Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas and Birthday Musings

Our Christmas dinner last night went very well, the better for the fact that my daughter Pasley and her family were able to share it with us this year. They were in Ottawa with Jeff’s family for the 25th, but we delayed our meal until Boxing Day to have them here at our table, too. After all, what’s Christmas without little kids around?


John’s brother David and his family arrived bearing gifts and champagne, which we drank immediately. The merriment that ensued was probably a direct result of that fact. I got a beautiful gift of one of Edith’s water colors for a birthday present. We had pate and the pretentiously-named ‘Paris toasts’ in front of the fire until it was dinner time, getting reacquainted, since David has been away in Calgary and Zoe in Toronto. Also, Edith, who looked great in a red sweater, has just recovered from an awful flu. Meanwhile, John toiled in the kitchen, with David popping in to keep him company, working like a wizard (in the half dark, since a lamp had come unplugged and we couldn’t replug it) on making gravy and finalizing the stuffing.


At dinner time, with everything keeping warm on my new warming tray (a gift from Paze and Jeff) on the sideboard, John was finally able to sit down while David and his daughters carved and served. John and I were amazed at how a rather limited menu managed to fill our plates: we had forgotten how cranberry sauce, and stuffing fill all the gaps between turkey, rice, peas and a green bean dish I had made earlier with beens, mushrooms, sou rcream, worchestershire sauce and a topping of Muslix and sliced almonds. We had planned earlier to have Yummy Taters as well, but that idea had been scrapped when Jeff went to Provigo for recipe supplies and found only two cashes open and over 40 shopping carts in line at each one. Luckily, we didn’t need his dish.


It was all very delicious, with the turkey quite moist and everything hot for once (which was amazing considering that before eating, we had to pull our XMas crackers, then put on our funny paper hats and then examine the cheap gifts inside the crackers, and that takes time with food on your plate going cold, usually, but not with the new warming tray.


Edith, who had a new part for her increasingly professional-looking camera for Xmas, circled us like a papperazza at first; Paze did much the same with her little digital. Even Devon took a few shots with her new, pink camera. But for the most part we ate very satisfyingly.

The Trifle was made by Edith’s family and had kiwi as well as other fruit, and rum at its base rather than the sherry we usually use. It was delicious, and there was a Xmas miracle attached to it: Devon was assigned to using the egg beater (we don’t have an electric beater any more) in the kitchen to turn whipping cream to whipped cream. I predicted that it wouldn’t work, since we used to try this every XMas, and found it impossible, even when I chilled bowl and electric beaters and went out on the back porch in the cold to do it. Yet the whipping cream turned to whipped cream for Devon!!


The meal was perfect. As we ate and drank and chatted, Little Tallis, up two hours past her usual bedtime but not a bit cranky, padded around the table barefoot in a Christmas dress made of patch-work velvet, looking very intent, now and then appearing holding a cat dish for our inspection. Devon, in a little misty-blue dress and silver sweater, played with the new toys her aunt and uncle had brought along, helped out at times. She was also full of funny questions and comments; D& E’s family were, I think, surprised to see how grown up she was, as they don’t see her often.


Today, my birthday, John and I have been lounging in front of the fire while sipping coffee and eating fresh bagels with cream cheese and sliced tomatoes, plus chocolates. Lord help me diet, but not yet, to rework something 
St. Augustine once said. I feel great–being on a prednisone regime that I call Club Pred for its wonderful ability to erase all my aches and pains and make me feel great. I do not feel my age, and I am not sad at being a year older. I am never depressed at a birthday; it is a landmark on an adventure that I am still in the midst of. Besides , it’s always better to have a birthday than not do so, I figure. And I am very lucky to have a considerate, loving family around me.

Posted by Beviant in 19:22:39 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Monday, December 22, 2008

Merry Yule!

We celebrated Yule over the weekend, and all went well, thanks to some crafty work by my daughter and son-in-law, who had to deal with a sick baby, and to my husband, who cooked a wonderful Yule Eve dinner, then a Yule Morning breakfast, and then did all the dishes by himself. A toast to them!

