night we got together again for dinner at Vincenzo's, an Italian restaurant with a Vincent Van Gogh art theme. Dinner under his Starry Night? Works for me. And the food was quite good too. And the children behaved quite well, even when they put on a dance marathon for us. And moms got to ~~hit the sauce~~ sample delightful cocktails and wine. Best of all was the company and catching up. But not catching up enough, so the consensus is that she'll just have to come back and we'll have to have more fruity cocktails.

It was good to see my friend and have our girls play together.

The happiest of all, however, was Minxie.
Because the kids played outside the house and away from her...

2008-08-02T21:00:00.001-04:00

For all the times that something could have gone terribly wrong, but didn't: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

2008-08-01T19:32:00.002-04:00

A Revelation and Poetry Friday

You know how people without kids walk into the houses of people who have kids and are absolutely flabbergasted by the sheer amount of volume that toys take? Know how those conversations between aforementioned people without kids, usually in the car on the way home, go? They go something like this:

"Wow- every corner is crammed with toys and games and the kids don't play with half of it!"
"I know! I almost broke my neck slipping on those scattered Legos!"
"It's terrible. Why don't their parents stop giving them so much...STUFF?"

And here the conversation veers into materialism, the shortcomings of the upcoming generation, and other such scenarios that only those who don't have children and can afford to sleep in until 10AM waste time yammering about.

How do I know?

*I* used to be one of those people who made a mental note of how I would not allow my house to be cluttered with toys.

To be fair, we pretty much keep the toys confined to one big room. It just so happens to be our living room. We figured it's her room too and why shouldn't she enjoy it? But I digress.

I wish to illuminate those who wonder about the avalanche of toys most children seem to have.

There are gifts and presents- usually grandparents are guilty of this. But let's not keep the accusing finger on one party.

Here's the truth.
It's the parents you blame.
But do you know why?

Because they live in the hope that one toy- one single toy- will be THE ONE. The Holy Grail of toys that will successfully keep the child happily, quietly, and diligently entertained for more than 10 minutes at a time. They have unwavering faith in the coming of THE ONE, despite repeated failures in the past. It's the alluring promise of the toy that gives you enough time to 1) Go to the restroom without having the door kicked open 2) Make something remotely resembling a meal without setting off the smoke alarms 3) Allows you a few uninterrupted seconds on the Internet doing a business search for local liquor stores before being commanded to go to YouTube for videos of cute puppies and kitties and even bunnies.

And now you know.

***

Poetry Friday

Forgotten Language
by Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-07-29T21:12:00.003-04:00

Old-Fashioned Superheroes

OK people. This is a must see, with the sound turned up. Its cheese factor is high, so bring your own crackers.

What am I talking about?
It's that macchiato-drinking, chain-smoking, Italian Spiderman!

Enjoy!

2008-07-25T16:14:00.001-04:00

Poetry Friday

I MADE IT!

The blog lives.

A Green Crab's Shell
by Mark Doty

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

Happy Friday, everyone!

----------------
Now playing: Kazumi And Maia - A l'endroit...A l'envers
via FoxyTunes

2008-07-11T19:18:00.003-04:00

Poetry Friday

I haven't been good and posted poems every Friday. At the same time, I don't like posting for the sake of posting and not placing much thought into my selections. I will spare you all the onslaught of excuses and just say that summer has been hazy and humid and I've been lazy.

This is a lovely poem I am so glad to be sharing with you all! (All...see? Still the optimist.)

Faith
by Louis Untermeyer

What are we bound for? What’s the yield
Of all this energy and waste?
Why do we spend ourselves and build
With such an empty haste?

Wherefore the bravery we boast?
How can we spend one laughing breath
When at the end all things are lost
In ignorance and death? . . .

The stars have found a blazing course
In a vast curve that cuts through space;
Enough for us to feel that force
Swinging us through the days.

Enough that we have strength to sing
And fight and somehow scorn the grave;
That Life’s too bold and bright a thing
To question or to save.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-06-23T17:52:00.005-04:00

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

We've been having some very heavy rainstorms over the past few days. Since we live up on a hilly part of the Boston area, it seems that we have front seats to the displays of lightning and explosive thunder. We've seen heavy rain before here and it usually doesn't concern me, since I grew up in the tropics and am used to rain so thick you can't see ahead of you, and winds so strong I once saw a hanging stoplight lie horizontally in the air.

Today's storm, however, was pretty impressive. The thunder was so loud I thought for a minute that something had blown up, and like in those classic Scooby-Doo cartoons, Snicky and I huddled. The rain fell fast and hard quickly overwhelming the drain and storm pipes. We had some minor flooding in the basement- a puddle, really- because one of our basement windows was besieged by the rain and temporarily submerged. It even hailed for a while and the wind just stirred up the moving curtain of rain.

Once the worst subsided, I looked out the front door and had a Dorothy-in-Oz- Moment: We're no longer in the Boston area! We're in Venice!

I always wanted waterfront property...

Grocery shopping by kayak?

There's even a little riptide in there!

Ciao, ragazzi.
Here's hoping for the end of the storms today.

2008-06-18T14:01:00.002-04:00

Marital Bliss

McGyva stayed home sick today. Feeling profound compassion for the man, I asked him if he'd like some lunch.

"Whatcha making?"

"We have quiche..."

"No thanks."

"Why not?"

" Real men don't eat quiche," he stated philosophically.

"Real men don't even know what quiche is; they just eat it!"

And that was that.

2008-06-07T10:45:00.003-04:00

Poetry...Now
and a Proustian Phone Call

These days I know a poem is good when it manages to move me despite the background noises coming from Word Girl and Captain Huggy Face on the TV...

The Enigma
by Anne Stevenson

Falling to sleep last night in a deep crevasse
between one rough dream and another, I seemed,
still awake, to be stranded on a stony path,
and there the familiar enigma presented itself
in the shape of a little trembling lamb.
It was lying like a pearl in the trough between
one Welsh slab and another, and it was crying.

I looked around, as anyone would, for its mother.
Nothing was there. What did I know about lambs?
Should I pick it up? Carry it . . . where?
What would I do if it were dying? The hand
of my conscience fought with the claw of my fear.
It wasn't so easy to imitate the Good Shepherd
in that faded, framed Sunday School picture
filtering now through the dream's daguerreotype.

