Weblog 54
February 18, 2007~ 6:45am
..........Twice, He Made Me Laugh
..........You never know
..........what an almost four
..........year old
..........will say, but you know it'll be
..........the truth, in skewed but small
..........bodied
..........language, cut
..........right down so they can
..........look it in the eye, give their cowlick heads
..........a scratch,
..........then say it out
..........right. Twice
..........he made
..........me laugh tonight,
..........and one was
..........when he was talking to Wayne
..........on the phone, and said that "Grandma
..........brought these really
..........cheap gifts"- and the other was
..........when he looked
..........me over, smiling
..........all the while, and pronounced me
.........."fat. Like Kingpin's fat"- and he was
..........right. They were, and
..........I am.
So I figure, in his mind for some reason, there's an intimate connection between huge arch villain Kingpin and yours truly. Maybe it's the smoke and the tendency to loom -- as a 4-year old would see it. Maybe it's the 'snappy dressing' as well....lol.....but Grandma is Kingpin, yes she is-- round and bold and bigger than life.
The cheap gifts were a KINGSIZE jumbo pack of spearmint Tic Tacs, and three 25-cent plastic containers of Floam, from the gumball dispenser: two green, one pink (so we could make flowers after dinner.) I also stuffed in an old copy of "Dinotopia"
that his mother and her brother Matt gave me about 15 years ago, and I thought Bill and Kay could enjoy. Pretty cheap I must admit. LOL!!!--but lots of fun anyway. (I think I made the announcement that I had a bag of "just some cheap little things" when I came in- and that boy doesn't miss a trick.)
That kid makes me laugh till I cry. Absolutely anything can come out of his mouth, and does, and oh Lordie, what a fine world we'd have if everyone would put away their nice lies and inner censors and have hearts full of as much merriment, excitement, and love as little Mr. Bill has- and would just let loose- what a different planet this would be. I think it may just shine a little, whirling around in space like a hand-stitched baseball headed over the outfield wall, really cruising and spinning in fun. That boy makes pizza taste like filet mignon, I'll tell you, and cheap gifts feel like frankincense and myrrh.
Two things you can't put a price on: laughter and love.
February 18, 2007~ 2:30pm
And today we have.........snow. And this girl is gun shy. I woke up at 1:00 pm, as I always do on Sundays, and looked out the window, first thing. Cars creeping cautiously along Rt. 88, snow coming down- and the black asphalt reduced to 4 thin tracks- 2 in one direction, 2 in the other. Without even getting onto the computer to check, I called my mother to reschedule our Sunday "grocery shopping/dinner-out date" till tomorrow. That was met by deadpan disbelief...."Ah doll, they're not predicting anything for Pittsburgh."
"Ma, look outside....I don't care if the TV predicts this or not, it's snowing." Then from her end, "You sound like you have croup. Are you sick?" "No, Ma. I just woke up. I usually call you after I've been up 40 minutes, wide awake and having had some coffee. I'm croupy from just waking up."
"Tomorrow then, right?" she said, the words dripping with disdain and disappointment. "Yes. They take care of the roads during the week. It'll be rush hour- so there'll be lots of cars on the road. Much safer that way." "Oh......alright. See you tomorrow." Now maybe it's the stress of this past weeks ice storm, but hell, I know snow when I see it. I know slow-moving cars, this isn't all in my head.....then I did get on the computer and first thing, brought up the 'weather alerts for the Pittsburgh area'-
Special Weather Statement
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PITTSBURGH PA 1228 PM EST SUN FEB 18 2007
...SNOW SHOWERS WILL BRING OCCASIONAL WHITE OUT CONDTIONS THIS AFTERNOON...
BRISK NORTHWEST WINDS WILL PRODUCE SNOW SHOWERS THIS AFTERNOON THAT WILL BRING OCCASIONAL WHITE OUT CONDITIONS ALONG WITH A QUICK INCH OF SNOW ACCUMULATION. MOTORISTS SHOULD EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION AS ROADS MAY QUICKLY BECOME SNOW COVERED AND SLIPPERY. VISIBILITY WILL BE REDUCED AT TIMES TO NEAR ZERO.
