Take It Easy

I'm going to take it easy this weekend.  I have something I have to finish work-wise, but other than that, I am officially declaring this weekend hand-off-me time.  Since my answering machine is out of commission anyway, this shouldn't be all that hard to pull off.  I am going to finish the Greg Iles I'm working on now (once I get the work done, that is), get Jim Butcher's new one on my Kindle and read it, and generally indulge myself in music and print.  Tomorrow night will be a new episode of Dr. Who, and I am actually enjoying the new series quite a bit more than I expected, so that will be a nice treat, too.  If the promised bad weather doesn't come in, I may tag one of my friends and see if she wants to go get some Japanese food.  If not, I may go myself and be the chick with the iPod and book in the corner eating udon or donburi.  In fact, the idea of being totally anonymous feels mightily appealing.  Whatever I decide to do, the break in my usual routine should feel good, I think.  It will be the most important thing, just trying to get my mind in a new place.  If I can do that, I think I can hold up for what's to come.

Astute Observation on the Mother Tongue

The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary.

~ Dave Kellett, Sheldon, 02-01-09

Still Tumbling About in the Polisher

Here's one of the pieces I'm still working on.  I wanted to put one of them up.  I still don't have a firm title for it since it's changing shapes with each revision, but right now, I'm calling it Persistence.

You surround me
vast, endless
sea, desert, sky
a universe of you
everywhere

A flood of prepositions
sweeping me before you
enfolding me gently or rough
consuming me inside

Your blue eyes peer at me
with gentle and impersonal question
over the rim of every chipped coffee cup
every stranger behind a paperback
is you
gold and blue

Into my ears
subtle as Claudius' poison
slides your music
a rock and roll ventriloquism
still pulling the strings
after you took your voice away

Unkind of you
to have left behind
so many ghosts
when you went away
You should have taken it all
cleared up these shades
of or and azure
that cling like wind-borne incense
fragrance of something
sacred, clean, wild, precise
of the shoulder I used
to lay my head on
in the stillness of the long
moonless night

Instead there's the endless shock
again, again, again
of seeing the monuments
you left behind
carved into the corridors of my soul
like some latter-day pharoah
yearning for immortality

New Poems

I've written two new poems lately, and I'm quietly pleased with them.  They are still in the "rock tumbler" phase of adjustments little and large, but the core is solidified, the idea is there, the key phrases are clicking against each other and starting to look like poetry.  It feels so very good to write again.  I hate it when my inner voice is mute.  I walk around with pieces of things jangling around in my head, bits of colored glass and old buttons, oddments I've collected, and I sort through them with my mental fingertips, but during those times, no pattern forms.  Lately, though, everything has been treasure.  I'm grateful. I needed it.

A Million Good Things

This time of the year, I tend to get stressed, worn, and tired.  My focus tends to narrow down to the negative.  God knows there's enough negative to go around right now without looking very hard.  That, too, makes it hard to raise my head, unfold my wings.  I forget that there are a million good things around me.  I have to force myself to remember that there are tulip poplars in the world, beautiful with their yellow and orange blossoms.  I need to loop my sari silk scarf around my neck and study the vivid colors.  I should enjoy the simple pleasure of using my fountain pens when I have to do the everyday tasks of schoolwork paper-pushing.  I need to sing louder with the radio on the way to school and in the privacy of my classroom after the day is done.  If I can hold on to the good things, maybe I can offset some of the ridiculous detritus I can't clear away despite all my best efforts to the contrary.

Why My iPhone Rocks

My DSL has been out all weekend.  Something happened in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, and my phoneline got fried.  I, being the consumate electronic addict that I am, was panic-stricken at the idea of a whole weekend with no email or internet.  Worse still, I use email and web to do the bulletin  for my church. 

Enter the iPhone. 

Although I had to charge it in the middle of Saturday, it saved the weekend.  I could still get email.  I was able to pull stuff off the web for the bulletin.  I went and looked at a punch bowl for my mom on Ebay since she does not "go there."  I kept up with people on FaceBook during the insane weather.  It was a very, very good thing.

