“Two Women (Flowered Hair)” (1920, oil on canvas) by Paul Gauguin
Grandmother
old crow of a woman in bonnet, sifting through the dump salvaging those parts of the world neither useless nor useful
she would be hours in the sweatlodge come out naked and brilliant in the sun steam rising off her body in winter like slow explosion of horses
she braided my sister’s hair with hands that smelled of deep roots buried in the earth she told me old stories
how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock
~ Sherman Alexie
“Washing Day” (1915) by August John
The good old days at home sweet home
On Monday my mother washed. It was the way of the world, all those lines of sheets flapping in the narrow yards of the neighborhood, the pulleys stretching out second and third floor windows.
Down in the dank steamy basement, wash tubs vast and grey, the wringer sliding between the washer and each tub. At least every year she or I caught a hand in it.
Tuesday my mother ironed. One iron was the mangle. She sat at it feeding in towels, sheets, pillow cases. The hand ironing began with my father’s underwear.
She ironed his shorts. She ironed his socks. She ironed his undershirts. Then came the shirts, a half hour to each, the starch boiling on the stove.
I forgot bluing. I forgot the props that held up the line clattering down. I forgot chasing the pigeons that shat on her billowing housedresses. I forgot clothespins in the teeth.
Tuesday my mother ironed my father’s underwear. Wednesday she mended, darned socks on a wooden egg. Shined shoes. Thursday she scrubbed floors. Put down newspapers to keep
them clean. Friday she vacuumed, dusted, polished, scraped, waxed, pummeled. How did you become a feminist interviewers always ask, as if to say, when did this
rare virus attack your brain? It could have been Sunday when she washed the windows, Thursday when she burned the trash, bought groceries hauling the heavy bags home.
It could have been any day she did again and again what time and dust obliterated at once until stroke broke her open. I think it was Tuesday when she ironed my father’s shorts.
~ Marge Piercy
*****
Rest in Peace Gerald D. Fickel (October 6, 1916 – September 14, 2013)
“I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still” ~ Sylvia Plath
Tuesday afternoon. Cloudy, showers, much cooler, low 60’s.
Well, Corey is in the Ascension Island for a few days. He hasn’t seen any giant sea turtles, but he says that the island is beautiful, crystal blue waters, clean beaches, no touristy stuff. Apparently, the turtles nest at night, and the road to their nesting ground is actually closed to traffic at night so as not to disturb the turtles. Isn’t that cool? Unfortunately for him, his watch shifts haven’t allowed him to be off the boat at the time the turtles are on the move, but he has seen the tracks in the sand, and he says that they are huge.
A Dream of Grace by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
From there, the ship is supposed to head to Brooklyn to go into the yard, where it will be for a month or so. He sounds content, but tired. I haven’t heard that tone in his voice in quite a while, so it’s very nice. I can’t express how wonderful it is to know that he’s doing something that he loves and is very good at doing, especially after four years of a roller coaster ride.
Four years? Yep, since 2008. Wow. That really is a long, long, long time to be unemployed and underemployed, but I know that we are fortunate because many people who lost their jobs when the recession hit are still out of work. I truly fear for this country, its shortsighted leaders who continue to believe that the struggling lower classes are lesser citizens, and who continue to reward the elite.
What happened to equity? Democracy? The American Dream?
“What syllable are you seeking, Vocalissimus, In the distances of sleep? Speak it.” ~ Wallace Stevens, from “To the Roaring Wind”
I don’t want to go off on a socio-political rant as it will just depress me, and I’m actually feeling a bit better emotionally. I haven’t been weepy in several days, so that’s a good thing.
White Knight of Bright Morning by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
We got a graduation announcement from Corey’s niece, his older brother’s daughter. Apparently Steve texted Corey twice for our address, which just stymies me as we send them a Christmas card every year, and have done so for over a decade. Anyway, his daughter is graduating, which is kind of weird as I remember when she was just a little girl who followed Eamonn around Corey’s parents’ house when we were visiting at Christmas.
They refuse to stay young.
In ten years they will all wish that they were just approaching their 20’s again. After ten years of the stresses of young adult life, they begin to see how easy life really was. I’m not at all saying that being a teenager is easy, because it’s not. The stressors are there, just of a different nature. And far too many young people come out of their teen years scarred and scared, with absolutely no idea of what the future might hold for them.
