Friday afternoon. Partly cloudy and autumnal, 67 degrees.
So . . . hmm . . . a whole lot of nothing going on in my head . . . actually, too much to sift through . . .
The dogs kept me up most of the night, well, up and down and up and down. There must have been some kind of critter in the back yard that had their interest. The highlight of my evening was watching the finale of “Project Runway,” which I still like, even after 13 seasons. Tried to read and couldn’t. Tried to watch something else, and couldn’t. Not really sure what’s going on.
At least I finally got the x-rays on both of my hands done yesterday afternoon, something my pain management doctor prescribed weeks ago. Funny how I hadn’t noticed how weird my left thumb is looking, as in misshapen. Love this getting older stuff. Oh well . . .
This week’s headline:
You don’t say . . .
And another good one:
That these two were friends (they went to Julliard together) is absolutely amazing:
Have you ever ridden in an Intelevator? Me neither.
It’s long, but worth it, especially around 5:40.
Where do I get some of this?
Crime and Punishment: He did what?
Crime and Punishment: World’s worst robber?
The hell, you say?
Too bad the U.S. doesn’t have the guts Canada has in this instance:
Love the pun:
Moral of the story? Always check for newts . . .
Twitter responses to pumpkin riot in New Hampshire hand conservative pundits their own words . . . with a twist:
“We live in time—it holds us and molds us—but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly . . . And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing—until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.” ~ Julian Barnes, from The Sense of an Ending
Tuesday night I watched a retrospective on Robin Williams on PBS. It was lovely, and the interviews really got into the man as much as the comedian/actor. I appreciated that they spent a good portion on the visits to the troops that Williams had made over the years as I had no idea that no other celebrity had performed before the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan more than Williams. The interviews were cut with selections from his last full-length interviews for “Pioneers of Television.”
But when the show was over, after I dried my tears, I realized something important:
What I had said the other day about the coda to Dead Poets’ Society being about Mr. Keating realizing a light had gone out wasn’t exactly accurate. While Keating is deeply affected by Neil’s suicide, the honor the boys bestow upon him at the end by disobeying the rigid headmaster and standing on their desks leaves Keating with hope; he has not failed these boys. Instead, he has enlarged their perspectives on the world, and if that is the only thing they take away from his class (and it isn’t), then he has made it possible for more lights to shine in the world.
Sad yes, but hopeful, so very full of hope.
To paraphrase what Pam Dawber said at the end of the show, if only Williams could have seen how his death affected the world. I continue to be amazed by the number of people around the world who are truly mourning for this once bright star in the firmament.
Blue Like a Desert
Happy are the solitary ones
Those who sow the sky in the avid sand
Those who seek the living under the skirts of the wind
Those who run panting after an evaporated dream
For they are the salt of the earth
Happy are the lookouts over the ocean of the desert
Those who pursue the fennec beyond the mirage
The winged sun loses its feathers on the horizon
The eternal summer laughs at the wet grave
And if a loud cry resounds in the bedridden rocks
No one hears it no one
The desert always hollers under an impassive sky
The fixed eye hovers alone
Like the eagle at daybreak
Death swallows the dew
The snake smothers the rat
The nomad under his tent listens to the time screeching
On the gravel of insomnia
Everything is there waiting for a word already stated
Elsewhere
~ Joyce Mansour
Music by Gregory Alan Isakov, “If I go, I’m goin'”
In the Mount Saint Helen National Volcanic Monument from Connie a Wandering Soul
Two for Tuesday: Remembrance
Tuesday early morning. More storms on the horizon, a bit warmer, 77 degrees.
Hello again. I apologize for the length of yesterday’s post, but I had so much to say and so much that I wanted to share that the whole thing just got away from me, but really, I’m not sorry, because the message was important, the information needed. Much like ALS finally receiving some notable publicity via the ice bucket challenges, perhaps more attention will be paid to suicide as a result of Robin Williams’s suicide.
Perhaps, but I doubt it. Suicide remains shameful, something not to be talked about, which, I suppose, is why I chose to talk about it so much.
Anyway, the Balgach poem below was originally going with yesterday’s post, but I felt that two poems was overkill, as it were, so here it is, along with another one I just found by Noel Coward, and I must admit that for some reason, I never equated Coward with poetry, only plays. Just goes to show how much you don’t know when you think you know everything.
Enjoy.
Barbwire from Connie A Wandering Soul
What Holds Us
This morning I listened to the first birds of spring.
Even those birds bear the weight of time on their shoulders.
I have come from the ends of the universe to tell you this. Right now
I am so present that my breaths feel like knives
and these recollections are as loud
as a stranger’s footsteps on a quiet street.
Yesterday I recited the names of every dead person I know
because each day their names are spoken less. Everyone gets forgotten.
We each forget something about ourselves,
every day. It doesn’t matter. In the afternoon,
even on cold afternoons, birds sing their truths like birds
and I long to be as original as a first kiss.
I don’t know why I am trying to tell your heart
to hear its own tick. Tomorrow is going to come like lightning.
I’ll be breathing down some stranger’s neck,
pacing old footsteps over the same sidewalk I walked yesterday,
wondering what to eat for supper.
Such tired tunes make all of us go round
like ponies at the fair. Nobody deserves anything
but we want so much. Only nothing holds us forever.
~ Martin Balgach
Abandoned from Connie A Wandering Soul
Nothing is Lost
Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.
~ Noel Coward
Music by The Soundtrack of Our Lives, “Second Life Replay”
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 