Cummings -- "You Are Tired"

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.

Come with me, then,
And we’ll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—
Open to me!
For I will show you places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!
I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I’ll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea.

- e.e. cummings

_____________________

If you can't tell, I'm on a kick with Cummings.  I was cleaning out a bookshelf at school this afternoon, and I found my copy of 100 Poems.  I sat there on the tile floor and took a few moments to look through it, rereading the poems I'd marked, looking at the ones I hadn't.  

He never fails to please, to have the words that cut like gorgeous daggers of glass.  He never fails to have the words that I want somebody to come and say to me.  More than any other poet I know, he manages to capture that voice I wish I heard speaking to me.  

I could be the person he's talking to in this poem so easily right now.  I am tired (more than a little) and all my toys are broken.  Why isn't there somebody, some beautiful-speaking, parentheses-using man who UNDERSTANDS that who comes and knocks at the hopeless gates of my heart with a rose?  You know what?  It's okay if he forgets the flower, even.  Just as long as he brings the words....

Cummings -- "let it go"

let it go ‐ the
smashed word broken  
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise ‐ let it go it
was sworn to
go
  
let them go ‐ the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers ‐ you must let them go they
were born
to go
  
let all go ‐ the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things ‐ let all go
dear
so comes love  
  
~ e. e. cummings ~

When It's Done

I got drafted into being a part of graduation yesterday. I helped with "the middle" of the massive class, helping them robe up, file in, stand up, file down, and sit down at the right times.  Mostly, I think it went as well as anything involving more than 350 very excited people can.  I wasn't in the spectator stands or on the field, so I am not exactly sure about the precision with which we carried it off, but I think it was good.  If not, they have their diplomas and they were happy, and that's all that really matters ultimately.  They behaved well, carried themselves with grace and dignity, and we were out of there before midnight.  All in all, not a bad evening.

Graduation is such a mixed time for me.  I am so proud to see all my chickadees fly, see all those bright blue robes flapping in joy when it's all done, but especially right now, I was also sad to know that it's an ending.  Of course, I'll still keep in touch in some ways with some of them, and that's as it should be.  They go on to other things.  They shed us, and that's they way it's supposed to be.  We are the shell the nautilus outgrows, the nest they perch on the rim of for a brief moment before flying away.

Sitting behind them as they stood up and turned their tassels, I watched as the inevitable downpour of hats began.  Because I was so close, I had to fend off a couple, but I just laughed as they fell, as the new graduates scrambled to find a cap, any cap, and dashed down the stadium seats to the field where the throng of family and friends awaited.  For a few moments, I just sat there in the horrible black robe they make us wear every year and watched them go.

Then, suddenly, I just didn't want to be there anymore.  I'd been at school, I realized, since 7:30 that morning.  I'd been at school, in fact, putting in 12-hour days almost 5 days out of every week.  And along with the sense of happiness and completion that came from seeing every single one of mine walk that line and get what they had worked so hard and so long for, there was also a terrible sense of tiredness and emptiness.

I suppose somebody is going to say that it isn't appropriate for me to have had that feeling.  Perhaps I should have been all joy and sweetness and light and sugar puffs, but it was real, and I did have it, whether it was wrong of me or okay.  So it wasn't that I wasn't full of joy for them.  I was.  Very much.  It's just that at the same time, I was suddenly somehow out-of-place for me.

I got up and made my way down.  I hugged a few necks, made some conversation with those I saw, but mostly, I had only one real destination, the little PT Cruiser waiting on me, already parked nose-out in the back lot.  This was a moment for families and friends as people were swept into embraces and photographs were taken.  I, being neither of these, did not belong.  I was like the old brick building standing silent looking down on the field.  We had done our part,  had served our ordained purposes, delivered up our portions of the sacrifice, and now it was time for others to take it from there.

As I crossed the field, I unzipped the black robe.  As I climbed the bleachers on the other side, I pulled it from me.  I was no longer anything that was official, anything that mattered at all.  I was just a tall woman in a black dress walking.  The revelry on the field continued.  The happy noise of it followed me across the dark parking lot through the courtyard.  I tossed the wadded up robe in the backseat of my car and cut through town seeking the interstate where I could find speed.  When it's done, it's done.

Hide Out

I sat on a rock by a river today for a long time listening to the sound of water falling.  It's amazing how sweet that was.  I'm restless, my mind is chewing on something that it will not let go, and now is not the time for a long trip, so I loaded up the car and headed to Dunn's Falls.  A short twisting county backroads drive, a dollar and a half handed to the wizened ranger behind the sliding glass window, a quick trip down steep stairs thoughtfully surfaced with old shingles for better grip, and I had what I needed for the most part.

A fair number of people come to see Dunn's Falls, but the beauty of it is that nobody really stays very long.  They are transient, walking down to take quick pictures, delicately picking their way across the limestone shelf, holding a child's hand as he or she wades in the cool water there, looking up at the rusting mill wheel, and then, by and large, the people go away again.  It's possible to be peaceful for long periods of time there.  There is no swimming area, no concession stand, no fishing or boating area.  The river is not easily accessible for wading.  There is no picnicable place.

My little rock tucked into the corner is quiet, shady most of the day, large enough to pull my legs up when I want to sit indian-style, and dry enough to put my camera gear and other things on as well, just in the flow enough to let me dandle my feet if it gets too sultry.  I took pictures for awhile and then came back to the rock, wrote in my journal, read my Kindle, just sat and looked at the river lazing away below.