With the wind fallen and the moon swollen to the full,
small, white doubles of the creature at my feet
flared like candles in the creases of the night
until it looked to be alive with newborn lambs.
Where could they all have come from?
A second look, and the bleating lambs were birds—
kittiwakes nesting, clustered on a cliff face,
fixing on me their dark accusing eyes.

There was a kind of imperative not to touch them,
yet to be of them, whatever they were—
now lambs, now birds, now floating points of light—
fireflies signaling how many lost New England summers?
One form, now another; one configuration, now another.
Like fossils locked deep in the folds of my brain,
outliving a time by telling its story. Like stars.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

* * *

McGyva went to a crew race in Connecticut early this morning. Just a little while ago, I received a phone call from him.

"J. has invited us over for brunch tomorrow. Can we go?"
"Sure!"
"Can we bring petit French cakes?"
"Huh?"
"You know- those little cakes."
"What little cakes?"
"Madeleines!"
The only Madeleines we have current access to are from Starbucks.
"Umm.."
"Can you make some?"
I am attending a birthday party for small children with Snicky this afternoon. When I get home, I am not making anything unless it involves some kind of mix, a wedge of lime, and lots of alcohol preceeded by fistfulls of Valium.
"Uhh...You need a special baking pan to make the Madeleines into those little shell shapes-"
"You know, I want to start making Madeleines. I want to become REALLY GOOD at it."
It would have been a good time to gently ask McGyva to put on his rowing partner on the phone so I could inquire whether he had been hit over the head by any wayward oars.

I wonder how many wives get phone calls from husbands aspiring to become Madeleine gurus?...

2008-05-27T00:42:00.005-04:00

An Excuse and a Poem

My mother was visiting.
She caught the ubiquitous stomach bug during her visit.
(And I've been feeling lazy. Very lazy.)

The blog hasn't met its demise, but like an occultist, it surely skirts around the fringes, no?

Ok. Now the poem.
I often feel that we live in a culture that mistakenly believes youth is beauty. Although youth is beautiful, it does not define beauty thoroughly. I hope to age gracefully, and wish only for good health, the ability to still do the things I enjoy, use my hands, have good eyesight, be able to stroll through some winding scenic path, and hold the ones I love tightly. That would be a beautiful thing.

Crossroads
by Joyce Sutphen

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

Happy Week, everyone!

2008-05-04T13:26:00.002-04:00

Sunday Funnies

Overheard conversation between Snicky and McGyva:

Snicky, to McGyva, who is sporting an exaggerated frown because she won't give him a big hug: "Are you sad, Daddy?"

"Yes, I am."

"I'm going to make you happy."

"That's very nice!"

"I'm making something for you!"

"Oh! Yeah? What are you making?"

"I'm pooping."

* * *

Snicky, talking into her toy phone:

"Mommy is doing well." Pause. "But she's sick."

* * *

2008-05-02T09:41:00.003-04:00

Poetry Friday

It's been a rough week for the Zen household. McGyva and I have both spent most of the week sick with what we suspect is food poisoning. The sight and smell of food still makes me queasy, something that I have to do my best to suppress, since I have to cook three meals a day for the little one, who, mercifully, did not get sick. One of the few things I have been able to stomach is some French bread with butter. Butter, and its fatty constitution, is probably not the wisest choice for an upset stomach, but sometimes what does wonders for the palate and morale rescues the rest too...

Butter
by Connie Wanek

Butter, like love,
seems common enough
yet has so many imitators.
I held a brick of it, heavy and cool,
and glimpsed what seemed like skin
beneath a corner of its wrap;
the decolletage revealed
a most attractive fat!

And most refined.
Not milk, not cream,
not even crème de la crème.
It was a delicacy which assured me
that bliss follows agitation,
that even pasture daisies
through the alchemy of four stomachs
may grace a king's table.

We have a yellow bowl near the toaster
where summer's butter grows
soft and sentimental.
We love it better for its weeping,
its nostalgia for buckets and churns
and deep stone wells,
for the press of a wooden butter mold
shaped like a swollen heart.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-04-29T10:19:00.004-04:00

Et Tu... and an English Lesson

Snicky has loved Minxie from day one. It's been a very one-sided admiration although the cat has warmed up somewhat to the child. Recently the manifestations of this love for the cat have gone overboard. As in my having to rush into the room to pry the cat from the child's loving arms.

On most days I might have to do this approximately every few minutes.

The cat looks absolutely bewildered and horrified.

But this begs the question: if it's SO horrible as her spooked demeanor suggests, then why, OH WHY, does she deliberately and insistently park herself in front of the child day after day?

I suspect it's just to have the schadenfreude-ish pleasure of watching Snicky get in trouble...

This morning, however, there were indications that even the deepest of devotions has its limits.

Snicky wanted to draw with her marker.

Her RED marker.

Not the blue, purple, or green one. It had to be the red one, for whatever reason the artistic muse who was inspiring her decided. Of course the red one was the missing one.

So we scouted the house for one missing red Crayola marker, up and down and around.

"Where's the marker, Mommy?" Snicky asked tearfully.

"I don't know. Where did you put it?"

Repeat this conversation some 384 times and you'll get an idea of my morning.

"Is it under the coffee table? Is it in the toy basket?" I asked as we searched under furniture.

Minxie casually sauntered into the room.

And suddenly the child stopped her searching, looked at the cat and there was this look of pained betrayal.

"Did Minxie 'tooked' it???"

We eventually found the marker in the toy basket (mercifully, with the top on- can you imagine if it had been dry?) and much merriment was made...But I checked Minxie's bed...just in case.

* * * * *

Snicky had a 24-hour tummy bug last week. It was a nasty thing that caused her to throw up several times before she settled into a restless sleep during the night. It startled her because she had never really thrown up before.

The first time after it happened (and there were several incidents, including one on Daddy's Burberry shirt [which made me kinda smirk because he'd been giving me pointers on how to efficiently handle the situation]) she looked at me and inquired:

"Mommy...Did I 'pooked'?"

It was too cute, but I had to correct her:

"No, sweetie- You 'tossed your cookies..."