It started out with my making Carrot/ Apple Soup on Friday, then storing it in the foyer, which is so cold that it is used by us as a sort of cold room when the fridge is full, as it usually is. John then made up the Mashed Potatoes with Sour Cream recipe. I was  torn about whether to make a delightful-sounding
dessert called Chocolate Turtles Bread Pudding, which took French bread, caramel, chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, cocoa and chopped pecans, or make something called Chocolate Pudding that was to be served in ramekins. Both were dishes I had never made before, so I worried a bit about their not turning out. Finally, John convinced me to do neither, but stick to something simple: ice cream, chocolate sauce and fresh raspberries. That simplified the menu, and meant I had only to decorate the dining room table. 
 
So I did so, using my lace tablecloth over the crimson one, then putting on the black place mats with scenes of fox hunting, birch bark deer, two red glass globe lanterns, and my good silverware and plates. I love making the table look as beautiful as possible for holiday dinners; it’s one of the things that I can do to make the day seem less cold and the world less barren. I can never understand why or how people can sit down to Christmas dinner, for example, on a bare formica kitchen table with no sign of holiday trimmings of the non-culinary sort. If people are poor, okay, but if not? How can they stand it??? Even thinking about such a thing makes me feel like someone has just tried to put something under my fingernails, or has run their fingernails over a blackboard. I was spoiled, mind you, by a mother who always over-decorated the house for Christmas, and had a very red tablecloth and lace overcloth at the table. I seem to have passed this taste on to my daughter, who delights me when she invites us to dinner, especially on holidays, when her table also has little ornaments and colors of the season, whether it be Spring, Thanksgiving or Christmas.

My daughter and her family came over at about 4. Right away, we could see that the littlest one, Tallis, was sick, ironically despite the fact that she had just been to the pediatrician the day before and had been given a bill of good health. On the other hand, she had also got two shots that day, and may have been recovering from them. (My cleaning lady, Enid, who is from Jamaica, says that the best thing to do after a child has vaccinations is to put a warm, wet facecloth on the site of the shots and hold it there for a few minutes; for some reason, this helps and keeps the child from feeling sick, she says.)

Little Tallis just sat on my daughter’s lap and looked like a limp noodle. She fretted if any attempts were made to put her in a high chair or on the ground, but put her head into a ‘flop’ on Paze’s shoulder a lot. We were all calling her Flopsy Bunny by the end of the meal, when it was obvious that she need to go to bed early. Pasley left Devon, age 6, with us and went home with Jeff to nurse Tallis and put her to bed. Then John went to get her and bring her back so she could wrap presents and help him bring up from the basement the old doll house that used to be hers, when she was Devon’s age. They put it in a corner of the dining room, where Paze then put all the furniture in the proper places; then they wrapped it in paper and put a tag on it saying “John”. They had told Devon they were getting John a work bench for Xmas, so that Devon wouldn’t be surprised to see a big gift in the dining room.

Also, we were able to do a small ritual when she returned. (We had done only the minimum earlier, at the table, just a reading out of the Invocations of the Forces of Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Devon was pleased to be able to read out the words for Water this year.) But now, we lit a candle, I spoke briefly about its being Yule and what that meant, and then we acted out a brief pageant about the Bethlehem story. 

It worked well last year when Paze was holding the newborn Tallis, asleep, in her lap and playing Mary with Jesus. This year, it didn’t work that well. Jeff was missing (home with Tallis) so we were one short for Wise Men, the roles were all screwed up, and my computer had refused to print the pages we needed for carols like “In the Bleak Midwinter”, which we had incorporated into the pageant. However, Devon knew the words to the part she has sung, as the poor child who can only bring her heart as a gift to the Child. She sang her part, as she did last year, with one of those lovely, pure child voices that one hears on Christmas choir CDs. (Good thing she’s in the choir at school; she really is good, and very serious about it.)

Anyway, before she went to bed, I read Devon a story written by Margaret Lawrence called “The Olden Days Coat”, which is nicely spooky, dealing as it does with a child of 10 going back, briefly, in time to meet her grandmother age 10. Devon loved it (partially because she and Paze had just finished reading about Will Stanton’s going back in time on the day of his 11th birthday, in “The Dark is Rising”, that spooky but wonderful classic young adult novel about a war of Dark vs. Light at Christmas, or rather, at the Solstice), and was quick to pick up on the fact that the girl was in the past and what she needed to do to get back to her own time.

