Poetry

December 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA)
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No, it’s not over. I’m still here. And it’s not that there hasn’t been plenty to say. I just haven’t. The assigned theme for poetry group last week was writer’s block. This is what I wrote:

A variation of what I wrote in November. October had enough inspiration in it to keep me making poems for years to come, but I’m better at finding poetry than at making it. Yesterday I found it in the sky; birds. They were not geese and there was no V formation. No MC Escher imitation of birds turning in sync, now snowy breast, now silver wing. Just birds. Black ones, plain and graceless and all the more beautiful because. They reminded me of this:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things–

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

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Thanksgiving

November 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA)
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“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

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October 1, 2009 at 10:35 am (ARCANA)

 

Readers have complained. I’ve been remiss in my posting.

I know, I know, I know!

It’s just that it’s busy here in my head. I will be back.

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September

September 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA)
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The thrill is gone, like a love used up. Faded and forgotten. Summer’s still officially here, but our minds are full of fall.

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Hi

July 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA)
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I’ve been reading a lot. And drawing. None of it makes its way here. I don’t know why. I’m really a very private person. Someone made the observation that the Pixie talks when she wants to, but when she doesn’t she just doesn’t. She’s as closed as a nut.

I guess I’m a little like her.

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July 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA, SLICE OF LIFE)
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I was lately inspired to visit my grandparents. The cemetery isn’t walled or gated or overgrown and forgotten. Just a not-so-big Methodist cemetery in rural America. Open, sunny, well cared for. Optimistic. It would never be the setting for a scene in a Gothic novel. I’m glad. I’m glad to look out across a field of green and see sun warming the stones. Yes, I’ve cried there. The memory of playing tag between the stones is stronger. The cemetery runs right up to the Sunday School steps. While I waited for my mother I memorized the names on the headstones, making up stories to go with them. When she was late I visited the graves of my great grandparents and my sister, who lies beside them. I talked. I rarely thought to bring a tribute. I’m not good with observances and formalities. My tribute was my words. In my head I talked to them as though they were there. And now, my grandparents. They weren’t famous. They weren’t war heroes or social activists. They were more than that. They were mine.

A huge basket of wildflowers was spilled over the new grave that summer day seven years ago. She’d have loved them. Wild, leggy beauties that looked as if they’d been gathered on a mountainside. It would have been a shame to leave them to wilt and rot. We picked the ground clean and carried bouquets home to remind us of her. She’d have laughed and done the same. And that’s how it was. We each of us carried something of her away inside ourselves.

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On the Road Again

July 2, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA, WANDERLUST)
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I’ve been away. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now I want to talk about white-line fever. Not the book, the movie, the television show, or the song. No; Highway Hypnosis. Technically, a mental state in which the person can drive great distances, responding to external events in the expected manner, with no recollection of having consciously done so. The driver’s conscious mind is apparently fully focused elsewhere, with seemingly direct processing of the masses of information needed to drive safely. Automaticity. The conscious and subconscious minds appear to concentrate on different things. You sleep deprived mothers know what I’m talking about. It’s not just for truckers anymore.

I’ve had it many times on the road though and I don’t like it. I want to notice one place melding into another. The hardwood forests of New England easing into the scrub pines and eventually the scattered palms of the South. The soil that turns to sand as you near the shore. I want to feel the differences between one place and another. A uniqueness of space.

There’s truck driver blood in me. When I was ten I thought I’d grow up to be a Truck Driving Artist Librarian President of the United States. I’d take the Oval Office on the road and multi-tasking to a new level. My father drove a semi. From the time I could climb in, I spent hours sitting in the cab pretending to drive through the deserts of New Mexico or along the rocky coast of Maine. Always with an empty load, sailing along like the breeze. Free. My friends did not do this and I thought it was my truck driver blood that made me different. A rover.

Sometimes a sort of white-line fever comes over me at home. I go through the motions of domestic life daydreaming. In my mind I’m somewhere else. Today I’ve been back to Budapest, which I haven’t given a fair assessment of here, then to China and Japan. I want to see Mount Fuji from the air. I want to float down the Yangtze River. I want to be on the road. I want the wind in my hair and white lines running on before me.

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Heal Thyself

June 8, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA, ARTS, SLICE OF LIFE)
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Dr Gray leaned back in his chair, rubbing his nose meditatively. Then he spoke, eyes still closed so I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself. I always get the feeling he’s more of a philosopher than a physician and that in itself makes me feel better. In college we had a Philosopher in Residence. Every now and then I wandered down the hill and up long, narrow, switchback stairs to visit. It was like climbing the Sacred Way to consult the Oracle. At the top was a small, dark landing and a door. That’s all. I drew myself up to knock and the door opened onto a sanctuary. Sun poured in from long windows and stacks of books rose up everywhere like the vapors of Apollo himself.

There are no stacks of books in Dr Gray’s small office, but there are paintings. His wife is an artist, which is how we met. So we talk a lot about her and a lot about art and a little about my physical health. This suits me fine. As he walks me out I realize there is a life-size marble bust of Julius Caesar there in the hallway. He’s sitting on a faux woodgrain laminate desk as if the waiting room were too plebeian for him. Obviously the doctor would see him immediately. He’d wait right here. If it were a smaller sculpture I could imagine someone walked through and said: I’ll just set this down here a minute. But this is Caesar, large as life and ten times as heavy. He demands homage.