2008-04-25T13:01:00.002-04:00

Poetry Friday

Although there is no allusion to it, I can't help but think of Lilith's children (Lilith, who is often described as a demon, but I prefer the Greek daemon for this intriguing woman), while reading this poem: shadowy beings living in the fringes of reality, tricksterish, protective of their knowledge. Forests seem to be perfect portals for light and dark to coexist...

It also reminded me a movie I like a lot: Pi.

Forest Children
by Colette Inez

We heard swifts feeding in air,
sparrows ruffling dusty feathers,
a tapping on stones, mud, snow, pulp
when rain came down, the hiss of fire.
Counting bird eggs in a dome of twigs,
we heard trees fall and learned
to name them on a page for school.

And living among trees, in the shadows
of their leaves and seeds, we had
the mystery of numbers, we believed,
from figuring angles of the sun
or counting stumps in a widening field.
Each day saws substracted boughs
for books of double algebra, equations
in a text we carried home
past hacked down pines.

Conjuring the spirit of the grove,
in a circle we sang:
“Mark out planes of shade and light
that seedlings might root.”
One morning in spring
trees showed winter skeletons
through smoke, abrupt curves, bent oak.
We were stripped of words to cast a spell.

“Algebra cadabra,” someone shouted
pointing to a vanished nest
we remembered as braided of moss,
ivy tendrils and spider’s silk.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-04-21T13:05:00.003-04:00

Cheeky Truck

I have decided to always have my cell phone's camera ready to spring into action when I am out and about because there is always something unsual or funny I want to remember to share later.

Like this truck:

And yes, I took a detour to make sure I got the shot (Alewife exit off Route 2, for Boston dwellers- so, not a really terrible detour...).

2008-04-20T12:45:00.002-04:00

Poetry Friday...

Today
by Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

2008-04-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

Poetry Friday and The Art of Discipline...

Secret History
by Charles Simic

Of the light in my room:
Its mood swings,
Dark-morning glooms,
Summer ecstasies.

Spider on the wall,
Lamp burning late,
Shoes left by the bed,
I'm your humble scribe.

Dust balls, simple souls
Conferring in the corner.
The pearl earring she lost,
Still to be found.

Silence of falling snow,
Night vanishing without trace,
Only to return.
I'm your humble scribe.

Happy Friday, everyone!

***

I thought Snicky had reached the pinnacle of these so-called Terrible Twos before friends began telling me that the Threes aren't a gondola ride down the Main Canal. I have had to pull rank and do the whole disciplining thing.

We tend to favor the "Naughty Step" technique, which involves a time-out after three warnings with minutes commensurate with the child's age. So Snicky gets 2 minutes at the foot of the stairs. Normally we rarely get past the count of two, but since the past week, she's been getting a time out once a day. One was for biting me on the shoulder, the other for hitting my hand away after warning #1, the other for screaming at the top of her lungs every few minutes when she didn't get something she wanted...all odd occurrences because Snicky is usually very sweet and not aggressive at all.

She usually hates being put on the step and either cries a little, or calls for me. Longest two minutes of the day- although the make-up hugs and kisses are this technique's saving grace. Plus the fact that she typically won't repeat the offending behavior.

Except for this morning.

Snicky was yelling and jumping and mad faced and all the bells and whistles that accompany full-fledged tantrums. McGyva, who was getting dressed for work, peeked out the bedroom door and warned sternly: "That's a one."

After which our child, nonchalantly, turned to me and stated: "I want to go to the Naughty Step."

Yup.
We're in trouble.

2008-04-07T21:03:00.005-04:00

Every once in a while you stumble across a story originally geared towards children, but that has a timeless appeal to it. I like these types of stories because they harness what storytelling is all about; they're the tasty fruit sheltering the seed that plants itself in our imaginations and blossoms in wondrous ways.

I ran across such a story today.

After a disappointing start to our day (I got the dates confused for Snicky's Baby Yoga class and showed up a week early...) I decided we could use a little cheering up at the local bookstore. Snicky loves picture books and we tend to favor anything about puppies, but today an author's name caught my attention, mostly because I did not expect to find him among the children's books: Jacques Prévert.

Prévert was a wonderful French poet, Surrealist, screenwriter (Les Enfants du Paradis, an epic of a film, was penned by him), and free spirit. He wrote a poem that artist and Caldecott medalist Mordecai Gerstein translated and illustrated: How to Paint the Portrait of a Bird is an ode to the artistic spirit in all of us. Sweetly illustrated without becoming saccharine or precious, the book's message is simple, yet movingly profound. Like most truths, in fact.

I picked it up without reading it first and wasn't disappointed. Snicky and I read it twice today, per her request, making me feel goofily happy and pleased...

So if you want to give some magic to a little one in your life, or want to recapture that joy, I recommend this gem of a book.

2008-03-19T11:20:00.005-04:00

Poetry Whenever

I was thinking about what kind of poem I'd like to put here during Holy Week, which always makes me introspective. For a long time I couldn't get why this was the holiest and highest of all the holidays for Catholics- for me it should have been Christmas, because, after all if the child had never arrived in the first place, then there would have been nothing else.

Then I started studying myth and folklore, my main field, and began to see that there was a theme: a deity who dies, but escapes the finality of death. Instead the deity reinvents itself and through that process eliminates some stagnation, some cycle of destruction from the cosmos. And that is all very good for us. I think of not only Jesus, of course, but of the West African trickster messenger god Eshu, killed at the crossroads, a kind of cross, and Osiris, from Egyptian myth, murdered by his brother (creation stories are filled with quarreling brothers, come to think of it) and resurrected by his wife, Isis, the Great Mother. There is Odin, in Norse myth, who hangs for nine days on the Yggdrasil, the World Tree, an Axis Mundi, in order to obtain sacred wisdom. The Hero Twins from the Mayan epic the Popol Vuh (probably one of my favorite), Jaguar-Hunter and Hunter-Deer, agree to immolate themselves over the fires of the Lords of Xibalba, or hell, just to return as more powerful magicians who can defeat them. Dionysus, of the Greek pantheon, is born from Zeus' (his father) thigh after his expectant mother, Semele, is destroyed after beholding Zeus in his true form. The beautiful Sumerian goddess Inana also makes a gruesome descent into the Underworld, where she is made to give up a piece of her wardrobe at each gate, and is killed and left hanging until she swaps places with her no-good husband.