Now, my BlackBerry was very good to me for a long time, but I'm here to tell you right now that I could not have done everything that I did this weekend with it.  Before this weekend, I was fond of my trusty little "electronic device," but afterward, I just want to give it a hug and make it a little cushy bed all of its own. 

Signs and Omens

I deal with literature too much.

Pale Rider just came on, and of course, my brain just traced the path of allusions to Revelations, webbed it across Pratchett and Gaiman and Anthony, and then tied it to my own current situation.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Most of the time I enjoy this extra layer that almost everything has laid over the top of it.  Sometimes it's a little like a game of Six Degrees of Separation.  Right now, though, I'm just tired, and the bits and pieces that are rubbing together are like the raw edges of broken bones.

I have nightmares when I sleep.  It doesn't matter what I watch or read before bedtime; I wake up in the night dreaming of serial killers, of monsters (and not the kind I empathize with), of loss that makes me cry. 

I am so forgetful that I can't get from one room to another without losing what I went there for.  It's distressing and horrible, like my mind is a slate being continually washed clean by fast-flowing water.  It's like being pre-migraine all the time.  Maybe that's what's really happening, but I'm not actually on-setting with pain, halo, or anything other than very delayed processing, so I can't tell.

I'm going to have to take a day soon.  As soon as I can get everybody through testing, I am going to take one of my many, many personal days and just go somewhere else.  Maybe Jackson, maybe just the Old Place.  It won't really matter.  Maybe if I spend a day somewhere other, maybe the web of connections that ties everything together won't be such a leaden burden afterward. 

Good to See

A local university has started to take unused buildings downtown and renovate them, use them as arts centers, parts of its campus.  I think that's great.  Nobody else seems to be doing anything with these great old buildings except buying them up and letting them fall in or tearing them down.  It makes me happy that these old department stores which were once the heart of the city will again have life in them, maybe give life back to our town.  I'm tired of deadness and decay.  It will be great to see something grow instead of fall apart.

The Price of Knowledge

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. ~ Quentin Crisp

Some Things Are Just Right

i carry your heart eecummings inscription by pocketfullofpoesy

I don't usually do this.  I'm not the type to browse through bridal magazines, and God knows I avoid the latest rash of bride reality shows like the plague that they are.  I've never done the ultra-girly thing of picking out my dress, my colors, or planning my reception.  It's always seemed so unreal, so impossible, to me that there was no reason to do it.  The only wedding idea that I've really had involved a Las Vegas Elvis....

That being said, if I ever do find a crazy sucker wonderful man and we wind up getting married, I have at least found what I'd like my ring to look like.  This is e.e. cummings, of course.  How could it not be, really?  Now if I can just find a man who knows who that is.....

When the World Falls Apart

(Vague for a reason)

Everything is coming unglued.  All the pillars of stability are falling in or being ripped away, and I don't know, anymore, what to think.   I'm a person who can adapt to a great many variables when I know they're coming, in a situation like travel or a project or something that demands it.  In the other areas of my life, though, I need most things to be what they're supposed to be, need a minimum of chaos.  Surprises are okay, I don't mind being flexible, but there comes a certain point past which all the flexibility becomes so much flailing in water that's too deep to survive.  I can only build when there's a firm foundation.  Is there?  Will there ever be again?  I am soul-sick with these questions. 

A New Doctor

"Beans are evil.  Bad, bad beans."  The Eleventh Doctor

I am watching the Dr. Who premiere again on its replay.  Matt Smith is the Eleven, and I'm getting used to him.  Some of this episode is hilarious.  The scene at the beginning where he's trying to find the food he craves is classic.  By the time he hurled that saucer of bread and butter out the door, I was laughing so hard I had teared up. 

I also think I like Amelia Pond.  I didn't expect to since they made her look about six in all the previews.  She's feisty, but she doesn't appear to be another Rose Tyler, who, I know it's heresy to some to say, I actually got very tired of very fast.  I love the scene where the child Amy packs all her stuff in a box and then goes to sit in the garden.  I also love the fact that she's running away with her "imaginary friend."  The set-up this time is good, much better thought-out to me than usual, it seems.