THE SNOW SHOWERS WILL TAPER TO FLURRIES LATER THIS EVENING.
Posted a half hour before I called her. (I guess the weather bimbo from the local channel was in touching up her lipstick when this alert came through.) In this world, there are two things one cannot get over- the common cold, and parental disapproval.
Look here at old Winston-
There he is with mother Sarah. Does she look like she's beaming at a world class achiever? Or does this convey a private look of, "He should have been a doctor.....and just look at that hat? Who does he think he is!" Throughout history, the nagging, albeit loving voices of mothers have disturbed more sleep than any real deeds committed. They are hard-wired into the brain....and they are LOUD.
February 19, 2007~ 8:30pm
Alright. So the roads were good, and the shopping got done. But my oh me, I can only think what we look like, one shuffling old, old broad, walking like Laugh-In's Tyrone Horneigh (Arte Johnson- 'the dirty old man')- and me, a scowling Gladys Ormphby, the Ruth Buzzi character ready to hit her over the head with my purse. It's not so much that she shuffles- it's that she shuffles and is imperious at the same time! "I want a booth! I won't sit at that middle table with everyone looking at you like you're a damn goof"-- this is what my mother mutters behind the waitress as she shows us to our table. And she always orders the same thing, and then complains that there's never anything new...LOL...and then a BIG SIGH.
Here's the topics of conversation: "there's nothing good on television", "there's nothing good on the menu", "I get jumpy just sitting around the house but there's nothing to do", "I can't sleep", "this apartment never gets warm" (meanwhile, you can parboil an egg on the dining room table, and there are TWO space heaters going.)
and my favorite: DON'T GET OLD.
Oh Lord, I love her, but she is predictable. Thorny, too. After sitting an hour and 20 minutes in traffic after being at work by 6:30 in the morning, after the dinner and the shopping-- after I put everything away-- I want to hit the road and get my own groceries settled on shelves and cupboards, feed the cats, put on a pot of coffee, take the SupportHose off my swelling dogs and get a damn HOUSECOAT on, minus the elasticky, biting underthings- and I get, "Going already? You just got here." "Yah, ma. But I have to get back up for work in another 9 hours and I haven't even been home for a piss yet." LOL! We are a pair. And I bet one day I'll be just like her.....
February 20, 2007~ 7:00pm
There's been a discovery of bones in Pittsburgh. An entire skeleton, as a matter of fact, the powers that be think date back to 1956. He was found with a book of poetry, a couple of guns, and the remains of what looked like a campsite. Well, Wayne emailed me about this and said, "It's obvious to me that this was probably a suicide." I had to agree. That led to some volleys back and forth that took us to a very interesting place. I told him that if John Berryman was the poet, or Robinson Jeffers- (and I quoted this Jeffers poem to him)-
..........Suicide's Stone by Robinson Jeffers
..........Peace is the heir of dead desire,
..........Whether abundance killed the cormorant
..........In a happy hour, or sleep or death
..........Drowned him deep in dreamy waters,
..........Peace is the ashes of that fire,
..........The heir of that king, the inn of that journey.
..........This last and best and goal: we dead
..........Hold it so tight you are envious of us
..........And fear under sunk lids contempt.
..........Death-day greetings are the sweetest.
..........Let trumpets roar when a man dies
..........And rockets fly up, he has found his fortune.
..........Yet hungering long and pitiably
..........That way, you shall not reach a finger
..........To pluck it unripe and before dark
..........Creep to cover: life broke ten whipstocks
..........Over my back, broke faith, stole hope,
..........Before I denounced the covenant of courage.