Eventually, a "serious photographer" showed up with a Nikon D3 and a tripod and started messing around, scrambling up the falls and so forth.  He had a good time, and I was much amused watching him, especially when he ignored the sign that said "DO NOT CLIMB FALLS" to get a shot he wanted.  I wanted to take a shot of him standing basically right under that sign with his setup, but I didn't think he'd appreciate the irony of that as much as I did.

He saw me with my D80, and came over to condescend to me some.  "Oh, what's that you're shooting with?  A D50?"  Um.  No.  D80.  (and yes.  I know you have one of the great gods of KAMERA there, chief.  I do recognize them when I sees them.) "Let me show you a cool trick..."  And he proceeded to try to talk to me about slow shutter speeds making cool effects on waterfalls....  I proceeded to make polite noises.

It's true, though, that I don't control my camera as well as I'd like to.  I can't deny that I'm still having trouble with the controls (NOT THE CONCEPT OF THE CONTROLS) of the D80.  I need to print out some of the PDF of my manual to take out with me.  I don't have a hard copy, and when I get out shooting, I get all the buttons turned around in my head.  This camera is complex with menus, buttons, and little wheels that make it do everything but make coffee.

It's also true that the guy was basically harmless.  He was just one of those "experts" who can only share the love of something by being a bit didactic.  We were showing each other pics off the back of the cameras, and making the appropriate polite sounds, and he told me that he thought I should print some of mine.  That was nice to hear.  I always figure that nobody but me and my family who has to sort of pretend to love what I do anyway much cares what I do with my camera.  To have a perfect stranger tell me that was gratifying.

I sat today until the water combed away the worst of the mental tangles.  It's good at doing that.  Then I put my camera, my Kindle, and my journal away, climbed the steep, rickety steps again, and slowly drove home.  It's good to have a place to hide when needed.  It's necessary.

Kiss

I know I said I was going to be gone for a bit, but… Well, didn’t Robert Burns say something terribly clever and Scottish about mice and men and stupid plans?  This has been on my mind a lot lately, and so it seemed to be demanding to be written.  So I wrote it (and I may not write anything else again for a while).  And no, you may not ask me why.  I will simply lie with a straight face to you and call it a dramatic recitation or poetic license.  I will simply weave together something slightly maudlin about anniversaries, passing years, silver strands in the mirror, old year book photos, and BS you.  Because while I love you, not everything is your business….

The thing I crave most about being in a relationship just now is the kissing.  Isn’t that crazy?  Of all the multitudinous important aspects of everything that a relationship is and can be, right now, I miss kissing. I could be graphic; I can write that, but that’s not what I’m here for.  And it’s not the graphic side that I’m talking about, really, anyway. 

I miss all the ways it starts.   The casual touches, the tangled hands, or the fingertip across my lips.  That little smile that’s full of pure devilment or that slow steady glance that’s full of something that somehow consumes.  Things that are games or things that are totally serious.

I miss the feeling of being held close, of sharing the space with someone else, of no longer being an isolated island in the universe.  I miss the moment when his breathing changes, when the kiss changes, when it becomes sweet, or wild, or certain, or all of those things together, and for an eternal moment nothing else matters.

It’s been too long since I had anybody to share this simple thing with, and to be honest, the price for it with most of the ones I’ve met has been far too high, a kind of giving up, giving in, becoming something other, something else, for me to even consider it for very long.  Either they’re not interested (the usual) or I run as far as necessary (more rare, but it happens).  But still, when I’m tired and when it’s late, sometimes the sacrifice doesn’t seem like such a big thing.  While I’m okay with being alone most of the time, sometimes, just sometimes, just today, just now, this life I’ve picked gets very heavy.

Hat Off (Hiatus)

I wish I could be clever for you, or witty, or silly, or whatever it is that you've come to expect of me, but right now, that just isn't happening.  You will probably see a slight absence here.  This blog is a bit tidal, anyway, and I've been going strong for me this year.  I need to take a little bit of time right now and get my head back together about something.  It's not the sort of thing that makes good reading, actually, if anything that I ever write does, so I beg your polite indulgence. Rather than say something trivial in an uninteresting way, I'm going to choose to say nothing instead.  I'm sure I will crop up with the horrifying, the amusing, or at least an item worth running your eyes over sooner rather than later, but rather than bore you with this piddling little existential crisis, I will simply take my jingly cap off and do some silent soft shoe on the edge of this abyss where it will annoy no one.

My Favorite Seuss

Tonight we were sitting around talking and my cousin's little girl was pulling story books out of her collection.  They had recently unearthed a bunch of Dr. Seuss, and she had one of my very favorite ones from when I was a child myself, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.  I looked at it for the first time in probably 20 or more years.  It's amazing to me how much I remember and how much of it I'd forgotten.

I'd forgotten how nice the art really was.  I remembered Bartholomew and all his hats. I remembered that they got more and more interesting as time went on, but I forgot all the intricacies of those he met.  I had forgotten almost all of the details of the plot.  I had forgotten why I loved the book in the first place.  I had forgotten that I liked his calmness in face of trouble and persecution, his confidence in his rightness and honesty.

I used to make my Dad read this one to me night after night when I was little to the point that he finally would say, "I'll read you anything you want that's not Bartholomew Cubbins."  It makes me laugh now to think about it.  Part of it was that it is such a long story, and that meant that I got to spend more time with him reading to me, of course, but I did really like the intricate story.  So many of the stories were predictable and fluffy.  I guess even as a little kid I wasn't much into that.

I am glad my cousin's little girl is going to have the rich experience with Dr. Seuss that we all grew up with.  I'd hate to think of somebody missing him.  Every person has an individual favorite, and who knows what hers will wind up being.  As for me, I think I'll go see if I can dig my copies up and see what else I may have forgotten from those dusty volumes.