I won't know for sure how Eleven is going to stack up for a few more episodes yet.  If they all live up to or build on this first one, I think he's going to be a worthy successor to the tradition. 

Julia's Gone

Designing Women was on during much of my junior high and high school years.  It passed into syndication, and I watched re-runs for years afterwards until it disappeared into those late night, hard-to-find slots on Nick at Nite, Lifetime, and WE.  The whole original cast worked well together and was necessary for the show to be a success as is so often the case with ensembles, but the character I admired the most was Julia Sugarbaker. 

I think we all found something of an inspiration in Julia.  She had it all together.  She was what real Southern girls with brains want to grow up to be.  Even when everything was falling down around her, she maintained dignity and poise, kept her kindness, and above all, dealt with situations with her formidable intellect.

And that intellect was a mighty weapon.  She was erudite, a master of the art of linguistic skewer.  I loved her for that most of all.  She, like my own mother, was a woman who never needed to resort to profanities to reduce someone to a tiny little pile of ashes.  The famous "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" speech remains one of my favorite examples of Julia in her rhetorical prime.

She also had a strong sense of what she would and would not allow, what was and was not going to happen in her life, in her world, and to herself.  Her moral code was unbending.  She knew what she believed, and she stood up for it fiercely, with the same grace and determination of the heroines of the movies I love from the 30s and 40s. 

She was never so rigid, though, that she couldn't laugh at herself and the absurdities of the world in which she found herself.  Humor, so much a part of the show, was also a part of her own personality.  Julia taught us not to take everything, including ourselves, quite so seriously. 

Dixie Carter, the classy lady who gave life to Julia Sugarbaker, passed away today.  I think that much of the charm and richness of Julia came straight from the graciousness of Dixie.  I wanted to take just this one little moment to honor the character who, with her velvet glove and iron fist attitude, served as an inspiration for so many of us.  I said earlier that we all wanted to be Julia when we grew up; I guess we all still do.

What I Need

I'm in a reckless, sad, and tired mood tonight, and I need.  I need. 

I need a fast strong responsive car that I can get in, crank up, and feel the power of it hum through my fingertips and the bottoms of my feet as it takes me away.  Because I also need to be away, to New Orleans, to the coast, to Las Vegas, to Seattle, to somebody's backyard under a spreading oak tree, anywhere that isn't here.  I need to see something different, scenery that doesn't bruise my eyes when I look at it, that doesn't wear on my soul like fine-grain sandpaper because of what it makes me think of, what it makes me feel. 

I need an adventure, something wild and unplanned, something wonderful and unexpected, a gift falling out of the sky.  Not one of those things that costs a lot of money, but one of those things that takes me out of this space I get trapped in all too often between my own ears and away from the problems I cannot resolve, the pains I cannot ease.  I need something to remind me of the sheer stupid wonder and wonderfulness of this world.

I need somebody.  I need a person who can take me when I'm at my worst because lately, that seems to be all that's left rattling around the bottom of the barrel.  I need a person who can help me remember what I am when I'm not tapped completely out, who will just hold on to me when I'm wild and whirling until it all of it is done.  I need a fellow adventurer and a person who's not afraid to stand toe-to-toe with me when I'm a stubborn wench. It seems too much to ask for in any person, all of that.

Night falls; the sun dies.  The air is chilly and damp with it.  Weariness closes around me like another layer of cold dew, internal, clinging.  I'm wishing for magic tonight, wishing for a knock at the door that only happens in fairy tales and Greek myths.  Those days were never really "those days," though, and I think I am going to have to turn my mind to being content somehow instead.

Claws

I went to a meeting recently expecting an informative presentation of matters of interest.  What I got instead was a chance to hear my school get slammed through the floor for an hour and fifteen minutes. I've just about had enough.