Next morning, Paze came back to our house around 6, crept into the house, went to Devon’s room and was with her to open their stockings. Then they woke me at 7. John was already up and brought in coffee for all of us (minus Jeff again, alas, since he was bringing Tallis over when she awoke. It worked out well; he arrived just as we finished looking at the contents of our stockings (mainly chocolates and windup toys, as usual, which always make for a fun time as John shows off his latest tiny robot or –this time–creepy metal bug).

There were, as usual, too many gifts. I don’t know why we overdo this, every year. We always say we will get only one gift for each person, then lose it at the mall. Luckily, Devon is the perfect gift recipient. She spends some time with each gift she receives, exclaims over it when she unwraps it (whether or not she likes it, I suspect), and never gets bored or complains, as some spoiled kids do, about not getting what she wanted for Christmas. She had asked for Paze’s doll house last year and didn’t get it because we figured she had enough toys without it; this year, it seemed at first as if she hadn’t gotten it once again, but she said nothing. She cheerily came to open John’s gift of a work bench for him, and was quite stunned to see it was really a doll house. And she was delighted with the doll house, remarking all day about how much she liked it and how she had been waiting for it ‘all her life’, and how surprised she had been when we fooled her. The rest of the day went well, and we were quite merry, despite Tallis’ Flopsy Bunny act; she cheered up a bit and walked around with a little smile on her face for a while. Paze thinks she’s probably cutting molars, too, poor litttle dear. 

So, now we only have to worry about the real Xmas dinner, when we’ll have nine people at the table and a more elaborate menu. But Merry Yule, at least! So far, so good! 


  
Posted by Beviant in 21:31:19 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Marry Our Daughters Site is a Prank, Thank Goodness!

After ranting to all and anyone who’d listen about this site, which I felt strongly about and which some people I told about it refused to even look at on line in their disgust at the mere idea of girls of thirteen being sold by their parents to older men, I was delighted to read the following today:

Please Don’t Marry Our Daughters

By BRAD STONE

The parents of 15-year-old Rachel M. say that “being married is the only career” their daughter is interested in. They are seeking a man willing to pay $19,995 for her hand in marriage.

Kristin J., 16, has a wild streak but recently decided “it was time she settled down with a man who could meet her needs and help her fulfill her dreams of being an actor or singer.” Her parents are trying to sell their “fiery” daughter into matrimony for $49,995.

Or so go the personal ad listings on MarryOurDaughter.com, an outrageous Web site that purports to blithely sell underage girls to older husbands for large dowries.

The site is a prank. Thank goodness.

But not everyone is in on the joke. The site has gotten 20 million page views in the last two weeks and now elicits around a thousand, mostly angry, emails a day. In the last few days, the site’s “publicity director” has also appeared on at least half a dozen talk radio shows around the country, including on Las Vegas (MIX-FM), Houston (KRBE-FM) and Philadelphia (WYSP-FM) and mixed it up with belligerent on-air-personalities and hostile listeners, whom he neglected to let in on the ruse.

“People get angry so fast they don’t stop to question whether its real,” says the creator of MarryOurDaughter.com, John Ordover, who masqueraded as the site’s fictional publicity director, the unlikely surnamed Roger Mandervan.

Mr. Ordover is a science-fiction editor with a prankish history and an interest in urban nudism.

Contacted through MarryOurDaughter this morning, Mr. Ordover quickly conceded the page was a parody aimed at drawing attention to inconsistencies in state marriage laws. States consider it a crime for adults to have sex with minors, but they allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission.

“As far as I can tell, in every state but Oregon, parents can marry off their children,” Mr. Ordover said, pointing to this Cornell University Web site which tracks the various state marriage laws. Texas has a particularly ridiculous legal discrepancy, he says. Kids as young as 14 need parental permission to get married – unless, the law says, they have already been married before.

Mr. Ordover is no stranger to controversy, or to media attention. Mr. Ordover runs events for nudists and recently organized a Sheepshead Bay nude cruise, covered by the Times in July.