Holiday from Myself

I need a vacation from my own self.  I have something in my head that I'm turning over and over obsessively, grinding it into tiny gritty bits that are abrading.  I can't let it go, won't put it down, and  I'm tired of thinking about out.  I need to escape myself somehow, climb out of this space between my ears and see something else for awhile.

(Warning:  Literary Allusion Commencing)

I'm like Hamlet.  I'm overthink.  I have a tendency to take even something relatively straightforward and question it until it becomes a four-fold path.  There are certain things for me that are never straightforward at all, certain topics that simply stick all the gears together.

I wonder if everybody is this way.  I wonder if everybody has something that "gives them pause," or if there are people who sail through life able to reach out and grasp those things they want sure of the consequences and confident of their ability to bear the costs, believing in the rightness of their turnings and the virtue of their footfalls down the road before them.

Right now, I don't even wish for that.  I just want to shake it all off me like an old overcoat and not even think about it anymore.  I just want to run, to spread my wings in the sun and be totally free of all of it, to go somewhere wonderful and fill myself with something else for long enough that when this comes up again, and it, bad-penny-like, must, it won't feel like something rubbing on a sore spot.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

(Or, There Are Some Kinds of Fool Not to Be)

Don't you hate it when you realize that you're doing something more than a little unwise?

It sneaks up on you.  You're not really paying attention.  You're in the middle of your day-to-day routine, and suddenly it hits you like a hammer right between the eyes.  It could be something you do or don't, a relationship you're pursuing or running away from, a way of eating, a pattern of thought, a work ethic or lack thereof, a spending habit.

Then you have to have that moment of self-assessment, of measuring and weighing, of getting it back between the white lines again.  You have to drag your hands through your hair, ask yourself those "What WERE you thinking, or WERE you thinking at all?" questions, and realign your personal universe in proportion with whatever the silliness you were participating was.

After that, you have to hold the reins of the wayward mind tightly, keep it from jumping fences and rolling in clover, from running away and getting into trouble.  Discipline is required.

It would be easier and possibly more pleasurable to let it run, but sooner or later, disaster always strikes.  It's better to play it safe.  Stupidity leads to tragedy.  I have the scars to prove it, on my body, on my mind, on my heart.  Smart is the way to go.  There are some things that are just stupid, and the wise lay them down gently and walk away before they wake to find  cannot put them down at all.

Soup and Solitude

My nerves are raw today...  So I ran away a little.  It's the test.  I know it.  I can't help it.  I'll be a total basketcase tomorrow (more than usual) and then I'll be more like my version of fine.  Right now, though I can feel the stress under my skin like live eels.

I'm hiding out in my room eating soup and listening to music.  It's safer this way as I'm not a nice person when I'm stressed (more than usual) and I don't have the right to take this nasty out on anybody else.  This way I don't have to make emergency judgement calls and hope that what falls out of my mouth isn't cringeworthy, and I won't claw up those who only mean no harm or who are just being themselves.

Tying the Knot (in It)

Lest you think this indicates something it doesn't I added the parenthetical...

I'll start out cheerily by telling you today sucked.  A lot.  I was greeted with a "command" from CO to sign something for a box that hasn't arrived yet meaning another shipment of my stuff has magically disappeared.  Uh-gin.  Who knows what portal to adventure this one slipped through.   I also found out a have a ream of paperwork due (stapled in neat bundles); I'm "behinder" than usual since I felt like crap all day Saturday and was fighting the battle of the Dying Fridge and had other stuff (house cleaning/family obligations/visitors) on Sunday.

The crowning touch came when one class started sharing horror stories of their "personal recreation" time and couldn't understand why I didn't want them to talk about said recreation activities and thought they needed to get smarter about their lifestyle.  It was frustrating and disheartening beyond all my ability to express.  I heard every cliche that will lead to a moment of agonizing revelation somewhere twenty or thirty years down the road , when the person wakes up at last.  They thought it was all very, very funny.

The sickness from the weekend combined with a lack of sleep making me shaky and weak. We had another bird in the building.   I felt completely sympathetic as it flew from end-to-end and vainly sought freedom against the relentlessly blocking glass.  The day finished with calls from the repairman telling me he could not come out to fix the refrigerator today...Maybe tomorrow!...and a horrible, ridiculous, depressing fightish call with my mother.  A headache hovers at my temples.  I am about to go to bed. I have to believe that even though tomorrow is Tuesday, it is going to be better.  If not, I am going to run away.  I've tied my knot to hang on, but my hands are too sore to cling for long.

Exactly

"The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting." ~ Amanda Cross

People Who Take Care -- Nancy Henry

People who take care of people
get paid less than anybody
people who take care of people
are not worth much
except to people who are
sick, old, helpless, and poor
people who take care of people
are not important to most other people
are not respected by many other people
come and go without much fuss
unless they don’t show up
when needed
people who make more money
tell them what to do
never get shit on their hands
never mop vomit or wipe tears
don’t stand in danger
of having plates thrown at them
sharing every cold
observing agonies
they cannot tell at home
people who take care of people
have a secret
that sees them through the double shift
that moves with them from room to room
that keeps them on the floor
sometimes they fill a hollow
no one else can fill
sometimes through the shit
and blood and tears
they go to a beautiful place, somewhere
those clean important people
have never been.
________________________________________________________
And just one more.  I am frequently asked why I do what I do, why I don't do something else, don't seek a job that doesn't try to eat the soul out of me on a regular basis.  This poem says it, I think.  Teachers are people who take care, too, after all.  I might print a copy of this off and keep it somewhere I can see it behind my desk.

