“And I can’t be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.” ~ J. D. Salinger

All Together by kdee64 (FCC)

                   

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” ~ Frank Herbert, from Dune

Tuesday afternoon. Rainy and mild, 59 degrees.

And so we do the Tidewater temperature bounce: 34 degrees, 59 degrees, 31 degrees, 67 degrees. Is it any wonder we are a population of incubating sinus problems?

Pine Grosbeak
via onejackdawbirding.blogspot (cc)

Just above my left temple is a pain akin to having been bruised by a hammer. I can’t tell if it’s leftover migraine or incipient sinus headache, which makes figuring out which med to take more trouble than it’s worth. I sat on the edge of the bed with my hot coffee cup pressed against my head, trying to figure this out, and finally took nothing more than ibuprofen because I was giving myself more of a headache over trying to figure out the headache than the possible medicine could have relieved.

Still with me?

Last night I dreamed that my high school friend Sarah was a soothsayer, and she had read in the cards that within 24 hours everyone who was playing video games would die. We were trying to figure out how to let everyone know without causing widespread panic. Can you just imagine? An impossible task. One thing though—she had the most amazing long grey hair, the white-grey, not the steel grey, and I was so envious.

“All we can do on this earth is step into the future
with a sense of the many people behind us,
the living and the dead, as if we carried our bodies
like amphorae filled with sunbeams into each new day” ~ Morton Marcus, from “All We Can Do”

Yesterday I went to Lex’s apartment after dropping off Brett on campus, stayed for a bit and then brought Olivia home with me. We hadn’t seen her in a week, and I was going through bebe withdrawal. Eamonn had called in sick to work, so Olivia got to see her uncle and her Granddaddy, two of her favorite people. She is babbling a lot, saying ma ma, but it doesn’t seem to be associated with anything, just babbling, which is natural.

Chickadee on Snow-Covered Branch
via northrup.org

I remember when Caitlin was in the hospital, she had begun to say something that sounded like ma, and she was the same age that Olivia is now. Funny the things you remember out of nowhere.

Anyway, we had fun eating strained squash and fruit, and she is doing all kind of gesture imitations, which is funny to watch. But while we’re watching Olivia, Tillie is watching us, especially Corey, as if to say, “Hey! What about me?” Such a funny dog.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if poetry—poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs—is how the world works. The world isn’t logical; it’s a song.” ~ David Byrne

By the way, I’ve been meaning to say greetings and thanks to my newest followers. Recently, I topped 100 followers without even realizing it. Always glad to hear from new people, and remember, if you would prefer to comment via e-mail, that’s fine too.

Let’s see . . . what else?

Robin in Winter
via onejackdawbirding.blogspot (cc)

I haven’t started on my new meds yet mostly because one of them was on back-order at my pharmacy, and I want to start the new regimen with everything. That makes the most sense because I want to be able to tell if they are working collectively and to see if there are any unwanted side effects I may not be able to tolerate. Anyway, I found the one medicine at a CVS near the house and had the script transferred there, so I’ll probably start everything tomorrow; although I’d prefer to start on a Sunday as one of he meds is a patch that needs to be changed every seven days, and I know myself—I forget too easily, so I need a memorable day of the week, you know, like Sunday.

My, I am running on today, aren’t I?

One of my new meds is a sumatriptan shot that I can give myself when my migraines are severe. I had tried this medicine years ago, and it made me very nauseous; however, that being said, the new doctor gave me a shot while I was in his office (because I had a headache, of course), and told me to take a phenergan with the shot for the nausea. The shot worked on the headache, but left me feeling a bit dizzy/woozy. I guess I’ll have to wait to see if this is an avenue in which the nausea is worth the pain relief.

“I am looking into your dark centers
where I see myself reflected,
standing close to the edge,
as though I might
at any moment
take in my breath and dive down.” ~ Deborah Abbott, from “All Day at Work”

I watched the last episode in season 3 of “Downton Abbey” last night, and boy was it heartbreaking. I really hate it when I have made an investment in a show, and it ends up breaking my heart. Corey is going to take seasons 1 and 2 with him when he leaves. I have the boxed sets. He likes period pieces as much as I do. In fact, one of the first movies that we watched together was Sense and Sensibility, the one with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman. Such a beautiful version.