Dr Gray sighs. “That belongs to Dr Billons. I think he wants to put it on ebay.” Dr Billons, who I’ve never met, has been brought into the practice as a relief pitcher. I imagine him young and brash and wearing rubber gloves. He’s very clinical, probably diagnoses patients with his eyes open. This is his? Suddenly I don’t want to pull his name off the door. I want him to assess my lymph nodes speaking Latin. I picture him reading Catullus to the matronly receptionist between patients. “I entreat you, my sweet Ipsitilla, my darling, my charmer, bid me to come and rest at noonday with you…”  as she photocopies and files prescriptions for antibiotics and diuretics.

“You want it?” Dr Gray asks. Yes. YES.

No. Well, yes. But no, not really. What I really want is to have it at my doctor’s office. Julius Caesar wearing a bronzed breastplate and set on a chipped laminate desktop amid oil paintings of the doctor’s garden, his boat, his cat even. I want my doctor to know I was once 18 with a ridiculous crush on a colorblind painter and that I cut the tip of my finger off with a paper cutter trying to impress him. I want him to ask how many kids my sister has now and what I’ve been reading. I want to hear the funny story about his vasectomy and to have his home number in case I need it. I want there to be a huge marble bust of a Roman dictator sitting in his office for no particular reason. I want him to be a real live human being and to know that I am.

Isn’t that what we all want?

So I left Dr Gray the way I used to leave the oracle at the top of the stairs; no clear answers but lighter in spirit, with much discussed and more to think about.

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Commercial Break

May 5, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA, SLICE OF LIFE)
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From the booklet included with my new electric razor:

Congratulations! Now that you own an electric shaver, you are part of a growing group of women with smooth legs – Strong, beautiful women who lead busy, demanding lives balancing family, friends, jobs, socializing, school, sports, shopping, and much more! Women who are ready to ditch their razors and pick up an electric shaver to ’shave’ time by not having to deal with messy creams and gels, as well as protect their legs from nicks and cuts! And women who will not settle for anything less than smooth and silky legs!

The model you have purchased can be used in or out of the shower – So feel free to shave in the mall’s restroom, your shower, or even while you watch TV! The shaver is also designed to hug the curves of your body for a close, fast shave. We are glad you have chosen the electric shaver journey to fulfill your shaving needs – from saving time to smooth legs!

I have to admit, that first paragraph fills me with confidence as much as it makes me crack up laughing. I am a strong, beautiful woman, too busy to be bothered with messy depilatory creams. Too beauteous to risk nicks or cuts.  I must socialize. I must shop. Thankfully, I have this exciting new electric shaver to take along. At last! I can save time by shaving at the mall!

And so, my electric shaver journey continues…  Meet me at the mall. I’ll be the one radiating silky smoothness (and giggling).

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Words

March 9, 2009 at 12:00 pm (ARCANA, SLICE OF LIFE)
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Words have been on our minds. Today is the spelling bee. For two weeks my daughter has had words to spell tossed at her from every quarter. Conversations usually go like this:

Me: Eat your lunch. Spell tortilla.

The Speller: Tortilla. T-O-R-T-I-L-L-A. Tortilla.

Son: These are peanut butter sandwiches, Mom. Not tacos. What’s your favorite dinosaur?

Me: Brontosaurus. Spell brontosaurus.

Speller: Brontosaurus. B-R-O-

Son: Mom! Brontosaurs didn’t exist! Spell apatosaurus.

Speller: Apatosaurus. A-P-P – wait. A-P-A-T-O-S-A-U-R-U-S. Apatosaurus.

Me: I know, but it’s my favorite because it proves scientists make mistakes, too. Mistake.

Speller: Mistake. M-I-S-T-A-K-E. Mistake.

Pixie Child: Do dinosaurs really eat only girls? Spell ‘girls rock’.

During lunch yesterday we had my iPod playing on the surround sound. The Speller asked to hear a certain song and I said sure, telling her it was popular when I was a teenager and treating them to a little dance. She laughed indulgently, then made her point.

Speller: This song is explicit. E-X-P-L-I-C-I-T. Explicit.

Me: No, it isn’t. It’s… Oh. Wow.

The boy’s eyebrows went up.

Pixie: I know what explicit means.

The Pixie’s favorite thing to tell strangers right now is “I know a bad word. I can’t say it, but it sounds like…” and then she sounds it out for them. Apparently slowly enunciating a word does not equal saying it. There’s always that laugh at the end. She gets to say the word with impunity because she’s not really saying it. Not technically. Then she tells her story. “We were in the car and Mom was singing and I don’t think she was paying attention because I think she forgot to turn because she stopped at a stop sign. I can spell stop. S-T-O-P. At the stop sign she said that word and I said I think you just said a bad word and she turned the car around and we turned onto the road that doesn’t go by Cracker Barrel. Do you want me to tell you the word again?”

So I don’t know who I thought I was kidding yesterday when I said “Yeah, we’ll have to take that song off your iPods.”

Son: It’s not like we’ve never heard the word, Mom.

Me (with horror): Where? Where have you heard that word?

Son: You. You say it all the time.

They’re all smirking at me at this point. I smirk back.

Me: Well. I’m not going to say it anymore. It’s a bad word and I have a better vocabulary.

Son: Give me a dollar every time you say it.

Me: A nickel.

Son: A quarter.

Me: A nickel. I have to wean myself.

Son: You’ll stop sooner if you give me a dollar every time.

Speller: If you give each of us a dollar.

Me: I don’t have that much money.

Speller: Then you won’t say it, will you?

Sometimes it sucks having smart kids. But don’t tell them I said that. They’re smug enough. I haven’t had to make any pay outs yet, thankfully. Nor have I had to flex my wider vocabulary under stress though. Maybe I should write some phrases down so I’ll be ready. In case I can’t bite my tongue.

I am perturbed.

This situation is odious.

Stop being so fractious. I love you and do not want to pay you a dollar.

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