Why I Have A Crush On You, UPS Man -- Alice N. Persons

you bring me all the things I order
are never in a bad mood
always have a jaunty wave as you drive away
look good in your brown shorts
we have an ideal uncomplicated relationship
you're like a cute boyfriend with great legs
who always brings the perfect present
(why, it's just what I've always wanted!)
and then is considerate enough to go away
oh, UPS Man, let's hop in your clean brown truck and elope !
ditch your job, I'll ditch mine
let's hit the road for Brownsville
and tempt each other
with all the luscious brown foods —
roast beef, dark chocolate,
brownies, Guinness, homemade pumpernickel, molasses cookies
I'll make you my mama's bourbon pecan pie
we'll give all the packages to kind looking strangers
live in a cozy wood cabin
with a brown dog or two
and a black and brown tabby
I'm serious, UPS Man. Let's do it.
Where do I sign?
____________________________________________
And one more, lest you think all I think about is sex....  This one is from the same collection.  It made me smile.  I, too, seem to see a whole lot of my UPS guy, thanks to my amazon.com addiction.  I don't know that I'm quite to the point of eloping with him, though....

Last Gods - Galway Kinnell

She sits naked on a rock

a few yards out in the water.
He stands on the shore,
also naked, picking blueberries.
She calls. He turns. she opens
her legs showing him her great beauty,
and smiles, a bow of lips
seeming to tie together
the ends of the earth.
Splashing her image
to pieces, he wades out
and stands before her, sunk
to the anklebones in leaf-mush
and bottom-slime—the intimacy
of the geographical. He puts
a berry in its shirt
of mist into her mouth
She swallows it. He puts in another.
She swallows it. Over the lake
two swallows whim, juke jink,
and when one snatches
an insect they both whirl up
and exult. He is swollen
not with ichor but with blood.
She takes him and talks him
more swollen. He kneels, opens
the dark, vertical smile
linking heaven with the underearth
and murmurs her smoothest flesh more smooth.
On top of the rock they join.
somewhere a frog moans, a crow screams.
The hair of their bodies
startles up. They cry
in the tongue of the last gods,
who refused to go,
chose death, and shuddered
in joy and shattered in pieces,
bequeathing their cries
into the human breast. Now in the lake
two faces, floating, see up
a great maternal pine whose branches
open out in all directions
explaining everything.

___________________________________________________

I've never seen this one before...found it in a new collection of poetry I bought the other night edited by Garrison Keillor called Good Poems: American Places..  I'm gobsmacked now, though.  This is beautiful.  The things he's mixing here, the mythologies, the power of it.... Once again, both in awe and horribly jealous.  I wish I could get my craft together to be able to capture things this clearly.

An Embarrassment of Riches

The summer season for TV has begun, and all my smart, wonderful, imaginary men are back.  Doctor Who is back, and while I'm still a bit ambiguous about Matt Smith in the role, the show just keeps blowing my mind.  We're only one episode in so far (ep. 2 is tonight), but I'm already befuddled.  It's grand.

In Plain Sight is about to gear up as well.  I've so missed Marshall.  He's a delight, so off-beat, so smart, so strong.  I hope he's a bigger part of the show this year.  I hope they find a way to mop up the atrocious mess they made at the end of last season, too.  The finale made me ill.

The best news, though, was totally unexpected:  Goren and Eames are coming back to Law and Order: CI.  I had stopped watching it altogether.  Goren has long been on my list of favorite fictional men.  He just got better and better with every season, and then, poof, he was gone.  That decision never made any sense.  With IPS off for the season and CI running random other folk, I had stopped watching USA altogether.  I flipped through the other day and caught a commercial for the new season of CI and was delighted to see that they're bringing Goren and Eames back.

I guess with these three shows, my DVR might actually get some use.  It will be nice to see these gentlemen do their thing once a week.  Of course, once summer is over, I guess the shows will be, too, but at least I can be entertained for awhile....

Weird Dreams

I'm dreaming of people I know.  I hate that.  I like it much better when the people in my dreams are just dress extras, random configurations of my subconscious tossed in for makeweight.

Last night's extravaganza was very odd.  It didn't even feel like mine.  It almost felt like I had a walk-in role in someone else's dream.  Wouldn't it be odd if somehow, some way in sleep our dreams could cross like that? (And yeah, I realize that may be the plot of some science fiction thing somewhere...)  How strange would it be to run into each other in our dreams?

I ran away from somebody last night in mine.  They wanted to talk to me, but I had a moment of my oddness, and I fled.  I think that is my oh-so-subtle subconscious telling me that I need some alone-time, something I haven't had much of lately since I can't imagine my running away from this person in real life.  Then again, maybe my subconscious knows something about this person it's not sharing... Hmm....  Sobering thought that.  Maybe if so, it will get a little less inscrutable with these things.  Otherwise it's just going to have to take what it gets like everybody else.

Definition

Listen,
I need to tell you something....

Pink is not my signature color.
There is not one single pair of heels
in my closet,
and I do not care
if my purse matches my shoes.


My nails are not manicured or polished.
But these hands are strong and dextrous;
they know how to do many things:
hold a pen, a knife, a needle, a hilt,
coax life from somnolent keyboards,
transfix rainbows in glass,
soothe hurts large and small,
craft pottery ravens,
gesture disdain both politely and otherwise,
rescue kittens, building-bound birds, and cicadas,
focus a lens to capture a moment,
fry the best damn fried chicken you'll ever taste,
hold on tightly when the world goes to hell.