Don’t really know what the above paragraph has to do with anything, but I was thinking about it, so there it is.

Bohemian Waxwing by bobvt (FCC)

Other than the usual weird dreams last night, I also wrote a poem. However, I did not wake up after composing this poem, so I did not record it. Consequently, I remember nothing of it other than it was there. I know that it was short with short lines, a la Charles Bukowski, but I don’t remember anything else, which is so very frustrating. I know that I liked it, and I think that it had something to do with gravity, which may have come from thinking about Copernicus’s birthday today (somehow that connects in my brain).

I hate when my mind does this to me.

“Without even intending it, there is that little shiver of a moment in time preserved in the crystal cabinet of the mind. A little shiver of eternal space. That’s what I was looking for.” ~ Alan Ginsberg

I’m all alone in the house now, listening to The Secret Sisters. Corey has gone to do errands; Eamonn is at a concert, and Brett as at school. Just me and the dogs, and the dogs are barking at everything and nothing, and Alfie’s bark is the exact pitch that makes my eyes hurt when I have a headache, so all in all, it’s simply fantastic. The only thing missing is the sound of a chain saw or leaf blower.

Eurasian Jay by n-c (CC)

Actually, just a few minutes ago while I was sitting here daydreaming, I was listening to the wind whip the wind chimes into a frenetic ballad, and I noticed the sound of a jumbo jet passing overhead. When you live in an area filled with the sounds of fighter jets and jumbo jets, it is very easy not to hear them any more. Anyway, so paying attention to these random sounds I remembered a scene in “The Walking Dead” in which one of the characters says that she would love to hear the sound of an airplane passing overhead because in this post-apocalyptic world populated by zombies and survivors it’s so quiet.

And this leads me to ponder: Would I really like to live in an old farmhouse on a piece of land somewhere, far from everyone else. I think that I would, but then would I miss the sounds? I wouldn’t miss the loud trucks and the sirens, but I would miss the sound of the train in the middle of the night, and the sounds of a fog horn on the bay.

I think that I know what I want, and I think that what I want is different from this, but actually, I don’t really know. Do I? Do any of us?

More later. Peace.

Music by The Secret Sisters, “Tomorrow Will be Kinder”

                   

The Lucky Ones

stuck in the rain on the freeway, 6:15 p.m.,
these are the lucky ones, these are the
dutifully employed, most with their radios on as loud
as possible as they try not to think or remember.

this is our new civilization: as men
once lived in trees and caves now they live
in their automobiles and on freeways as

the local news is heard again and again while
we shift from first gear to second and back to first.

there’s a poor fellow stalled in the fast lane ahead, hood
up, he’s standing against the freeway fence
a newspaper over his head in the rain.

the other cars force their way around his car, pull out into
the next lane in front of cars determined to shut them off.

in the lane to my right a driver is being followed by a
police car with blinking red and blue lights – he surely
can’t be speeding as

suddenly the rain comes down in a giant wash and all the
cars stop and

even with the windows up I can smell somebody’s clutch
burning.

I just hope it’s not mine as

the wall of water diminishes and we go back into first
gear; we are all still
a long way from home as I memorize
the silhouette of the car in front of me and the shape of the

driver’s head or
what
I can see of it above the headrest while
his bumper sticker asks me
HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR KID TODAY?

suddenly I have an urge to scream
as another wall of water comes down and the
man on the radio announces that there will be a 70 percent
chance of showers tomorrow night

~ Charles Bukowski

“I’ve never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.” ~ Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

“Sunset in June after Eruption of Krakatoa” (c. 1880s, pastel)
by William Ascroft

                   

“When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world—profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence.” ~ Ingmar Bergman

Sunday, early evening. Partly cloudy and cold, 35 degrees.