- I told him that would have locked it for me. Wayne then googled Jeffers, whom I know from only from a handful of poems, usually anthologized, and from hearing his voice on an old Times Books tape collection from the 1970's (which I treasure) called "The Poet's Voice". I knew little of his poetry- and nothing of his life. Well....it seems that Jeffers fucked up big time during WWII, by being a vocal, non-supporter of the war, and his made him anathema. Though his reputation at the time was nearly as great as T.S. Eliot's, the proliferation of Jeffers poetry in schoolrooms and colleges, etc. - was squelched. (It seems we can tolerate anything in this country-- child abuse, incest, grand larceny, murder, cheating thousands out of their retirement funds, lying under oath..........but we will NOT COTTON TO A LACK OF DAMN PATRIOTISM, BY GOD!)
That, for Americans, is the cardinal sin. And during a time of war-- it's grounds to cut a person's voice and their legacy right off at the knees, by gum! He's lucky he wasn't drawn and quartered in Times Square! If you've never known much about Jeffers (and I imagine not many do, for the aforementioned reasons) have a look at Wikipedia's fine synopsis of his life. What an extremely interesting man! And look at this blurb-
"ROBINSON JEFFERS. Never heard of him? You're not alone, and it's rather a wonder. One of the bestselling American poets ever, Jeffers (1887-1962) once ranked alongside T.S. Eliot. Time magazine put him on its cover in 1932, and The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers was reprinted so many times that Random House lost track of sales. Tor House, the stunning, invincible granite cottage Jeffers built with his own hands in Carmel, Calif., remains the focus of literary pilgrimage. Yet, as California poet Dana Gioia, '73, MBA '77, wrote in his essay "Strong Counsel," "No major American poet has been treated worse by posterity than Robinson Jeffers." Jeffers's pessimism about the human race didn't sit well during the dark Depression years, and his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II turned respect to ridicule. His exaltation of nature above humankind also ran counter to 20th-century sensibilities. "I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk," he wrote."
Well, Mr. Jeffers........I can't say I'd disagree with you, most times. For instance, how about that candy-assed editor from Random House and his infernal 'disclaimer'? What a 'company man'...
February 21, 2007~ 7:30am
Yes, it's true. I've been browsing internet blogs and I have to say, "I'M SICK OF CLEVER!" Damn, dolled-up places being glib or YouTubed to death. Throwing disjointed, trendy, jazzy things out there, expecting to snag kudos of "oh my! isn't she/he the clever one!"
Let me tell you what's clever....I'm sitting here furiously typing this at work, and chomping on my new favorite snack- whole grain new Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits- and my front tooth pops out.
What did I do??
I keep the SuperGlue with me in my make-up bag, a large safety pin to re-prick the top of the tube, and I just whisked my self right up and went to the ladies room, sat down in a stall, got out the pressed powder for use of a mirror- and glued the thing back in. That's clever, all you Namby Pamby blog sluts. That's using the old noodle.
February 21, 2007~ 4:30pm
The spigot that once was on has been turned off. I'm entering into my hundred year sleep.
It seems I've been under an enchantment, which has ended. There may be gold in Gilead, but this ain't Gilead. This whole, virtual world is one nasty-assed Fata Morgana. I intend to come home from work, read, sleep. That's about it folks.
February 22, 2007~ 12:00am
The above entry was made during a nadir. Some days, the lens just closes completely. The will is gone, the lead shoes too heavy. I have to say that news I had yesterday began to bore so deeply into my core, and so unexpectedly for me, I was speechless about it- so I came home, went to bed at 5:30 p.m. and just woke up a while ago, knowing it was a case of 'the one straw breaking the back'- the one awful thing too much....