There are more examples, of course, but the rebirth theme applies to more than just the reappearance of the god. It is recreating. Reinvention. A type of new year, so to speak, in the sense that there is a purging of old, bad, destructive habits that poison us and kill us in so many ways. We let go, we forgive, we move on, changed, like Odysseus' men, who after their transformation into swine by the enchantress Circe, emerge younger and handsomer.

So for Holy Week the poem selected is by Massachusetts native Anne Sexton. I find this is a beautiful poem about loss, longing, love...and letting go.

All My Pretty Ones
by Anne Sexton

Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,
boxes of pictures of people I do not know.
I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,
hold me. I stop here, where a small boy
waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ...
for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy
or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.
Is this your father’s father, this commodore
in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile
has made it unimportant who you are looking for.
I’ll never know what these faces are all about.
I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began
the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly
as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran
the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me
and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went
down and recent years where you went flush
on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant
to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.
But before you had that second chance, I cried
on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.
Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;
here, with the winner’s cup at the speedboat races,
here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,
here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,
running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;
and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept
for three years, telling all she does not say
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

Peace, everyone.

----------------
Now playing: Peter Gabriel - Mercy Street
via FoxyTunes

2008-03-08T10:32:00.004-05:00

Poetry Friday (on a Saturday...)

I'm shameless. I admit it.

We've had a lot of rain this past week- rain that drums over our heads, running down shingles and browned leaves through a murky course down our gutters. The sky is gray and the snow has melted away to give us a glimpse of all we neglected in the fall: a carpet of loamy leaves, a mosaic of decay over the flattened grass. And yet I can't help feeling cautiously joyful because I know that first come the crocuses and then the tulips, just as impatient as I am to go play outside. There was a hint of warmth in the air that I hadn't felt in a very long time this week, and that was a blessed relief.

A walk a couple days ago revealed the massive task before us. While Snicky pranced in muddy puddles in her galoshes, I took inventory of everything necessary to make this garden breathe again: pruning, weeding, mulching, planting. I looked at the plot reserved for vegetables and pondered what to plant this year without disturbing the perennial chives.

There is so much to look forward to this spring and summer, despite the amount of work awaiting. For one, we got a farm share through The Food Project. I like the idea of supporting a local farm that does such significant social projects with the community. I like fresh, local veggies and I like the element of surprise and the challenge of having to cook with something I might have avoided or overlooked. Like last year when I ended up with a bunch of chards. I never knew I'd like them so much.

So I am feeling a little restless, like Hadrian in D.H. Lawrence's short story You Touched Me. Except my Matilda is the fair weather.

Much in Little
by Yvor Winters

Amid the iris and the rose,
The honeysuckle and the bay,
The wild earth for a moment goes
In dust or weed another way.

Small though its corner be, the weed
Will yet intrude its creeping beard;
The harsh blade and the hairy seed
Recall the brutal earth we feared.

And if no water touch the dust
In some far corner, and one dare
To breathe upon it, one may trust
The spectre on the summer air:

The risen dust alive with fire,
The fire made visible, a blur
Interrate, the pervasive ire
Of foxtail and of hoarhound burr.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

2008-02-29T15:03:00.002-05:00

Poetry Friday Bonanza!

Because I went and missed last Friday, here are TWO poems!
My excuse? I was sick. And Snicky was sick. With nasty little colds. Nuff said.

And starting next week I will try to post a little more regularly. I know. Bold and bolder and always later...

There may be Chaos still around the World
by George Santayana

There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

But wait! There's more:

Canary
by Rita Dove for Michael S. Harper

Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-02-18T11:14:00.005-05:00

Foodie Poetry and Post

Onions
by William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by
dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter
slithers and swirls across the floor
of the saute pan, especially if its
errant path crosses a tiny slick
of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto
or chutney (from the Sanskrit
chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions
go limp and then nacreous
and then what cookbooks call clear,
though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.
It’s true it can make you weep
to peel them, to unfurl and to tease
from the taut ball first the brittle,
caramel-colored and decrepit
papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion
wrapped around its growing body,
for there’s nothing to an onion
but skin, and it’s true you can go on
weeping as you go on in, through
the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on
in to the core, to the bud-like,
acrid, fibrous skins densely
clustered there, stalky and in-
complete, and these are the most
pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal
comfort that infant humans secrete.
This is the best domestic perfume.
You sit down to eat with a rumor
of onions still on your twice-washed
hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual
endurance. It’s there when you clean up
and rinse the wine glasses and make
a joke, and you leave the minutest
whiff of it on the light switch,
later, when you climb the stairs.

* * *

On Saturday McGyva, Snicky, and I met up with a co-worker's of his, along with his wife and 3 yr-old son for a little impromptu lunch. The guys are volunteering on a science project at a nearby high school and decided they would treat themselves, on the last Saturday of this long, ongoing project, to a leisurely lunch at the local fancy-pansy hamburger joint. It was the first time I had met this couple and during conversation I found out she had been formally trained as a pastry chef. She revealed, however, that it wasn't a career she decided to pursue because, as she humorously put it, "once pastry chefs accomplish everything they need to in the field, they then go off to do bizarre stuff, like the entire cast of Star Trek glazed on cakes and such." They began to tell us about the loopy world of chefs and this led to a most entertaining reading recommendation: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,by Anthony Bourdain.

McGyva picked the book up for me that night and I delved right in. Despite the slightly scandalous and downright risque turns the book takes, turns that are bewildering and amusing, it's his recollections of the food, his descriptions of different ingredients and tastes and smells that make this, pardon the pun, a delectable read.

* * *

When I was 17, I briefly flirted with the possibility of becoming a chef. I attended a class at the Cordon Blue when I was living in Paris. I had never been that much into food before then, having been dragged to restaurants by my gourmet-wannabe-but-truly-gourmand stepfather. Dinners at the Moulin de Mougins, where we went while spending time in Cannes, or at the Tour d'Argent in Paris, were pretty much wasted on me at that time. Still, that course at the Cordon Blue opened my eyes to the complexity of preparing something that nourishes and brings pleasure to others. Watching that chef reveal that there was more to swilling mixed ingredients from a boiling pot over a slab of venisson made me feel that this was an ancient, arcane trade filled with tricks and caveats, an alchemy of sorts, entrusted into the hands of those who mastered the speed of knives and harnessed the potency of fire.