I never thought I’d be talking about today’s youth in that same tone of voice that I hated when I was younger, so I try to remember that all of those things that seemed terribly important, life-changing, heartbreaking, all of those things really did matter then. Only now am I able to place them in context.
“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.” ~ Rumi
I ate a snack bag of Cheetos last night, really wanted them, but today I’m paying for it as I can feel the migraine creeping into my head. MSG. I don’t understand why food producers continue to use MSG when so many other things are available and so many people are sensitive to the additive. I try to tell myself that it won’t bother me, but 98 percent of the time when I ingest something with MSG I get a migraine. It’s that two percent that I’m hoping for.
Filling Up the Sea by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
Silly me.
Last night Richard Gere and Mari were in my dream. Very, very strange. Apparently, I knew Gere. In the dream I’m taking Mari to the airport, but we’re in the Underground in Crystal City, Arlington, and we keep making wrong turns. At some point, the cast from “Law & Order” makes an appearance, and Jack McCoy is standing outside of the courtroom talking to Abby. I think to myself that Abby really is just as beautiful in real life as she is on television. Then I notice that she has a scar running down the side of her legs, and I think that she’s had an operation to make her thighs smaller. Richard Gere is wearing a white dress shirt but no tie, and he’s going in the same direction as Mari and me. The newspaper is across the street. Mari tells me that she has chronic pain but wonders why she didn’t get my old job at GW. There is a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.
Make of that what you will.
“Whatever I looked at was alive, everything had a voice, but I never found out were you a friend, an enemy, was it winter, summer? Smoke, singing, midnight heat. I wrote thousands of lines. Not one told me.” ~ Anna Akhmatova, from “Fragment, 1959,” (trans. Stephen Berg)
That creative spurt that I was going through a few weeks ago seems to have dried up. Gone. For a while, I had poems running through my brain constantly. Lines upon lines kept appearing. Now the only thing in my brain is pain and bad dreams. I knew that it wouldn’t last.
Tam Lin the Knight by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
I’ve started to request galleys of books again. I thought that I would try to get back into writing reviews, like I was doing a few years ago. I had stopped requesting galleys when I stopped reviewing the books I was being sent. Knowing the publishing process, it didn’t seem right to request an ARC (advanced reader’s copy) without writing a review.
I’m also trying to stay caught up on Goodreads. I hadn’t updated my profile in ages, so I set a reading goal for myself in 2012: 60 books. I’m a little behind, but I should be able to make my goal by the end of the year. I don’t really do the social part of Goodreads—chatting with other people about what they’re reading, making friends, all of that. I just don’t get into that whole social networking, even if it is a reading site.
I know. I’m a curmudgeon. But you can’t say that I’m not honest about it.
If you’re an avid reader, and you haven’t discovered Goodreads yet, you should click on the link on my sidebar. It really is a nice resource for readers; they do book giveaways each month, and people do write some good reviews of books. At the very least, it is a great site for keeping a record of your books and for finding literary quotes.
“When you do not speak, the thousand stars that lay upon your tongue slide back down your throat only to be swallowed one by one, jagged, pointed and weighing more than planets.” ~ Tama Kieves
Speaking of age, as I was earlier, the Doobie Brothers and the Beach Boys are touring. Aren’t they all 100 or so? I mean, even though Mick Jagger is ancient, I can kind of see him touring (not really sure why), but these guys? Whenever I think of the Beach Boys, unfortunately I think of Charles Manson. I know. It’s a weird association, but Manson’s desire to be taken seriously as a singer, his relationship with Dennis Wilson, are all part of what drove him to do the crazy things that he did.
Climbing the Dragon Gate by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
You know what’s really crazy? Manson’s music was actually used by some bands after he and his followers killed all of those people. Guns ‘n Roses and Marilyn Manson have covered his songs. Weird, huh?
If anyone does not deserve that kind of recognition, it’s Manson, but hey, we’re that kind of society: desirous of fame no matter what. Okay, maybe I’m generalizing, but I remember as a youth I wanted to be famous, wanted to sing on Broadway. Of course, my dreams of fame had nothing to do with being infamous, but I wanted that recognition, nonetheless.
The desire for fame is as old as time, though. As long as humans have been able to speak, someone has chosen to be the one to lead, and people have followed because of what they have heard. Even before speech, someone always stood out, took charge, and others went along. It’s a pack mentality that has evolved into the kinds of government that exist today. Think about it: Are our Congressional members really so different from the early hominids? In both cases, someone pounded their chest (literally or figuratively) and declared that he should be heeded because he, and only he knew what was right . . .