Wayne's large office building downtown employed a fella named Kenny. I heard Kenny stories from Wayne from time to time and I didn't even know that somewhere deep inside, Kenny had become some sort of symbol for me of the 'Come Back Kid'. This poor fella had a tough time of it, small and skinny, deviled by drink and heavy smoking but always there at his desk as security guard. Always there until he had a stroke a while ago, and Wayne told me, "Gees, Kenny had a stroke and he's only in his 50's." Well Kenny survived. Gave up that lifestyle, became felled by epilepsy somewhere along the line-- but still showed up, worked long hours, lived with his mother- and Kenny was a kind of touchstone for Wayne when he'd say goodnight to him every evening, and I'm sure Wayne would smile and think, "Kenny"- in the way certain names will make you smile- because I heard those stories, and I know we were both rooting for him and what he epitomized.
Well, late last night, about just this time, Kenny was struck and killed by a car not far from here as he crossed the street after his night shift. All day long, that image stayed with me, the futility of so much of life- the hideous endings for so many of us, and that all the willpower, all the courage in the world, all the pleasant goodwill we have toward our fellow man will do nothing in the face of blind tragedy. There was that- and the news headline tonight that an entire family from the area, burned in a fire from using a space heater in this cold, was buried in a single coffin. Oh Lord.......oh, Lord.....and I realized that silence would kill me eventually. That writing it out is the one thing I do that's positive, even if the subject matter is angry, or despairing or hateful. So I wrote this one. For Kenny.
..........Too Much
..........Yes there was 911
..........many deaths
..........and the death of friendships death of love
..........over the years
..........and there was my father's
..........death the son's
..........year in Iraq the horrible events keep piling on
..........and you'd think
..........a person would become inured or become
..........stronger or
..........become
..........indifferent
..........but today seemed
..........to be
..........the end of the tether
..........when I heard that Kenny
..........was hit
..........by a car
..........sent through the windshield thrown several feet
..........and died
..........that something finally
..........broke
..........inside
..........and the question
..........Why Kenny?
..........seemed to sum
..........it up for me
..........for wasn't he just a 60 year
..........old guy recovered
..........from drink and a lifetime of smoking
..........struck
..........down by a stroke a while ago felled by the Caesar
..........disease to writhe
..........in epileptic
..........ecstasy still
..........Kenny
..........kept coming back like
..........Rocky
..........got
..........up for his job
..........as security guard every day every awful
..........day and made his way to work
..........and rode the trolley
..........stayed
..........overtime
..........said hello
..........to everyone
..........said
..........goodnight kept coming back
..........kept at it hit last night on 51 at 11:30
..........after
..........his shift his mother
..........surviving him her waiting
..........home
..........for Kenny
..........who never came home at all
..........and the way that story
..........made me ..........fall
..........has been
..........complete.
February 22, 2007~ 6:30pm
I'm feeling less total "blackout" sorrow. Time- even 24 hours- takes us and rocks us like a mother, and sings those words only Time knows that begin a venous drip into the vein of what feels like an amnesia elixir or a gauze of fog. Maybe it's just that we can't feel that down for too long without it having consequences, and the 'fight or flight' thing starts to kick in, and we run away into something for a while and lose the piece of us that's so empty.
I'm about to take 2 sandwiches upstairs, pull open a suspense novel after playing about 20 games of hand-held, electronic solitaire- and will undoubtedly once again have nightmares. And like Old Scrooge, I'll be chasing Jacob Marley away, and telling him he's nothing but "a crumb of cheese", a flake of undigested braunschweiger"....
But if you're interested, I'll send you back a postcard. I believe it'll look something like this-
I'll be carried off by little green men with sharp teeth, and mayhem on their minds. It's never never something tall, dark and handsome- it's always the gnomish, Goya type thing that comes and sits on my chest. Weighs about 40 lbs- feels like 200.
Off I go to meet my little men. Mind stretching, st-t-t-r-r-r-e-t-c-hing toward Friday, anticipating a weekend with better weather, Saturday night with the grandkids, and then the Texas Chainsaw movie we never got to watch last week. (Thank God I don't have to pay late fines on these things.....I believe I kept 'The Man Who Loved Flowers' for a month!) Ah winter, with its cruel, cruel months. I'm ready for it to be over with- I'm looking for the first bud, first shoot, first robin. My world could stand a bit of green....