In 2000, he was also the co-creator of the now defunct humor site 

Technicalvirgin.com, in which a young actress described the creative ways in which she maintained her honor. Last year, when those videos enjoyed a resurgence on YouTube, the actress who appeared in them, Melanie Martinez, was fired from a job hosting “The Good Night Show” on the PBS KIDS Sprout network – another Mr. Ordover-inspired saga 

Mr. Ordover was planning on coming clean next week as the creator of the site and has a full slate of radio interviews scheduled this week. He said he avoided spinning his fiction to print journalists who might get fired for falling for the scheme, but reasoned that radio shock jocks had looser leashes.

“We were trying to get people a little stirred up about this,” Mr. Ordover said.

    

Posted by Beviant in 23:22:16 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

“The Great Lover” by Rupert Brooke

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, the equivalent to Veterans’ Day in the States, when many bloggers will remember “In Flanders Fields”. I have been thinking, instead, of a poem by Rupert Brooke, who died very young in war after writing a handful of poems that indicated that he would have been a great poet had he matured. He writes sometimes poignantly about the war, but in this poem he writes about what he loves, now that he is daily putting himself in the way of danger. 

The first third of the poem is rather old-fashioned, intentionally so, I think. It gestures at Renaissance poems of a knight’s riding into battle with a lady’s name upon his lips, for you feel as if he is about to name the women he has loved, giving them fame by writing an ode to them. He says his loves have consoled him and have helped him to “cheat” despair. In remembering them glowingly as he dies, he says he will cheat Death. 

Then, just when you think he is going to go down a long list that starts with his mother and teddy bear, includes the girl who first kissed him, and ends with his fiancee, he begins to name the everyday things of life that he loves, the things that make life worth while. And in doing so, he makes each one a sacred icon of sorts. It’s quite touching and strikes a chord in me every time I read it.

The Great Lover
by Rupert Brooke

I have been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love’s praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and silent content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men’s days.
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
The inenarrable godhead of delight?
Love is a flame; -we have beaconed the world’s night.
A city: -and we have built it, these and I.
An emperor: -we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
And the high cause of Love’s magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I’ll write those names
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that men may know,
To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming…
These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such - 
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year’s ferns…
Dear names,
And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water’s dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the groud; and voices that do sing;
Voices in laughter, too; and body’s pain,
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; - 
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; - 
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
They’ll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust
And sacramented covenant to the dust.
- Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what’s left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers…
But the best I’ve known
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,
Praise you, “All these were lovely”; say “He loved”.

Submission Notes: None
Posted by Beviant in 15:39:46 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tallis At One

On Sunday, November 2, 2008, we had a birthday party for my grand-daughter Tallis at our house. About 18 people—family and honorable aunt and uncle–came bearing potluck specials, and it was very cosy and pleasant. Tallis was at her best, smiling most of the time and looking adorable in a little white corduroy dress. I wrote the following poem for the occasion:


TALLIS AT ONE

Tallis
Is gripping my fingers
And running
Chasing the cat
Down the hall and into the living room.
My back is breaking as I lean over her
Letting her run;
She is like a puppet that has
A mind of its own
And wants to escape
But I hold onto her
Firmly

Still clinging,
She leans away from me like a sail
Filled with wind,
Ahead of her own wee feet,
Her pink shoes pattering softly
On the hardwood floor.
And then, suddenly,
She lets go of my fingers
And, before I can catch her
Walks on her own.
She has done it before but
It is always amazing to see

Even if, for now,
She walks like Frankenstein’s Creature
The one in  the book,
Not a monster; but an innocent
Learning to walk
Out into the brand new morning.
Step, step. Step, step.
Each step a venture,
A balancing act:
First testing the floor
Then teetering onto
The other foot.

Only, in her case, she is so beautiful:
Her hair bright as a new penny,
Her little flowered dress
Puffed around her ankles,
Her sweet voice calling, “Cat! Cat!”
She toddles away from us.
And we  call out,
“ Tallis! Tallis!”
“Come to Gramma!”
“Come to Mama!”
“Tallis!”
“Tallis!”

At first it seems
As if she will totter on forever–
Chasing the cat
Out of the room
And
Out of the house
And
Out of the garden
And
into the world beyond,
Rushing headlong out of our reach
Forever.

But then she turns
–Almost losing her balance–
Steadies herself,
Her little face aglow
–So beautiful!—
Pauses
And grins at us
As if she has been teasing us all along.
And to our infinite relief,
(And that of the cat)
Totters back
To our awaiting arms.