I don't harbor dreams of
of a magic prince who sweeps in
and carries me away
the cathedral length train,
the cloying smell of lilies and roses.

Instead I want the rhinestone benediction
the full glory of a chapel Elvis
and a partner-in-crime
driving away together with me
into the darkness of a Las Vegas night
into the rest of our lives.

Mixed Bag

Things that are good:

• We're making real progress in getting ready for the state test.  Our prep camp seems to be working.  The students seem to enjoy it, and I feel more confident about them than I have in a very long time.
• My cousin is coming home for a long visit.  He's more like a brother than a cousin, and I haven't seen him in a very long time.  I am so excited that he's actually going to be here.
• There are fewer than 35 days remaining in this school year.  I might be able to do that.
• There are fewer than 70 days remaining until I can go geek out with my fellow AP teachers in Louisville.
• Topamax has taken ten pounds off me.
• I didn't have a headache today.

Things that are bad:

• I've started having more missing and mispronounced words than usual.  The Topamax is dancing around in my head like someone with a fork making scrambled eggs.  It's terrible.  It makes me feel like a fool, and not in a carefree, happy way.
• I have way, way more bills than money right now.  I don't know what I'm going to do about that.  Trying to ignore it isn't exactly working.
• I'm fighting losing battles on many fronts.  I don't know how to turn these defeats into victories, or if it's time to fold tents, cut losses, participate in other cliches, and walk away.

That's life in Podunk today.

The Forgotten

I have been thinking now for some time of doing a series of dramatic monologues based upon carvings that I have seen in various places that I've been.  The first one of these came to me when I was in the church of Santa Croche in Florence.  I have been tumbling this one over and over in my head for over a year now, and I took my first stab at it.  Feedback would be most greatly appreciated.  I have included a picture that I took of the carving itself so you know what I'm talking about.  Santa Croche is the church in Florence that houses the remains of Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, DaVinci, and too many other geniuses to shake a stick at. 
________________________________________

 

The Forgotten

based upon a worn tomb carving in Santa Croche in Florence, Italy

It must be admitted

this is not how I imagined

the long wait for the glorious trumpet’s Last Call.

In the quiet darkness after the cameras are gone

they mock my choices from around the walls

from their elaborate monuments

Dante, Galileo, even that wretched, toadying politician.

I shift my shoulders philosophically

under my satin-smooth slab and sigh.

These things, after all, they do happen…

Laid to rest at Santa Croche’s altar

covered with my own image in such delicate carving

and three colors of Florentine glory

I rested head and feet on tassled stone pillows

crossed hands on flowing robes

knowing every penitent kneeling

would marvel and aspire to the beatific peace they saw

as I slept my little while.

It is no soft prayer that intrudes on my dreaming now.

Hurrying feet in soft rubber soles erase my identity

as they rush past seeking not heaven

but the exit, the gift shop, the rest room

Each presses lightly, indifferently into my chest

wearing a hole just where the heart should be.

A long crack slowly opens

halving my right foot

creeping toward the black border

where “Resurgat” still dimly gleams

stained stone script still unvanquished.

If they do not remember me here,

if no line forms to see this resting place,

if Time with every passing year his chisel removes

some further trace of my remaining earthly vanity

I take some comfort in this:

I am always near to God and known unto Him.

Poets, Musicians, and God's Other Fools

Warning:  Random stereotyping commences here

Pandora is a wonderful thing for a variety of reasons.  One of my favorite things about it is that it helps me find new artists to enjoy.  Last night it spun me to the Avett Brothers, and today I've been listening to their Four Thieves Gone album and reading.  One song on it, "Pretend Love," got me started thinking about the way that musicians and poets love.

You'd think we'd be the same in love, but really I don't think we are.  We both craft words, we both go around looking at the world in a bit of a haze, but we're cousins, not brother-kin.  Poets have a tendency to fall hard and deep, attaching to a single person in particular.  Poets look at the object of our love and see in them the entire world.  Look at Petrarch and Laura.  300 freakin' sonnets in which he completely deified her.  While I prefer Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 for realism and sentiment, it still follows the pattern.  Love for the poet is to be stricken with the emotion and to fall at the feet  of the beloved for as long as they will allow it. 

Most musicians of my acquaintance have been something more in the nature of surface skimmers, more in love with the idea of love or its multitudinous sensations than with any one individual in particular.  They tend to be less willing to stay with any one person, more in need of their precious "freedom,"  and this seems to involve a capacity for falling "in love" over and over again, something most poets don't much do.  I suppose it's the difference between ravens and hummingbirds, those which mate for life and those which dart from pretty flower to pretty flower with a show of bright plumage.

Should you ever put a poet and a musician together?  Hell no.  A poet and a musician together would tear up the bed and burn down the house with their passion, produce reams of memorable material in the inspiration from it, forget to buy groceries and pay the bills, but they would eventually move on to have fights that make the Trojan War look like a polite misunderstanding, make mutual friends pick sides and hate each other, and end with recrimination and something bitter left in the soul that comes out in pieces of public work that turn into potshots taken at each other in song and in print.  They are things that are like, but not really the same, like animals of the same genus but not the same species.

I wonder how scientists, engineers, lawyers, law enforcement -- the sane, in other words -- I wonder how they approach romance when they don't have that creative hell boiling inside them riding them and trying to turn every moment into something else.  Do they know their own souls better, more truly, or are they just as confused as the poets and the musicians?  God, I hope not.  I hope somebody somewhere is quiet and sure.  I'm counting on it, counting on somebody being iron to ground my random lighting.  It would be so grossly unfair to think we're all hopeless messes. 