It's easy to take shots at someone when they're down.  It's easy to see some person with a problem you don't personally struggle with, have maybe never struggled with, and point your finger, smirk to yourself, whisper catty little comments behind your hand.  What's not easy, what is in fact bone-crushingly hard at times, is to get off your backside, out of your comfort zone, and turn that pointing finger into a helping hand. 

It's the old Good Samaritan parable all over again.  This one is too busy, this one won't dirty holy hands, this one is happy to see the downfall as it happens because of some old personal grudge long-held and carefully cherished.  Who is going to be the one who stops even if their clothes get a little muddy or bloody?  Who is going to be willing to leave the country club bar and do instead? Who is going to be the one to let old petty conflicts pass and look at the greater good in the present?

I'm tired.  Mortally so.  I love my school.  I love my kids.  I believe in both fervently.  Am I blind to the fact that there are problems?  Absolutely not.  I'll tell you this for nothing, though.  I'm just about done with polite smiles and socially-gracious responses to those who seem to glory in our struggles and try to push us face-down in the mud.  The claws are going to come out.  I just can't manufacture it much longer.

Wicked

I saw Wicked last night. My friends and I were lucky enough to get some tickets to the New Orleans performance with the touring roadshow.  I haven't been to a Broadway show since I left IU, so it was nice to be back in a theater to see a big production.  I really miss that about IU.

I never expected to get to see this one.  I  had read the book a long time ago, and I remember being powerfully moved by it.  I need to go back and reread it because I apparently had forgotten a lot of it, but the musical was amazing. 

The basic storyline was the same.  Elphaba was the scapegoat for everyone else's issues because she was different.  It's easy to blame the one who doesn't quite conform, who doesn't play by the rules.  The performers in the roles of Elphaba and Glinda were perfect.  Elphaba, as she grew and bloomed, was powerful.  Glinda was both poignant and hillarious as she fluttered around the stage and became something more than "blonde." 

The songs were grand, and I loved the spectacle of it. What broke my heart, though, was the song "I'm Not that Girl."  Oh, it made tears well up in my eyes.  There were so many great songs in it, but I felt that one like a knife strike directly.  I may not be green, but the feeling reflected is all too familiar.

I'm going to get the soundtrack, and I'm going to reread the book.  I guess I'm off on another kick.  That's okay.  There are worse kicks to be on, I suppose.   If you'd like to read it, too, here's a link from Amazon to it:  Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Harper Fiction)

Cafe du Monde

I finally got to go to Cafe du Monde.  Last trip to New Orleans, we were too pressed for time for me to go, and I really regretted not being able to do it. It was the one thing my dad told me that I MUST do while I was there. 

Getting there turned into a bit of an adventure since there was some kind of fun run going on today.  We managed to park and walk in, but we had to hike down some railroad tracks and approach it from the rear.  There was a small pack of hungry tourists with us who were all headed for the restaurant.  It was sort of amusing to see all those people headed so single-mindedly toward beignets. 

They were wonderful, and well-worth the walk.  I love pastry anyway, so it was a shoe-in that I'd love these.  I need to get a recipe and see if I can make them here at home.  I suspect, however, that I will just need to wait until I can get back down to New Orleans again and have them under than green and white awning. 

Impressionism by God

Driving home today, I was full of beignet and drowsy in the sunshine.  The pollen was gilding the air with a hazy of surreality.   Across the eastbound lanes of the interstate floated a yellow swallowtail, the first one I've seen this year.  Even the Mississippi roadsides were exquisite works of art.

I've never seen the redbuds bloom like they're doing this year.  Splashes of amethyst and the rarer rusty-red break up the multitudinous shades of green.  Bursts of white from the newly-opened dogwoods shine like left-over patches of the snow we had earlier, but far more delicate and more welcome.  Twining through it all like an ornament or a crown is the gold of confederate jasmine. 

Even a long road trip can be made a pleasure with the right scenery.  As much as I like Monet and Pissarro, I don't think either of them could have produced anything more lovely or restoring to the soul that the landscape I passed through today.  Of course, I am no art critic; I only know what stirs my own heart.