February 23, 2007~ 10:00am
I have been very remiss here in not mentioning "the holy season of Lent"....
Although I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, I still remember a time- not so long ago- when I was driving to pick the kids up after work. Divorced- (it was my night) and it happened to be Ash Wednesday. Well, the little 'devouts' that they were, steeped in parochial school lore- I knew they'd spy the lack of ashes in the center of my forehead, so what did I do? I dipped my thumb into the car's ashtray and made a cross on my own head, and they never knew the difference! LOL!
We've just passed Fat Tuesday again, entered the season of penitence and self-denial, and I thought you'd be amused by what my fella had to say to me today about Catholic devotees.....lol....here it is-
...
I think he's summed it up quite nicely. One of the reasons I love him so much-- his scintillating succinctness.
February 24, 2007~ 3:45pm
Originally, the weather forecaster (I'm convinced this is a dog who barks in Chinese) was calling for 'mixed precipitation' for this afternoon and evening- meaning, ice, snow, sleet. Wayne and I decided to cancel out (once again) with my daughter for a Saturday pizza dinner, and opted to pop in to see Gary and the two kiddoes last night instead. (Now, of course, that prediction has been pushed back till late, to come in sometime in the middle of the night and continue through tomorrow afternoon, and we'll have cancelled tonight for no reason.) Looks like my Sunday jaunt with mum's gonna be cancelled yet again, with a make up date for Monday after work.
And oh, I just dread the ideer of chipping the ice off of the car tomorrow. That'll have to be done before Monday morning, because there simply isn't time to engage in that, half awake and freezing cold, standing out there in the dark with a hammer in my hand....
Popping in to see Bill and Kay last night (so they keep the 'visual' of what grammy looks like) I again brought 'cheap gifts', but even cheaper! LOL!!! The 25 cents in the gewgaw machine at the restaurant produced slimy, stick to the wall tiny hands, and two PINK rubber bracelets. (BOTH were pink, can you believe it?) Kay delighted in them- but it's so easy to satisfy a one and three-quarters little lady, but try passing that stuff off on an almost four! OH NO....nuthin' doing. "Gram", he said with disgust written all over his face, "these..........these things.....there's something wrong with them. These are not good." LOL! By that time, I was laughing too hard to care.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
..........Twice, He Made Me Laugh
..........You never know
..........what an almost four
..........year old
..........will say, but you know it'll be
..........the truth, in skewed but small
..........bodied
..........language, cut
..........right down so they can
..........look it in the eye, give their cowlick heads
..........a scratch,
..........then say it out
..........right. Twice
..........he made
..........me laugh tonight,
..........and one was
..........when he was talking to Wayne
..........on the phone, and said that "Grandma
..........brought these really
..........cheap gifts"- and the other was
..........when he looked
..........me over, smiling
..........all the while, and pronounced me
.........."fat. Like Kingpin's fat"- and he was
..........right. They were, and
..........I am.
So I figure, in his mind for some reason, there's an intimate connection between huge arch villain Kingpin and yours truly. Maybe it's the smoke and the tendency to loom -- as a 4-year old would see it. Maybe it's the 'snappy dressing' as well....lol.....but Grandma is Kingpin, yes she is-- round and bold and bigger than life.
The cheap gifts were a KINGSIZE jumbo pack of spearmint Tic Tacs, and three 25-cent plastic containers of Floam, from the gumball dispenser: two green, one pink (so we could make flowers after dinner.) I also stuffed in an old copy of "Dinotopia"
that his mother and her brother Matt gave me about 15 years ago, and I thought Bill and Kay could enjoy. Pretty cheap I must admit. LOL!!!--but lots of fun anyway. (I think I made the announcement that I had a bag of "just some cheap little things" when I came in- and that boy doesn't miss a trick.)