I realized, though, that I liked it all by association. I liked to observe it all happen, and while I definitely enjoyed the end result, I wanted to cook whenever I felt inspired. I didn't think I could churn out meal after meal, day after day. It wasn't my passion and my calling.

Still, I understand Bourdain's joy describing several foods. I, too, remember my first oyster. I remember we were spending time on an island off the coast of Rio, where I spent many vacations during my childhood. One of our family friends, momentarily seized by a great idea, disappeared into the nighttime beach armed with a screwdriver, a block of wood, and a small bowl, and brought back a few small oysters. He proudly set them on ice and left a little salt and limes on the side. Most of the adults in the room balked at them as if they were gobs of phlegm. Our friend picked a shell up, squirted some lime juice on it, and slurped it off the smooth shell. His face lit up with an expression of rapture. "Want to try one?" he asked me, offering me the tray. It looked ghastly. But I was intrigued. So I braced myself, not sure if it was daring or curiosity that prompted me, and at a mental count of three slurped my oyster down.

And it was exquisite: a taste of the sea and something more so unique I wanted another one to help me define it.

Since then I have had oysters served over large ice platters at Brasserie Stella, near where I lived in Paris, or here in Boston, where a New England variety can be sampled at McCormick & Schmick's. But whether they are just as good, better, or not as delicious, they are held up against that first taste...

2008-02-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

There used to be an old building on Siqueira Campos, Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, where it seemed most ballet schools, seamstresses, and dusty vinyl record shops resided. The gatekeepers to this vertical Babylon of Carioca life were the elevator men and women whose main jobs were making sure the zigzag of metal doors did not unfold on a last-minute patron and pressing numbered buttons on a panel. It was a delightful anachronism in a furious city. I wonder if they're still there?

The Dignity of Ushers
by Al Maginnes

Their authority did not unfold
from ironed white shirts and thin ties
or from the funereal seriousness that struck
their acne-splashed faces but because
they stood heir to our native faith in light.

So we followed the thin white waver
of beams they pointed down aisles
to seats we never thought of refusing.
It was the first job I wanted,
especially after birthday outings

far from home showed me the glowing
outfits worn by big-city ushers, their get-ups
a blend of doorman and military dictator,
as gaudy and fine as the plots
of movies my Saturdays were swallowed by.

None of us knew, as they took us
into the artificial light of the cinema,
that they walked the path of the pin setter,
the blacksmith or elevator operator,
professions reduced to curiosity

by wandering time. Only in the quick steps
of floor salesmen, the slim backs of hostesses
bringing us to our tables, do they remain,
the artful flutters of their flashlights lost
in dark we are left to find our own way through.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-02-01T15:18:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

The Heart's Archaeology
by Maudelle Driskell

On some fundless expedition,
you discover it beneath
a pyracantha bush
carved from the hip bone
of a long-extinct herbivore
that walked the plains on legs
a story tall. An ocarina of bone
drilled and shaped laboriously
with tools too soft to be efficient
by one primitive musician
spending night after night
squatting by the fire.
No instrument of percussion:
place this against your lips,
fill it from your lungs to sound
a note winding double helix, solo
and thready calling to the pack.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-01-25T10:49:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

A Way to Make a Living
by James Wright

From an epigram by Plato

When I was a boy, a relative
Asked for me a job
At the Weeks Cemetery.
Think of all I could
Have raised that summer,
That money, and me
Living at home,
Fattening and getting
Ready to live my life
Out on my knees, humming,
Kneading up docks
And sumac from
Those flawless clerks-at-court, those beautiful
Grocers and judges, the polished
Dead of whom we make
So much.

I could have stayed there with them.
Cheap, too.
Imagine, never
To have turned
Wholly away from the classic
Cold, the hill, so laid
Out, measure by seemly measure clipped
And mown by old man Albright
The sexton. That would have been a hell of
A way to make a living.

Thank you, no.
I am going to take my last nourishment
Of measure from a dark blue
Ripple on swell on ripple that makes
Its own garlands.
My dead are the secret wine jars
Of Tyrian commercial travelers.
Their happiness is a lost beginning, their graves
Drift in and out of the Mediterranean.

One of these days
The immortals, clinging to a beam of sunlight
Under water, delighted by delicate crustaceans,
Will dance up thirty-foot walls of radiance,
And waken,
The sea shining on their shoulders, the fresh
Wine in their arms. Their ships have drifted away.
They are stars and snowflakes floating down
Into your hands, love.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2008-01-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

Recently McGyva and I had been complaining to each other about things we don't like about our house: little closet space, low ceilings upstairs (yeah, it's a Cape...not like we didn't know we'd be grazing our knuckles against the ceilings anytime we pulled off a shirt), and no garage, among other things.

Then I got a letter, yesterday, from our friends who spent some time in Alaska volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. They sent out a note to all their friends who had supported their fundraising efforts and included brief bios on the families they had been building homes for.

Reading about these families made me feel like we had been complaining on a full stomach. There was the 28-year old man who was helping raise his four young orphaned cousins; he wanted a decent and affordable home with more than two bedrooms. There was also the story of the young parents who work different shifts so that one of them can always be at home with the children: they just wanted to live in a safe neighborhood, something they couldn't otherwise obtain without the aid of Habitat. These stories made me feel profoundly grateful that I have a roof I call mine over my head. It's all in how you look at it, and I appreciated the readjustment of my view...

“Although the wind ...”
by Izumi Shikibu

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

Happy Friday, everyone.

2008-01-14T09:22:00.000-05:00

Blizzard 2008!

We woke up this morning to a phone call from a concerned relative begging us not to leave the house today. One glance out the window explained why: we're having a blizzard. All you see are small flakes coming down fast and hard. The landscape has been redefined by layers of marshmallow-y snow.

Just to give you an idea: see the branches on that tree in the middle? The branches that are touching the ground? Well, let's just say I normally can't reach those branches. It's usually a clear path to that tree.