Yep.
More later. Peace.
*All images used with permission from the Fairy Tales and Mythology Gallery on Shadowscapes, the website of Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. I recommend clicking on each image to see full size.
Music by the Alialujah Choir, “A House, A Home”
Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets
Masters, the mock orange is blooming in Syracuse without
scent, having been bred by patient horticulturalists
To make this greater display at the expense of fragrance.
But I miss the jasmine of my back-country home.
Your language has no tenses, which is why your poems can
never be translated whole into English;
Your minds are the minds of men who feel and imagine
without time.
The serenity of the present, the repose of my eyes in the cool
whiteness of sterile flowers.
Even now the headsman with his great curved blade and rank
odor is stalking the byways for some of you.
When everything happens at once, no conflicts can occur.
Reality is an impasse. Tell me again
How the white heron rises from among the reeds and flies
forever across the nacreous river at twilight
Toward the distant islands.
Cover from The Furies by John Bolton (This is how I felt after my confrontation with Eamonn: vicious)
“The years teach much which the days never knew.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s raining . . . It’s pouring . . . the dogs are all snoring.
Rain today, lots and lots of rain, and tornado warnings. And guess what’s on the forecast for the rest of the week? Rain. Every day this week through Friday. The temperature is supposed to be in the 60’s then warmer then cooler.
I’ve stopped wondering why I wake up with clogged sinuses every morning.
The other night we had a major scare that I didn’t really want to write about at the time: Tillie had a seizure. Corey came running into the house carrying her, and I could tell right away that he was scared beyond anything I have ever seen in his face. Tillie’s legs were drawn up to her body; she was frothing at the mouth, and her eyes looked wild.
We called the emergency vet who told us that when these things happen to dogs, they usually pass within 30 minutes or so. The woman on the phone also told Corey that we didn’t need to bring Tillie in if it passed, but that we should watch her.
Within an hour, she was completely back to normal. The rest of the family was on edge for the entire night. The next morning, Corey took Tillie to our regular vet, where they promptly did blood work and a few other things, only to tell us that they couldn’t really say what caused the seizure, but to be on the lookout in case she starts to have them on a regular basis.
I won’t even talk about the bill because it was obviously more than we could afford, and the vet’s office does not let you make payments (we asked).
So much for getting caught up on the water bill.
Anyway, I’m not really sure what our dog’s seizure has to do with rain aside from the fact that Tillie just ran into the bedroom and put muddy paw prints on the clean sheets. Four more days of this. Hooray for the water supply. Boo for the wet dog syndrome, that is, getting muddy prints on things if you don’t catch them at the door and wipe them off.
“Youth cannot know how age things and feels . . .” ~ J. K. Rowling
It’s been a very long day: I spent the greater part of the early afternoon in a to-do with the older son, which left me feeling old, irrelevant, and frankly, bitchy. He knows exactly how to push my buttons just as his father did, and never hesitates to push every one of them when we get into these arguments. After I cooled down and came into the bedroom, Corey quoted me this passage from the book of Timothy: “Let no man despise thy youth” (4:12), which gets me started in interpretations, obviously not what he had in mind.
But I was saying that the word ‘thy’ was ambiguous. Is it thy as in don’t despise the youth that is the fruit of thoust loins? Is it thy as in looking back on my youth and despising it. Who is speaking? Ya da. Ya da. Ya da.
He hates it when I begin to parse. Anyway, the whole point (which I knew from the very beginning, but I wasn’t in the mood to play nicely) was that a person should act in a way that he or she never gives other people cause to despise them (which Eamonn was not realizing by comparing me to high school girls and saying that all females are alike.
I know. Don’t even get me started again.
Needless to say, I left Eamonn’s room with a less than stellar attitude, which was soothed somewhat by watching part 2 of The Two Towers with Brett this afternoon. But I really don’t feel inspired to delve into too much, having already delved into too much of life’s basic lessons with my eldest who will someday rue the day that he was stupid enough to say to his very feminist mother that all females are alike.
All of that being said, I’m really far too tired tonight to do a regular post (my kind of regular post with witty quotes, graphics, etc.), but I wanted to put something up here for now. Just a note, the graphic above is a repeat for those of you who have been following my blog for awhile, but it just felt so appropriate for today.
Time for a cup of tea and some bedrest. More later. Peace.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 