Posted by Beviant in 14:08:33 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Friday, October 10, 2008

AMISH CHILLY DAY CHICKEN SOUP

Ah, how I love this time of year! The sky so blue that it looks like cobalt lacquer, the trees glowing gold as the sun shines through their leaves, little eddies of dead leaves underfoot, blown by the slightly brisk wind that reminds us gently that colder weather is coming.

Here is a soup recipe I found that is more than just a chicken soup; it’s a cream of chicken soup, but one very much unlike the tinned type. It’s comfort food, like chicken pot pie, or mac and cheese, filled with carbs to make you feel really full and happy. And the entire house is redolant with the aroma for 24 hours later.
As you cook it, you may think at first, ‘This is ridiculous! Why should a soup need rice and pasta and potatoes!” But do it anyway. You think, later, as it simmers in front of you, “Why should I put cream in at this point? It looks like such a nice chicken soup, and cream is rich and full of fat.” But do it anyway. The soup is so much better for it.

Amish Chilly Day Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

2 large onions, chopped very fine
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
1 carrot, peeled and diced into coins
1 stalk of celery OR 1 parsnip, diced
1 tablespoon rice
1 tablespoon macaroni
3 cups chicken stock (a whole carton of pkgd. soup stock)
1 raw chicken breast OR 250mg. cooked chicken, cubed
1 cup heavy cream OR half and half
salt and pepper to taste
thyme and oregano to taste (optional)

Method:

1. Place all the vegs in a large saucepan as you cut them up.
2. Add rice and macaroni.
3. Add chicken broth/stock.
4. Add uncooked chicken at this point.
5. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the potato (and carrots and parsnips) are tender (about 30-40 minutes.
6. Add thyme and oregano.
7. Add precooked chicken at this point.
8. Stir in the cream and reheat gently but do not boil.
9. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This soup is great with fresh many-grained bread and butter. It’s a one-pot meal, and although it takes  45 minutes-60 minutes to cook, it’s not labor intensive, once you’ve cut up the vegs.
Posted by Beviant in 16:04:30 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Monday, September 8, 2008

A Poem about ‘Knife Crime’

Here’s an interesting  article from The Guardian about a fuss in the UK about a poem. 

 ”Top exam board asks schools to destroy book containing knife poem “ 

“Britain’s biggest exam board has been accused of censorship after it removed a poem containing references to knife crime from the GCSE syllabus. Officials at the AQA board said their request that schools destroy the anthology containing the Carol Ann Duffy poem ‘Education for Leisure’ had been triggered by concerns in two schools about references to knives. 

“A spokeswoman confirmed the decision had been made in the context of the current spate of knife-related murders. But poets yesterday condemned the move, saying such “censorship” fundamentally missed the point of the poem, which they said could help children debate the causes of street violence. The poem starts: ‘Today I am going to kill something. Anything./I have had enough of being ignored and today/I am going to play God.’ It describes a youth’s yearning for attention and a journey to sign on for the dole, and makes references to the killing of a goldfish. It ends ominously with the youth walking the streets armed with a bread knife. 

“Duffy, widely considered a front-runner to be the next poet laureate, yesterday declined to comment. But her literary agent, Peter Strauss, said: ‘It’s a pro-education, anti-violence poem written in the mid-1980s when Thatcher was in power and there were rising social problems and crime. It was written as a plea for education. How, 20 years later, it had been turned on itself and presented to mean the opposite I don’t know. You can’t say that it celebrates knife crime. What it does is the opposite.’

“Michael Rosen, the children’s laureate, said: ‘By this same logic we would be banning Romeo and Juliet. That’s about a group of sexually attractive males strutting round the streets, getting off with girls and stabbing each other. “Carol Ann is an easy target because she’s a modern poet.’ He added: ‘Of course we want children to be talking about knife crime and poems like these are a terrific way of helping that happen. Blanket condemnation and censorship of something never works.’  

“A spokeswoman for AQA confirmed there had been three complaints, two referring to knife crime and a third about the description of a goldfish being flushed down the toilet. The first complaint about knives was made in 2004. The second, made in the summer by an exams officer, was then taken up by an MP. The most recent complaint was made by Lutterworth grammar school’s exams invigilator, Pat Schofield, who welcomed the board’s decision and said: ‘I think it is absolutely horrendous – what sort of message is that to give to kids who are reading it as part of their GCSE syllabus?’  