Steps to the house. Where's the street? Where's the sidewalk? Where's my coffee?...

2008-01-13T17:51:00.000-05:00

Poetry, Dinners, and Creme Brulee

Ok, so I missed posting a poem on Friday. It happens...And I try to make up for it.

This weekend was all about good food and good friends and Snicky's decorative talents.

Appetizer:
Poetry

This poem filled me with joy because you can tell so much about people once you know what authors make them tick. Our favorite books and stories are little parts of us and are summoned to our memories and hands during different moments in life. And imagine such a well-read diner...

The Diner
by Richard Jones

The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffeepot
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
(he’s reading Rumi),
asks what he thinks of Arthur Waley.
In the booth behind them, a fat woman
feeds a small white poodle in her lap,
with whom she shares her spoon.
“It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,”
she says, “that one can’t live without:
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love.”
The revolving door proffers
a stranger in a long black coat,
lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.
As he waits to be seated,
the woman who owns the place
hands him a menu
in which he finds several handwritten poems
by Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The lunch hour’s crowded—
the owner wonders
if the stranger might share
my table. As he sits,
I put a finger to my lips,
and with my eyes ask him
to listen with me
to the young boy and the young girl
two tables away
taking turns reading aloud
the love poems of Pablo Neruda.

And a happy week to all!

Main Course:
Mongolian Fondue

On Saturday night we had a couple of friends over for fondue. It was a cold, wintry night, and I think fondue is one of the nicest, coziest, ways of enjoying good company and food.

Mongolian fondue consists of broth into which skewers laden with beef are plunged. I usually prepare my broth with some beef consomme, scallions, sliced mushroom, spices and wine. I cut the beef (fillet mignon and angus sirloin) into little cubes, and season them with amazing spices (I recommend Chicago Steak Seasoning and Krakow Nights )from Penzeys. I also like to mix things up a bit, so I served shrimp also. I served six different dipping sauces: creamy horseradish, creamy Dijon mustard, anchovy paste, Roquefort butter, sweet onion, and scallion-soy. Side dishes consisted of herbed potatoes, and mixed grilled veggies. After cooking all the beef (and this crowd ate almost all the beef), the cooking broth was served up as a flavorful soup. For dessert? Chocolate fondue, of course: dark chocolate and plenty of fresh strawberries and sliced bananas for some serious dipping.

I hadn't used my fondue pot since before Snicky as born, so it was good to go through the ritual of setting up the table, the lazy susan, the little dipping containers, the pot stand, the Sterno, crystal glasses and vintage china. I got to use one of my favorite table cloths- a Senegalese cloth that we got as a wedding gift.

The table looked like this at the end (apologies for the lousy lighting):

Snicky contributed her own personal touch:

Dessert:

Creme Brulee

This afternoon I decided to make some creme brulee, since I had some leftover heavy cream from last night. It was surprisingly easy and the result was, if I may say so, delicious. I am picky about creme brulee: I like it simple and subtle. I dislike the alcohol-flavored ones. I don't care for the chocolate or coffee ones, and I detest the overly sweet ones. This came out perfectly, with just a hint of vanilla.

And using the torch to caramelize the sugar on top? Fun...

Not too runny, not too firm. There are four more of these waiting in the fridge for me...

2008-01-07T14:51:00.000-05:00

New Year Meme

What was your favorite movie in 2007?

I don't get to watch half the movies I used to, but there were a few wonderful discoveries in 2007: The Illusionist and Stardust.

What was your favorite book in 2007?

I really liked The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith and The Shadow of the Wind, by Zafon, which kept me up quite late at night on a few occasions. And need I say Neil Gaiman's American Gods?

What music did you enjoy in 2007?

Oddly enough, it was a Lisa Loeb and Elizabeth Mitchell album for kids that captured my attention last year. Snicky loves the title song, Catch the Moon, and I find the whole album enjoyable for both Snicky and me.

I also discovered Calexico and the White Rabbits, who made music that intrigued, inspired, and made me plain happy.

Are you richer or poorer?

Richer.
But that's not referring to money, is it? That would be a sad way to measure your life.

Thinner or fatter?

Kind of the same.

What kept you sane this past year?

Not much: Buddhist texts.
Hot showers.
Ranma 1/2

Which personal accomplishment in 2007 are you most pleased with?

Finally managing to find some sort of balance between raising a child, working, spending time with McGyva, and running the household. With an iron fist...

What resolutions have you made for '08?

Take better care of my health
Make wiser dietary choices (sorry Annie Chun)
Fight the clutter

Which bad habit are most motivated to break?

Procrastination

Which do you expect to keep?

I expect to keep procrastinating...

What are you most looking forward to in 2008?

Not sure yet. Perhaps some changes regarding the career? We'll see...

2008-01-04T18:51:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

Dear Mr. Merrill,
by Moira Egan

I hope you'll pardon the informality
of this letter, postmarked Olympia
(Greece, not Washington), its task not simple:
crossing lines you've crossed, time, mortality,
to find you, who spent a lifetime crossing lines
out, twisting, polishing them to shine

cool and lustrous as the statue I fell in
love with yesterday. I'm sure you saw him
too, that perfect Hermes by Praxitelis,
full lips, hips contrapposto. I wished to draw him
down, latter-day Pygmalion, and embrace
him. Or barring Eros (and the guards) I'd trace

his face, the supple muscle of the marble.
I had a student who resembled him—
yes, Angelos—arrogant and beautiful.
I never touched him though he touches me in dreams.
Eros dangles his perfection in our faces
like one-armed Hermes with his promise of the grapes.

I was certain I'd dream of him last night.
Instead I dreamed another in the growing chain
of others with whom it ended not quite
right. But the thirst was perfect, if its price pain
and shattered crystal, spilling wine, all part
and parcel of our imperfect lives. Then Art

startles out of heartache, marble or page.
You learned this long ago. Now I too see
the wildest things require the strongest cages,
the panther's double bars, or the seeds,
bloodysweet and bitter, in the pomegranate's
rind. Love held tight in a sonnet.

Happt Friday, everyone!

2007-12-28T18:42:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

Burning the Old Year
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Happy Friday, everyone!

2007-12-27T11:20:00.001-05:00

On the First Day of Christmas...