No snow. Not a drop. No galumphing for Tillie, and no snow photos for me. Oh well . . .

So I’ve been thinking about clouds, not in a scientific way but in a philosophical way. Let me explain:

“Amber Afterglow with Crepuscular Rays” (1885, pastel)
by William Ascroft

When we look up at clouds in the sky, they seem to be buffeted along by the wind, without having any momentum of their own. They bump into other clouds along the way, sometimes just touching the sides, sometimes merging, sometimes completely obscuring. Clouds can be massive puffs (cumulus), multilayered (stratus), or wisps (cirrus), and all of the variations in between.

Now I know that in truth, clouds are propelled and formed by many factors: wind, gravity, moisture content, solar heating, etcetera. Yes, I know all about low level and upper level winds, jet streams, and all of that, but I’m keeping it basic as an extended metaphor for my life.

I realized that I am very much like a cloud: My life has moved along many paths, some of my choosing and others due to circumstance. Often I have felt as if I have had no say in the directions I seem to be traversing. Along the way, I meet people, some who seem to swallow me with their big personalities, and others who I tend to overshadow because consuming them is easy, and then there are the people who I meet in passing who may or may not leave me with any sort of lasting impression.

“After the cups of tea, coffee, public conversations . . . I want to sit down with someone and talk with utter directness, want to talk to all the lost history like that deserving lover.” ~ Michael Ondaatje, from Running in the Family

Now if all of that sounds like some kind of new age bullshit, well, what can I say? I’m certain that I’m not the first person to have used this metaphor for life, nor will I be the last. I can only say that it occurred to me this morning as my consciousness was coming into waking, and I decided to go with it.

“Sustained Light after Sunset (1886, pastel)
by William Ascroft

As children, we put our heads on our arms as we recline in the grass, and we look up at the clouds and try to make out shapes—bunny rabbits, cats, dogs. As adults, sometimes we see other things in the shapes—an arrow, a mass like a mushroom cloud, Richard Nixon (okay, maybe that one is just me). When do the innocuous shapes we see as children morph into things more reminiscent of our waking nightmares?

I couldn’t tell you. I only know that at various point in my life I have been content to be bounced around by the winds, landing wherever and whenever. I suppose it’s part of the overall adventure. But at other times I have felt indignant at having so little power to control my path, which reminds me of a particularly crass simile that I have heard many times: It’s like pissing into the wind.

Fate. It’s tricky, and sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s somewhere in the middle.

“I go, we go. On the way we keep a log-book, the book of the abyss and the shores. Everyone does. My books are thus like life and history, heterogenous chapters in a single vast book whose ending I will never know.” ~ Hélène Cixous

I know. Pretty flaky, and I couldn’t really tell you where any of this came from. Just thinking about life, my life in particular, life in general, and the fact that no one really has control, no matter how much they may think they do.

“Sunset and Afterglow” (1883, pastel)
by William Ascroft

Presbyterians believe in predestination, as in the idea that when someone is born, his or her life is already planned out, from start to finish, as willed by god. I always found that concept incredibly troubling. John Calvin contended that some people are born already condemned to eternal damnation, while others are slated for salvation. Think about this for just a moment: No matter what you do, you are damned if that is what god decided for you before you took your first breath.

Sucks.

I remember learning about this concept when I was about 10 or 11, and even then, it really bothered me. If one holds to predestination, then why try? I mean, if you have a run of bad luck at one point, is that god shaking the omnipotent finger at you, saying, “Tough luck. But this is your road, and you can’t do anything about it”? And if so, should you just give up because, well, what the hell? What’s the point?

“You know, maybe this is how your concerto ends. I mean, not a big end with trumpets and violin. Maybe this is the finish, just like that suddenly. Not sad, not happy, just a small room with a lamp, abed,a child sleeps, and tons of loneliness.” ~ Eran Kolirin, from The Band’s Visit

My awakening cloud metaphor stayed with me even as I read an article in Rolling Stone about Aaron Swartz (The Brilliant Life & Tragic Death of Aaron Swartz). You may not know the name, but Swartz was a brilliant Internet pioneer, helping to develop RSS and reddit, and he committed suicide in January of this year. Swartz was being charged with theft for downloading documents from the JSTOR system of MIT. JSTOR is an online repository of articles for which colleges and universities pay access.

