Poetry Party Wednesday

 Sometimes I get tired of thinking about who is right or wrong.  It's enough that we exist, together, in the same space of time.

“Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing”

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

Doesn’t make any sense.

(Rumi) 

Five on Friday

Dewey's feeling under the weather today. He was vomiting this morning and he's got me a little worried.

I feel ridiculous substituting Splenda for sugar in my cappuccino when I'm having a big piece of chocolate cake for dessert.  Who am I kidding with that?  (Yet, I still do it.)

I wish I had a script writer for my everyday life.  I'd love to always say the right thing at the right time in the right way,  like Julianna Margulies.

And speaking of that, I'm trying to eliminate very, really, and awesome in my writing.  Since I started going back to edit for them, I've realize how very, really often I use them.

Now that Downton Abbey is over, I'll have to get a new hobby.  Perhaps fox hunting.

Poetry Party Wednesday

How many of us truly appreciate our parents while we have them?  I did, and yet only to the extent a young girl is capable, and only to the view I could see with my eyes.  Who knows what their eyes had seen?

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays, too, my father got up early 


And put his clothes on in the blueback cold, 


then with cracked hands that ached 
from labor in the weekday weather 

made 
banked fires blaze. 

No one ever thanked him. 



I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 


When the rooms were warm, he'd call, 


and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing 

the chronic angers of that house, 



Speaking indifferently to him, 


he who had driven out the cold 
and 

polished my good shoes as well. 


What did I know, what did I know 
of love's austere and lonely offices?

--Robert Hayden

Catching up on the week's events

This week I went with my dear friends to the MOMA media event, where we worked on altered books.

I completed another postcard in the Art and Sole postcard exchange I'm doing with my friend Elena. This one is from Wales. I used Photoshop and an image found online, along with a bit of prose by Dylan Thomas (a native of Wales).

I worked on some pages for friends' Smash books. (We're in a round robin, taking turns decorating each others' books.)  

Some doodles and sketches in this one:

Lyrics below are from a Coldplay song. Love the vintage image of the woman driving the car - I found it in an old National Geographic magazine. Here I am, still copying out lyrics for songs I like into my journals.  I guess I'll never grow up. Music and words together always move me in a way nothing else does.

And finally, some pages from Walls books for another Round Robin in which I'm taking part.

Five on Friday

I think I'm a little addicted to Pinterest, in the nicest possible way.  Do you pin?

I love to leave my house for a minute  (like to take out the garbage) and then come right back in.  My dog gives me such a big greeting.  Hello!!  You're back!!  So happy!!

 I try to remember not to have a New Jersey accent, but it's so hard to say CAHfee instead of CAWfee, and besides it sounds so ridiculous coming out of my NY/NJ mouth.   "Bring me my CAFfee, DAHling."

Why does my cat need to sit right in the middle of the pile I'm working on? Is he trying to be annoying? Because he's succeeding.

Tonight I found out my daughter is pregnant with a baby boy. I'm beyond thrilled for her and her husband.  wow wow wow.  Her father and I said, "Wasn't it just yesterday we were the young and wild kids, dating? How did it happen that we're turning into granny and gramps?"

Poetry Party Wednesday

some needs can never be filled...

Sister Cat

Frances Mayes

Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
Wild cat, I say, Sister,
Look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
Against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
A word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
To me. She dips
In her whiskers but
Doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
To be sure. She stalks
The room. She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.

Five on Friday

I’ve discovered that suddenly abstaining from coffee for several days makes my head pound.  Drinking it again is like watering an impatiens plant - I perk right up.  I guess that makes me addicted.

Do you have cups in your cabinet that you never use but can’t bear to part with?  I do.  I feel like I’m honoring them just by letting them sit there and be themselves.

There is something very satisfying about going through papers in my inbox and sorting them out. It makes me feel organized.  But inboxes are like laundry baskets.  They never stay empty for long.

Most of my best art never makes it to my blog. I get so busy I forget to blog about it.

I wonder whether Madonna used to dance more, um, vigorously? or whether we’ve all just gotten used to female singers dancing around a lot more now.  

It's been awhile

I know I haven't blogged very regularly recently.  Some of you may know I had surgery last week.  It was planned, but it ended up being a lengthier procedure than my doctors or I expected.  I didn't think I'd be spending 7 hours in surgery.  I didn't think I'd be spending several days in the hospital. I didn't think the recovery would be this much of a challenge.  But every day is better and better.

It did get me thinking, though, about how life throws us curves sometimes. How it's the days that start out like any other that suddenly have something thrown in that causes us to stumble, scattering all the pieces of our well-ordered plans to the wind.

It also made me think about how grateful I am to be surrounded by the absolute best family and friends anyone could ever wish for.  I despise being dependent on others--even briefly.  It just isn't in my nature.  But each of you who have helped me through never once made me feel like it was inconvenient to give me pills or help me out of bed or make me food; to visit, to call, to send flowers, to email and text,  to let me be grouchy because the pain pills made me do it -- and all the rest.  To you who have been so kind, a very humble thank you.

Much as it hurts to stumble, it's really, REALLY nice to know you have pals nearby who will catch you and never let you fall.

Poetry Party Wednesday

White-Eyes

Mary Oliver

In winter
    all the singing is in
         the tops of the trees
              where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
    shoves and pushes
         among the branches.
              Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
    but he's restless—
         he has an idea,
              and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
    as long as he stays awake
         But his big, round music, after all,
             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
    In the pine-crown
         he makes his nest,
              he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
    I only imagine his glittering beak
         tucked in a white wing
              while the clouds—

which he has summoned
    from the north—
         which he has taught
              to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
    into the world below
         like stars, or the feathers
              of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent—
         that has turned itself
              into snow.

Poetry Party Wednesday

Snow

David Berman

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.

Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I didn't know where I was going with this.

They were on his property, I said.

When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.

But why were they on his property, he asked.