One of the funnest gifts I got this year was a graphic tablet. I can now draw or paint directly into applications such as Photoshop. It's quite nice to have more precision when working with images or creating new ones. I'm still learning the ins and outs of my tablet, including the fun software that came with it. There's a filter that applies an instant "Van Gogh Effect" on an image. It actually works quite well, although I don't think my creations will be sold by Sotheby's anytime soon...

Before Van Gogh-ization:

After a few digital turpentine fumes:

The most flattering, however, came from my mother, while I was testing my tablet's pen. It's quite cleverly designed in the sense that different pressures applied create more ink flow or stronger lines. So I created a bunch of loopy squiggles:

As I was about to delete it, my mother cried: "I want a copy to frame!" And the cherry on top: "Can you sign it 'Miró'? It looks JUST LIKE one of his works!"

(This is a real Miró)

And I must add that there were no spiked beverages being consumed on the premises at the time: not by the art critic nor the artist.

I can't vouch for Miró, however...

2007-12-24T15:20:00.000-05:00

Happy Happy

To all of you celebrating: Merry Christmas!
May you find yourselves surrounded by loved ones.
May you find yourselves surrounded by loved ones who would never give you fruitcake.

2007-12-22T10:11:00.001-05:00

Poetry Friday

Last night, after a morning of meetings and added deadlines, after a frantic afternoon of last-minute Christmas shopping (is there ever any other kind?), after stretching and being aware of all my bones just wanting to lie in a quiet heap, I watched a lovely movie that I might have to add to my collection. Based on Neil Gaiman's short story, Stardust is a charming fairytale about a young man living in the sleepy little town of Wall, in England, at what appears to be Victorian times. The town is named "Wall" because there is an enormous wall spanning the length of a field, into which residents are prudent enough not to cross.

Except... one young man called Dunstan manages to elude the wall's watchman and finds himself in an exotic market town. He comes across a charming maiden, claiming to be an enslaved princess, who sells him a sprig of white flowers in exchange for a kiss. The kiss is just a prelude, for the lad follows the maiden into her gypsy wagon...

Nine months later the wall's watchman appears at Dunstan's doorstep with a basket, dropped off for him at the wall's opening. It's a baby boy. Dunstan names him Tristan and we meet them a few years later, when Tristan is working as a shop boy and is hopelessly enamoured with the town beauty, Victoria. Victoria is also being courted by the town jerk, Humphrey, and she is quite capricious in her affections; she receives Tristan's declarations of love with amusement. One night, while trying to convince Victoria of the depths of his love, a falling star crosses the sky over their heads and apparently falls into the field beyond the wall. Tristan offers to venture into the field to bring Victoria a piece of the star to prove his love and hopefully change her mind about accepting a proposal from Humphrey. She bemusedly accepts and so Tristan runs home to tell his father of his impending adventure. In doing so, he discovers a little bit about his past and receives the magical sprig of flowers and an odd candle along with a note from his mother: "Travel is easier by candlelight..."

What Tristan does not know is that the star's fall was triggered by the tossing of a magical royal pendant into the heavens by the dying king of Stormhold, in a challenge to his heirs: the throne shall belong to the one who finds and restores the ruby in the pendant. The heirs are murderous brothers bent on eliminating each other while seeking the pendant. The pendant is now in the possession of the star it knocked out of the heavens, a young woman called Yvaine. Yvaine's fall hadn't only been noticed by Tristan and Victoria...it had also been noticed by three sorceress sisters, who need the star to fuel their dark powers. Thus, Yvaine, bewildered and new to the world is being sought by witches, warring princes, and a young lover, for very different reasons...

It's a charming story, it has plenty of humor (the ghost of the murdered brothers are quite amusing), and an impressive cast: Peter O'Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Robert De Niro, among other...stars.

Ancestral
by Archibald MacLeish

The star dissolved in evening—the one star
The silently
and night O soon now, soon
And still the light now
and still now the large
Relinquishing
and through the pools of blue
Still, still the swallows
and a wind now
and the tree
Gathering darkness:
I was small. I lay
Beside my mother on the grass, and sleep
Came—

slow hooves and dripping with the dark
The velvet muzzles, the white feet that move
In a dream water
and O soon now soon
Sleep and the night.

And I was not afraid.
Her hand lay over mine. Her fingers knew
Darkness,—and sleep—the silent lands, the far
Far off of morning where I should awake.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

2007-12-14T12:11:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

We had a snow storm yesterday: small flakes falling heavily, quickly transforming the landscape in hues of ghostly white. Amazingly enough, Massachusetts drivers seemed to have forgotten their winter savviness and folks began abandoning their vehicles on the roads, blocking the ploughs, and creating chaos on the highways. Many people were stranded in a hellish commute that- easily- took about four hours door to door. Snicky and I stayed home all day. We looked at the snow falling, drew and watched her favorite flicks. As messy as it can be, I love watching the snow come down. It is as if the world were immersed in reverential silence and peace; it's one of the saving graces of this dreary time of the year.

Without further ado- a poet I enjoy very much- William Carlos Williams:

Blizzard
by William Carlos Williams

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

Happy Friday, everyone!

The view from our front door, at approximately 7PM last night. Click for more snowflakarama.

2007-12-11T11:44:00.000-05:00

Number 8

Because McGyva and I never lived together before we were married, I remember the shock of merging our two households. I was also surprised, and sometimes touched, to see what he had kept over the years and treasured: a paperback edition of Ceremony from high school with the swear words all underlined; a yellow toy robot bank that greedily munched on coins; a miniature brass abacus; his varsity letter jacket; a few vinyl albums of The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen; a giant wool blanket knit by a loving grandaunt; an incomplete antique dinnerware set; black and white pictures of himself costumed as an old man in a school play; an Irish recorder and a silver harmonica; black boxes with red and blue-stoned high school and college rings.

These were little fragments of his history that were now compiled with my own collections of old tap dance shoes, Brazilian comic books, unstrung guitar, and old Paris subway ticket stubs.

Sometimes dissonant, sometimes harmonious, but always meaningful, this collage is a work in progress.

Happy Anniversary, McGyva!