“Sky Study” (1886, pastel)
by William Ascroft

Swartz, who was a child prodigy, was also plagued by personal demons, including depression and a sense of isolation. What does this have to do with what I’ve been saying? A lot.

Swartz, even though he could create code like others brew coffee, wanted to be a writer. He often felt as if he had no control over the direction his life was taking him. That he committed suicide is sad for all of the obvious reasons, but also because society lost a bright star, one who contributed to much but felt as if he had contributed nothing. When he died, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, wrote that Swartz was “blazing across the dark sky of ordinary people, broken systems, a shining force for good, a maker of things.”

What touched me about this story was how this genius man-boy was so self-doubting, so insular, so afraid, yet others saw him as this fierce fighter for access to information.

We never see ourselves as others see us.

“The time of departure is not mine to choose; I must find my way alone in this darkness. With the shadow of the moon at my side, I search for traces of wildlife in the white snow.” ~ Wilhelm Müller, from “Good Night”

I have spent so much of my life drifting aimlessly, it seems, yet you tell me otherwise. I have spent so many years lost, but not really.

I have had the pleasure and pain of encountering kindred spirits and malevolent spirits, all of whom have helped to build me up and chip away at my soul. I have merged, dissolved, grown layers and lost parts along the way.

“Sunset and Noctilucent Cloud” (1885, pastel)
by William Ascroft

I have been soldiered on by winds that were warm and comforting, and I have been tossed about without any ability to tether myself to something solid. If have felt spun, blown, thrown, carried, cajoled and heaved. I have lost my way and in being lost, have found other paths.

All of this is to say that in this third act of my life, I am older, wiser, and still thrashing about completely without a clue.

Just before waking, a woman in my dream said this to me: “Century, century, 25.” I had no idea what it meant, which is to say, business as usual. And all of this brings to mind that completely sardonic Yiddish proverb: “Men tracht und Gott lacht.” (Man plans and god laughs).

More later. Peace.

(All images are by British artist William Ascroft, who drew hundreds of pastel sketches following the eruption of the Krakatao volcano on a small island in Indonesia.)

Music by Mikky Ekko, “Feels Like the End”

                   

The Dumka

His parents would sit alone together
on the blue divan in the small living room
listening to Dvorak’s piano quintet.
They would sit there in their old age,
side by side, quite still, backs rigid, hands
in their laps, and look straight ahead
at the yellow light of the phonograph
that seemed as distant as a lamplit
window seen across the plains late at night.
They would sit quietly as something dense

and radiant swirled around them, something
like the dust storms of the thirties that began
by smearing the sky green with doom
but afterwards drenched the air with an amber
glow and then vanished, leaving profiles
of children on pillows and a pale gauze
over mantles and table tops. But it was
the memory of dust that encircled them now
and made them smile faintly and raise
or bow their heads as they spoke about

the farm in twilight with piano music
spiraling out across red roads and fields
of maize, bread lines in the city, women
and men lining main street like mannequins,
and then the war, the white frame rent house,
and the homecoming, the homecoming,
the homecoming, and afterwards, green lawns
and a new piano with its mahogany gleam
like pond ice at dawn, and now alone
in the house in the vanishing neighborhood,

the slow mornings of coffee and newspapers
and evenings of music and scattered bits
of talk like leaves suddenly fallen before
one notices the new season. And they would sit
there alone and soon he would reach across
and lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken
leaf and he would hold her hand in his hand
for a long time and they would look far off
into the music of their lives as they sat alone
together in the room in the house in Kansas.