“The AQA spokeswoman said: ‘The decision to withdraw the poem was not taken lightly and only after due consideration of the issues involved. We believe the decision underlines the often difficult balance that exists between encouraging and facilitating young people to think critically about difficult but important topics and the need to do this in a way which is sensitive to social issues and public concern.’  

Here is the poem:

                        Education for Leisure 

Today I am going to kill something. Anything. 
I have had enough of being ignored and today
 I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day, 
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets. 
I squash a fly against the window with my thumb. 
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in 
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name. 
I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half 
the chance. But today I am going to change the world. 
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat 
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.
I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain. 
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town 
For signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph. 
There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio 
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar. 
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out. 
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm. “
Posted by Beviant in 15:44:42 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Tallis, At Almost Ten Months

Wee legs spread on the living room carpet, 

In the warm morning sun, she sits there, 
Her little flowered dress puffed about her, 
Soft light on her coppery hair. 

Quite random the items before her:
Crinkly Ladybug, Soft Silky Heart, 
Her Bumpy Blue Crescent, her “Sousie.” 
She tastes each, she sets each apart. 

Her pink sippy cup full of water, 
Her Fuzzy Blue Bunny. 
                                      With each 
Her plump little fingers select it, 
And others she finds within reach. 

And what does she make of these items? 
As one who’s so young and so small? 
Is she eying each one, like a fisher 
Might delight in the fruits of his haul? 

Is she counting them, much like a shepherd 
Counts all of the sheep in his fold? 
Is she touching each one, like a miser 
Might finger his diamonds and gold?

Does she taste them as if she’s a gourmand, 
Enjoying each thing she can chew?
Or is she, like some feminine Adam, 
Naming each, in a world that is new 

To her, in her own little Eden 
On the living room floor, in the sun, 
So absorbed in such serious matters 
On a day that is barely begun.
Posted by Beviant in 15:10:21 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Dog Days of Summer

It has been a strange summer, one that hasn’t felt much like summer to me. Not that I know any more what constitutes a real summer, now that I no longer lie on beaches or swim. I spend most of my time indoors, anyway. However, my ventures forth into the outside world are at least helped by the fact that it is sunny, so the fact that it has rained a lot during July has made it all seem very dreary and damp. I think that this July I used an umbrella more than I ever had before in this usually sunny climate.


July is now a blur, but I know that it mainly consisted of two weeks at a cottage on Lake Memphremagog, where I must say I was quite miserable. The rain seemed interminable, and I cursed myself for not being able to think up things we could do in the cottage. Me, who once upon a time used to be a camp counsellor, a playground supervisor, an engaging mother to my daughter, and yet there I was, staring out the windows in despair, not wanting to play board games or engage in any arts and crafts. It was as if my entire body was saying “NO! I just want to curl up in a chair and read! Preferably with a blanket over my knees and a glass of wine, or even hot chocolate next to me, with the fireplace burning to take the damp off the air.”

This made for a rather damp and miserable stay, I’m afraid, which my husband and daughter carried off wonderfully, staying pretty chipper throughout, even though they did all the work, including walking the 8 month old baby, and in my husband’s case, taking my six year old grand-daughter swimming every day, rain or shine.  I just sat around non too cheerily and tried not to complain. I was also very achy from the damp, which followed us to bed at night, since the sheets were damp, too.

Anyway, we are now in August, and the weather is slightly better, with moderate cloudiness and less rain. It’s still not hot, thank goodness. This is my kind of summer weather, with temps in the low twenties centigrade.  Still, what can people my age do in the summer? Go for walks? My walking is limited, unfortunately, by arthritis. Which leaves what? I would like to go to lunch somewhere under an umbrella, with pleasant company. Unfortunately, my brain is fogged these days, so I can’t easily make small talk, and who wants to discuss larger things? 

Thus I turn to reading once again, always finding a friend, an escape, a pleasant pastime, as I listen to the tiny cries of the cicadas, a comforting August  sound.
Posted by Beviant in 16:58:34 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Presence/The Present

LOST by David Waggoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.


David Wagoner is an award-winning poet and novelist.


Posted by Beviant in 16:41:15 | Permalink | Comments (4)