Romantic
by Dara Wier

My love said take
All my books,

You can take all my clothes,
My hats, my shoes, my gloves,

You can have my watchband
Take my sifters

You can have my glass head
And my silver darts,

Take my wild boar, my astronaut,
You can have my pots & pans,

And my replica
Of the United States, and take

While you’re at it, all of the
presidential figurines

You can have all my matchbooks,
My binoculars, my exceptionally fine

Collection of cleaning products,
My one-of-a-kind snake charming horn,

Take my sand dollars & beach glass,
Take all of my spices and salt & pepper,

You can have my smoked ham & brown mustard,
You can take away my Progesso Soup,

Take away my bread, take my spoons,
You can have my sheets and my pillows,

Take my rugs and my three erasers,
Take my pitcher and the scarf you gave me,

Take my feathers my fox took
From my hawk, take my walking stick,

You can have my broom and my glass eye,
You can take away my atomic clock,
Take my dog, take my rule book,
Take my decoy and my bamboo cage,

You can take my girl waiting on
Her suitcase, my Michael Jackson doll,

You can take my mother and her priest
And their holy water basin,

Take my drill and my hammer,
You can have all my brushes & combs,

Take my handkercheifs and my scissors,
Take all of the keys you can find

In the house, take my scythe my hoe,
My rags, my lamp with the lovers

Asleep in one another’s arms, take
My sprite sitting on a stump daydreaming

Over an empty book, take my moose,
Take my coffee can of loose change,

Take all of my ant traps, take my
Windowpanes, take my steps and my doors,

Take my chicken shack & my wheelbarrow,
Take my combat ship plaque, take my

Vatican champagne flutes, my earplugs,
Take my quilts, take all of my quilts,

I would not take one stitch
Of one of your quilts, though I love them,

I sweetly interrupted.

2007-12-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

Poetry!

Shameless of me...but better late than never.

One Christmas, when I was a little girl, my father gave me my very first pair of ice skates. I remember them to this day- the soft white leather and the shiny silver blades. After I opened the box that held them, I looked at my father apprehensively because I did not know how to skate.

My father, uncle, cousin, and I drove out in my uncle's truck to a pond out in a snowy valley one early afternoon. What struck me, as I put my skates down on the frozen pond for the first time in my life, was that unlike the illustrations in books featuring those cheerful skaters, the surface was bumpy and uneven. I could also see bubbles and leaves, and pebbles, and reeds caught below the thick sheet of ice. I remember the absolute thrill of gliding over the pond and pretending I was racing against the wind. I also remember my father elegantly skating toward me and gently tugging me along my first laps around the ice. This poem brought back happy memories.

Ice
by Gail Mazur

In the warming house, children lace their skates,
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white
and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’
hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour
of distances moved backwards without falling,

then—twilight, the warming house steamy
with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep
playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,
a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide
arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never
be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her
in circles outside the emptied rink forever?

Have a great week, everyone!

2007-12-02T21:42:00.000-05:00

An Almost Tale of Bad Parenting

The other day Snicky picked up an issue of People (Shush. I wrote my dissertation on James Joyce. I can read whatever I like) we had lying around the living room and began to leaf through it. She likes to color and draw now and I let her play with old magazines. It's fun for her, a way to recycle and save some paper, and the expression on Viking Mom's face when she visits and pages through a magazine only to find Dr. McSteamy's face scribbled with green magic marker is PRICELESS.

"What's THIS?" Snicky asked, pointing repeatedly at a picture.

The picture in question was of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in an article covering what was going on now with different cast members. In the picture, Buffy was standing over a pale, bald, ferocious demon-like creature whose fang-filled mouth was contorted in a roaring grimace.

Oh boy.

With her little eyebrows knit in worry, she continued to point nervously at the picture.

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch handles a difficult situation with young daughter Scout in what can be described as a moment of parental genius. When Scout asks what "rape" means, Atticus honors her curiosity with the truth...but a truth so over Scout's head ("unlawful carnal knowledge") that she had to let it go.

The truth? Ok.

"It's a monster." I explained. Snicky's eyes widened.
"I'm 'scary' Mommy!" She cried.

Pause for a moment of reflection.
Yes, Atticus Finchwas a clever man and handled the situation well.
A situation with an outcome that was utterly controlled by the author.

The truth? With an Einstein twist: it's relative.

"No, no! It's not scary!" I explained. "The monster is HAPPY!"

Snicky looked at the picture sideways. She looked at me and smiled tentatively.

"See? He is SINGING! La la la!"

To which Snicky immediately began to laugh and suddenly the picture was a source of great joy.

"He's SINGING, Mommy!"

And

"The HAPPY monster! La la la!"

That's right.

And that magazine is in the recycling bin now.

2007-12-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday

On a Sunday. Brazenly so.

There may be Chaos still around the World
by George Santayana

There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

And may the upcoming week be a good one!

2007-11-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

Poetry

Motion
by Octavio Paz

If you are the amber mare
I am the road of blood
If you are the first snow
I am he who lights the hearth of dawn
If you are the tower of night
I am the spike burning in your mind
If you are the morning tide
I am the first bird's cry
If you are the basket of oranges
I am the knife of the sun
If you are the stone altar
I am the sacrilegious hand
If you are the sleeping land
I am the green cane
If you are the wind's leap
I am the buried fire
If you are the water's mouth
I am the mouth of moss
If you are the forest of the clouds
I am the axe that parts it
If you are the profaned city
I am the rain of consecration
If you are the yellow mountain
I am the red arms of lichen
If you are the rising sun
I am the road of blood

Happy Monday, if such a thing is possible...

2007-11-22T11:40:00.000-05:00

Happy Turkey Day

To all of you celebrating, Happy Thanksgiving Day!

It's the day we set aside to appreciate the true culinary miracle of stuffing...

2007-11-22T09:56:00.000-05:00

Quelle Surprise!

This found at the SamaBlog- Sama, who, by the way, is no longer up for grabs, ladies!As of last Saturday, his bride made an honest man out of him...

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated.
You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

I am delighted that although Paris is no longer my home, the joie de vivre and customary grumpiness have not faded completely! Bah- I mean- Bof!

2007-11-21T14:36:00.000-05:00

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

How's this for inspiring muse?

A Viking Zen! A Viking Zen! My kingdom for a Viking Zen!

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Found over at Myth Happens.