~ B.H. Fairchild

“The air alive, | memory lifts her head and I nearly | disappear.” ~ Anne Michaels, from “Skin Divers”

Mangetsu 満月 (1963)
by Yajuro Takashima

                   

My birthday present to myself: I spent two hours doing a practice Literature in English GRE subject sample test. I am woefully unprepared to take the GREs, so I suppose it’s a good thing that I found out today I’ve missed the deadline for submitting applications to the doctoral program at GW.

Ah me. Instead of rambling on and on about something that is bothering me, I’m going to post a lovely poem by Anne Michaels, which I found on  What the Camera Sees on blogspot. Please click here to see the post.

Skin Divers

Under the big-top
of stars, cows drift
from enclosures, bellies brushing
the high grass, ready for their heavy
festivities. Lowland gleams like mica
in the rain. Starlight
soaks our shoes.
The seaweed field begs, the same
burlap field that in winter cracks with frost,
is splashed by the black brush
of crows. Frozen sparklers of Queen Anne’s lace.

Because the moon feels loved, she lets our eyes
follow her across the field, stepping
from her clothes, strewn silk
glinting in furrows. Feeling loved, the moon loves
to be looked at, swimming
all night across the river.

She calls through screens,
she fingers a white slip in the night hallway,
reaches across the table for a glass.
She holds the dream fort.
Like the moon, I want to touch places
just by looking. To tell
new things at three in the morning, when we’re
awake with rain or any sadness, or slendering through
reeds of sleep, surfacing to skin. In this room
where so much has happened, where love
is the clink of buttons as your shirt slides
to the floor, the rolling sound of loose change;
a book half open, clothes
half open. Again we feel
how transparent the envelope
of the body, pushed through the door
of the world. To read what’s inside
we hold each other
up to the light. We hold
the ones we love or long
to be free of, carry them
into every night field, sit with them
while cows slow as ships
barely move in the distance.
Rain dripping from the awning of stars.

Waterworn, the body remembers
like a floodplain, sentiment-laden,
reclaims itself with every tide.
Memory terraces, soft as green deltas.
Or reefs and cordilleras -
gathering the world to bone.

The moon touches everything
into meaning, under her blind fingers,
then returns us to cerulean
aluminum dawns. Night,
a road pointing east.
her sister, memory, browses the closet
for clothes carrying someone’s shape.
She wipes her hands on an apron
stained with childhood, familiar smells
in her hair; rattles pots and pans
in the circadian kitchen.
While in the bedroom of a night field,
the moon undresses; her abandoned peignoir
floats forever down.

Memory drags possessions out on the lawn,
moves slowly through wet grass, weighed down
by moments caught in her night net, in the glistening
ether of her skirt. The air alive,
memory lifts her head and I nearly
disappear. You lift your head, a look I feel
everywhere, a tongue of a glance,
and love’s this dark field, our shadow web
of voices, the carbon-papter purple
rainy dark. Memory’s heavy with the jewellery
of rain, her skirt heavy with beads of mercury
congealing to ice on embroidered branches -
as she walks we hear the clacking surf
of those beautiful bones. Already love
so far beyond the body, reached only
by way of the body. Time is the alembic
that turns what we know
into mystery. Into air,
into the purple stain of sweetness.
Laburnum, wild iris, birch forest so thick
it glows at night, smells that reach us
everywhere; the alchemy that keeps us
happy on the ground, even if our arms embrace
nothing, nothing: the withdrawing
trochee of birds. We’ll never achieve escape
velocity, might as well sink into wet
firmament, learn to stay under,
breathing through our skin.
In silver lamella, in rivers
the colour of rain. Under water, under sky;
with transparent ancient wings.

Tonight the moon traipses in bare feet,
silk stockings left behind
like pieces of river.

Our legs and arms, summer-steeped
slapped damp
with mud and weeds.

We roll over the edge into the deep field,
rise from under rain,
from our shapes in wet grass.
Night swimmers, skin divers.

~ Anne Michaels

                   

Music by Shawn Colvin (with Alison Krauss), “Shotgun Down The Avalanche”