Foul Weather

Today I heard the sky scream.  Today, standing in our old red-brick school building, I saw a tornado skim over the treetops. 

We'd known there was the chance of foul weather all day long, so we were watching for it, and it arrived about 3:00, herding us all into the bottom floor halls.  Fortunately, since this is "prom weekend," many students were already gone.  Something that is usually a curse had turned into a blessing as we got our kids seated and quieted them.  Our administrators went outside, became "spotters," and we waited. 

Certainly I've been through foul weather there before.  I always feel safe in our vast sturdy building.  It was constructed in 1928, and its long wide halls feel massive and solid. There is really no other place in which I would rather ride out a storm.  Today, I edged over to one of the big windows regardless of the danger of glass and looked out.  Lightning was everywhere, and then it was strangely still.  The clouds were so dark, and the rain that was still falling was swirling wildly.  Then the end door opened just a little and we could hear it scream.

Someone standing near me told me to look, and when I did look back out the window, the funnel cloud was passing over us, headed to the north, mercifully skipping over us.  That is as close as I have ever been to a tornado, at least to my knowledge.   Who knows what has jumped over me in the darkness of the Mississippi stormy night....  All I could think about was, "Not here.  Please, God, not here with all these kids."  I couldn't even get a real prayer to form.  All I could do was look at them and say that.  And yet, it wasn't really fear that I felt as I looked back and forth from that mass of cloud to those trusting faces in the hallway; it was more a sense of both being somehow totally safe and of all of it being completely unreal. 

I hope I never spend another afternoon in the hallways.  It always winds up being a situation with the kids wanting to run out the doors because they can't understand the severity of the situation or something surreal happening with the weather.  Often it winds up being a combination of both.  Today, I am just grateful that the worst of all possible scenarios quite literally passed us over.  After everyone was gone as I was walking out to my car, I laid my hand on the worn brick wall and just gave thanks, both to the good old building that gave us strong shelter and the God that protected us from harm.  I am grateful to have been somewhere safe on an afternoon such as this.

Tea Cake

It's Their Eyes Were Watching God time again.  I love this book.  Zora Neale Hurston in general is a delight, but to watch Janie rise, overcome, and become is powerful every time I read it.  She is one of my favorite epic heroes.

It strikes me this time as I read it that I need to find my own Tea Cake.  I want to find somebody who doesn't try to own me or run me, somebody who will let me stand on my own, but at the same time who will also stand with me against the storms of life when they come.  I'm ready for somebody who tells me that I've got "the keys to the kingdom" and who wants to come along for the ride.  Tea Cake helps Janie realize that she needs to get back to herself, throw off the things that have held her back, and he helps her scrape away all the things that have been piled upon her by others.

I don't see Janie and Tea Cake as an ideal of perfection; they had problems and struggles like any human pair.  I just like that at the base of all of it was a bond of true love for each other, that he was crazy about her and accepted her any way she wanted to be.  He didn't try to put her in those restrictive showy dresses as a sign of status or tell her what she could and couldn't or should or shouldn't say to keep her in her place like Jody did.  He simply let her be the woman she was and loved her for it, told her it was glorious. That's what I want.  That's what every woman should have.

Sandpaper

Right now, everything is abrasive.  Everything is a little stroke of sandpaper against my skin, against my nerves, against my sanity. 

I wish I could be alone, could be in a place with no noise, or in a city where nobody knew me.  I would love to get on a plane, a train, in my car, and just disappear.  I would love for the crowds to just swirl around me and make me anonymous.  I would love to sit at the back table of some cafe or walk into some museum or stand behind the lens of my Nikon and watch the play of light and dark as people go about their lives, safe in my peaceful namelessness for a day, a week, until every buzzing of my phone in my pocket, every time someone says my name doesn't feel like an invasion.

I need peace.  I need the silk of understanding and closeness instead of the rough demand of more, more, more.  I need solitude or that special type of being with another that does not feel like an intrusion, like someone rubbing me raw with their needs and their constant expectations of what I can do for them. 

I like to give.  I am by nature a person who seeks to help others.  But today, just now, here in this very second of my life, my cup is running empty and I feel shaky inside.  Sandpaper, applied often enough to fine-grained wood will destroy the shape.  I hope I can find away to get out from under this grinding before it's too late.

Things I Did and Things I Didn't Do Today

What it says on the tin.

• I did not go to my pottery class tonight.  
• I got hugged a lot today. 
• I had that Sonic New York hot dog and a banana shake, both of which I am becoming dangerously addicted to.  (Please forgive the prepositional ending.)
• I did not have a migraine, although it was a very near thing at times as the storm arrived.
• I saw a former student I have been SO worried about (ref. hugs above).  He's not currently being shot at in a foreign country, and so I feel better about life.  
• I did not get wet.
• I wore Chaco flops and a silly Shakespeare shirt.
• I continued to appreciate the advice of the Sunglasses Hut salesman.  (Thank you, sir.  Polarized was the right choice, indeed.)
• I did not adjust well to the new reading glasses.
• I got at least one student comment on said glasses. (sigh)
• I got Super Glue on my fingers.
• I got Super Glue off my fingers.
• I did not use the Force, the Voice, or any other might or gift to destroy the pompous or the arrogant despite all provocation.
• I forgot to recharge my iPod.
• I dropped my handkerchief.
• I was confessed to by a student.
• I forgave said student.
• I read several good poems in stolen moments and smiled.
• I leaned against a red brick wall and pretended I was somewhere else for five-minute intervals every fifty minutes.
• I wished I had a tiny giraffe so I, too, could be "epic win." (and you may not get this one if you don't have DirecTV.)
• I drank far too much Diet Mountain Dew.
• I did not leave on time despite all my best efforts to the contrary.
• I prayed for Japan and my friend with cancer and two babies.
• I did not hit the person who ran the red flashing light at the intersection by Magnolia.
• I was happy with a friend who had good news.

A Reason to Wear the Motley

"It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish." ~ Aeschylus

I wish I could say it's the reason I wear the cap with the bells, but alas, I'm just an ordinary fool.  No wisdom to brag of here, folks....

And the Transformation is Complete

Make very sure you can read the caption.  I just got reading glasses today, so I guess I just need to grow my hair back out, put it up into a bun, and the transformation will be complete.  Damn.  And I do mean damn.  This is not who I wanted to be.  I am now the old-maid schoolmarm, glasses and all.  It wasn't enough that I'm built like an Amazon Queen, am interested in all manner of geekery, am mostly socially graceless, have my nose constantly stuck in a book, and have my mind constantly stuck in another world.  Now, I'm the living fulfillment of the Dorothy Parker phrase as well, "Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses." 

And that's totally unfair, by the way, since guys in glasses tend to be so terribly, terribly cute and sexy.  Glasses make guys look smart and delightful in most cases.  Case in point:

Would you kick him out of the bed for eating crackers?  He's lovely without the specs.  But when he puts them on....

Why doesn't it work that way for women?  I just can't imagine any hearts are going to flutter (if any hearts have ever fluttered for me, something I think unlikely) over mine.  Damn.  Damn, damn, damn.

I am not saying women can't be attractive in glasses.  I know lots of attractive women who wear glasses all the time.  I'm just saying that I do not personally feel that these help me out any myself.  I'm just saying that I hate becoming a cliche.  Sigh.

Just Another Saturday Night

It's late, late now, and the tree frogs and the night insects are singing.  The attic fan is finally pulling the last of the almost 90 degree temperature out of the house since I resolutely refuse to turn the air conditioner on before the middle of April, and the cool damp night air of a Mississippi spring is flowing in through all the screens of open windows, open doors.  I can hear the windchimes on the front porch clattering together, but other than these soft night sounds, there is no noise.

It's just another country Saturday night.  A car will briefly break the darkness with headlights every now and again as it passes, a temporary trespasser on all this solitude, but the night slides back together behind its passage like it never was there, its brief smudge of luminescence quickly devoured.  This aloneness is not uncomfortable.  It is not an isolation but a sense of being in one's own space.

It's a good night for reading or thinking, for remembering, and tonight my mind is dancing lightly across the past and into the future.  It's making the silliest and most improbable plans, confections with no basis in reality at all. These plans stir up longings and desires, make me take out maps and look up places online that I'd like to be, make me see myself with different light spilling over my face, different views out my windows.  Of course, Thoreau said, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."  However, that's the part that's giving me problems.  I can spin dreams for days.  I can make the most fantastic plans, see the most amazing futures.  When it comes time to begin attaching those castles to the ground though, that is where I lose my way. 

It's also apparently a good night for walking down the hallways of my mind and peering into old storage that I am more comfortable leaving the doors of locked tight and left alone, though.  And, so, too, this night also makes me sit and think of what is gone, what I had and wasted, what was never mine at all....  We recently read "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Herrick in my senior classes, and the last two lines, "For having lost but once your prime/ You may forever tarry," keep circling in my head like the mocking call of circling birds of prey.  My roses have faded.  I have not seized my day.  Herrick would be shaking his semi-priestly head at me, saddened by all the opportunities I've let go by.  But if I did not love them......

It's time to get up from here and take the freshly aired and sunned feather mattress and put it back on my bed, to take the clean sheets and reassemble my nest and get in it, perhaps even to take a cool shower to make sure all the heat of the day is gone before I climb in since sleeping hot will ensure the bad dreams I suspect are lurking at the corners of my mind will become a reality.  Whenever so much of what I desire and what I regret are in my head like this, I dream horrible things.

It is hard to be content sometimes.  I try to be.  I try very hard to be content with what I have, the blessings that I have at this moment here in this place.  Sometimes, though, I just feel like going out under the dark of the moon and throwing my arms up to the sky and screaming.  I don't know what that childish act would accomplish.  Nothing, probably, other than frightening the white tailed deer who sneak into the back yard and graze.  At least nobody would call the cops.  There are, after all, no neighbors near to be concerned by the sound of silly venting in the pasture edge....

It's just another Saturday night here in rural Mississippi.  The frogs are singing.  The breeze stirs the curtains gently.  My mind eddies and tumbles like fast-moving water over mostly submerged rocks.  This is what happens when there's nothing to distract me from myself.  I suppose what I need more than anything else here is something to save me from myself, then.  I wonder if anything ever will.

Book Haunting

I'm being chased.  It started about two weeks ago when I was looking at the Book Madness brackets and my beloved 1984 was getting trounced. The book doing the trouncing was The Great Gatsby.  I have taught Gatsby several times, and I love it, too, but well...put almost anything other than P&P up against 1984 and....

It got me thinking about Gatsby, though, and the cover art by Francis Cugat was much on the website.  I decided that on payday, I'd splurge and get the shirt since Out of Print finally released the original Cugat cover on a beautiful blue shirt, just like the original dust jacket.  I ordered it from San Francisco.  Keep track now, because these are instances of Gatsby numbers one, two, and three....

Sometime around in here, I had a strange dream about Gatsby.  I don't remember the details.  I just know that I woke up thinking, "Huh.  Can't wait for my shirt to get here.  Weird.  Maybe I need to reread that book."  I probably, to be perfectly honest, also thought something about Robert Redford in the movie version, too, because, well, COME ON...does any woman worth her salt really think about Gatsby and not think about Robert Redford?  (I mean REALLY?  He's all pretty...and...and...shiny....and...and...)

Then, last night, I had a interesting conversation with somebody that wound up headed down a literary alley and...voila...Gatsby was there again.  I sort of felt startled when I saw it come up, but then I just shrugged and went with it.  By now, I was sort of getting used to seeing it here, there, and everywhere, lounging idly against the hood of expensive vehicles and on street corners, insouciant and knowing grin in place.

Today, one of my students was turning in some work when another came in holding a paperback copy of the novel.  The second student wanted to give it to the first, as it had the first's name in it.  The first was bemused, saying she hadn't seen that book in over a year, hadn't brought it to school at all, didn't even know where it was until it turned up in the second student's hand.  I simply nodded and thought, "Okay, well, now it's actually coming AFTER ME in print..."

I've never been haunted and pursued by a novel before.  It's a little disconcerting.  I guess after I finish what I'm reading now I'll reread Gatsby.  I'm afraid that if I don't the next stage will be looking out my window to see a green light has appeared at the end of my pasture or having somebody start calling me "old sport" for a nickname.  That would be more than a little too much, I think.  I hope it can be patient until I finish this book I have going.  Otherwise, I guess I better look for big yellow cars as I cross the street....

Sonnet, Redux

As you can tell, I've rediscovered a treasure trove here.  This collection of sonnets, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, is wonderful.  This poem reminds me that all too often the private lives of creative people wind up as a horrible sort of sacrifice.  I believe everybody is deserving of privacy.  While I'm not usually a fan of Wilde, I am touched by his words here.  I don't think there were many more gentle in the world of letters than Keats.  To think of people pawing through the private musings of his heart breaks my own.  It's too much to hope that kind soul bought those letters, sealed them up in a box, and burned them to allow what was supposed to remain only between two to continue that way, isn't it?  I guess I'm just not much of a scholar when it comes right down to it; there's no desire in me to know what he wrote to his beloved.  It should be left alone.
_______________________________________

OSCAR WILDE  Sonnet: On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret and apart,
And now the brawlers of the auction-mart
Bargain and bid for each tear-blotted note,
Aye! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price! I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart,
That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat.
Is it not said, that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?
1886

Musicians and Poetry

Found this today as I was pulling sonnets for my AP class.  It is, of course, Shakespeare.  I've felt this way too often watching certain musicians who were very bad for me play.....

_________________________________________________

SONNET 128

How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
   Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
   Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Rain and Eggplant

I had a D-A-Y today.  The natives were growing restless, what with spring and testing and all.  It is not to be talked of. 

After school I took my taxes out to the lady who does mine.  She's in the town where I went to high school, and just driving out there is an experience.  So much has changed.  When I went to that school, it was a small country school, very good, but not very big.  Most of the families who were there had been there for generations.  It was truly a community school.  Now, there are subdivisions everywhere and mammoth houses where people have moved in from everywhere.  It makes me feel strange, a little like somebody came in and took something that was mine when I wasn't looking.  I know that's not logical, especially since it's not mine anymore in any part, but still....

I came back to town and decided not to have a Sonic burger for supper.  Instead, I went to an Italian restaurant to have something more substantial.  Eggplant Parmesan is one of my favorite dishes, and I took the time to read over it and enjoy it slowly.  It was a nice change over eating a jalapeno burger in the car, even if the burger would have come with a banana shake.

I hope tomorrow will  be better.  Today I feel as if I was a bear in a cage who was being poked at from all sides.  I'm going to put my paws over my eyes and pretend there's nothing there and hope that they all leave me alone for a little while.

Why I'm Still Single

"Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men." ~ Kin Hubbard

Dunn's Falls

The weather was too beautiful to stay indoors today.  Although I left much later than I'd wanted, I finally went to Dunn's Falls to take some pictures. 

I hadn't been there since I was very little.  That's a shame.  It's a very peaceful place.  I need to go back when I have more time to hike the trails some.  There isn't much there except the mill, the trails, and the river, but there doesn't really need to be more than that to be honest. 

The old mill is in very poor repair.  I suppose things like that need a great deal of money to keep them up.  At one point, I think they used to run it and mill grain there periodically.  As I was taking pictures of the various components, I noticed the damage to most of the working structures.  I don't know if it will ever mill again, but it is still lovely for all that.  It's still possible to go in the building and look around.  I got several pictures inside it that I'm fairly pleased with, lots of interesting details to shoot there.

The river is beautiful where it bends at the falls, wide and curving, and with the water cascading down into them from the mill, it's a great spot to take photos.  As usual, I shot much more than I kept, even after editing, but it was nice to wade out into the spring-cool water in my Tevas, feel the sun on my face and arms, and baptize my feet in the water of my native region as I tried to find the right angles on things. The little shelf of limestone where the water comes over the falls is ridiculously pretty, and on either side, all of Mississippi's lush spring blooms were on display, native honeysuckle and dogwood sprinkled through the new green of the woods.  I am more glad than I can say that I waited for spring to go out to take pictures.  

I think I'll go back again with a picnic lunch, a quilt, my Kindle, and much more time.  It should be a good place to find a quiet spot in a bend of the river and listen to the water go by and the wind in the tree tops.  I won't forget it's as close as it is again.  There are too few places of refuge to throw one like this away.