That kid makes me laugh till I cry. Absolutely anything can come out of his mouth, and does, and oh Lordie, what a fine world we'd have if everyone would put away their nice lies and inner censors and have hearts full of as much merriment, excitement, and love as little Mr. Bill has- and would just let loose- what a different planet this would be. I think it may just shine a little, whirling around in space like a hand-stitched baseball headed over the outfield wall, really cruising and spinning in fun. That boy makes pizza taste like filet mignon, I'll tell you, and cheap gifts feel like frankincense and myrrh.
Two things you can't put a price on: laughter and love.
February 18, 2007~ 2:30pm
And today we have.........snow. And this girl is gun shy. I woke up at 1:00 pm, as I always do on Sundays, and looked out the window, first thing. Cars creeping cautiously along Rt. 88, snow coming down- and the black asphalt reduced to 4 thin tracks- 2 in one direction, 2 in the other. Without even getting onto the computer to check, I called my mother to reschedule our Sunday "grocery shopping/dinner-out date" till tomorrow. That was met by deadpan disbelief...."Ah doll, they're not predicting anything for Pittsburgh."
"Ma, look outside....I don't care if the TV predicts this or not, it's snowing." Then from her end, "You sound like you have croup. Are you sick?" "No, Ma. I just woke up. I usually call you after I've been up 40 minutes, wide awake and having had some coffee. I'm croupy from just waking up."
"Tomorrow then, right?" she said, the words dripping with disdain and disappointment. "Yes. They take care of the roads during the week. It'll be rush hour- so there'll be lots of cars on the road. Much safer that way." "Oh......alright. See you tomorrow." Now maybe it's the stress of this past weeks ice storm, but hell, I know snow when I see it. I know slow-moving cars, this isn't all in my head.....then I did get on the computer and first thing, brought up the 'weather alerts for the Pittsburgh area'-
Special Weather Statement
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PITTSBURGH PA 1228 PM EST SUN FEB 18 2007
...SNOW SHOWERS WILL BRING OCCASIONAL WHITE OUT CONDTIONS THIS AFTERNOON...
BRISK NORTHWEST WINDS WILL PRODUCE SNOW SHOWERS THIS AFTERNOON THAT WILL BRING OCCASIONAL WHITE OUT CONDITIONS ALONG WITH A QUICK INCH OF SNOW ACCUMULATION. MOTORISTS SHOULD EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION AS ROADS MAY QUICKLY BECOME SNOW COVERED AND SLIPPERY. VISIBILITY WILL BE REDUCED AT TIMES TO NEAR ZERO.
THE SNOW SHOWERS WILL TAPER TO FLURRIES LATER THIS EVENING.
Posted a half hour before I called her. (I guess the weather bimbo from the local channel was in touching up her lipstick when this alert came through.) In this world, there are two things one cannot get over- the common cold, and parental disapproval.
There he is with mother Sarah. Does she look like she's beaming at a world class achiever? Or does this convey a private look of, "He should have been a doctor.....and just look at that hat? Who does he think he is!" Throughout history, the nagging, albeit loving voices of mothers have disturbed more sleep than any real deeds committed. They are hard-wired into the brain....and they are LOUD.
February 19, 2007~ 8:30pm
Alright. So the roads were good, and the shopping got done. But my oh me, I can only think what we look like, one shuffling old, old broad, walking like Laugh-In's Tyrone Horneigh (Arte Johnson- 'the dirty old man')- and me, a scowling Gladys Ormphby, the Ruth Buzzi character ready to hit her over the head with my purse. It's not so much that she shuffles- it's that she shuffles and is imperious at the same time! "I want a booth! I won't sit at that middle table with everyone looking at you like you're a damn goof"-- this is what my mother mutters behind the waitress as she shows us to our table. And she always orders the same thing, and then complains that there's never anything new...LOL...and then a BIG SIGH.
Here's the topics of conversation: "there's nothing good on television", "there's nothing good on the menu", "I get jumpy just sitting around the house but there's nothing to do", "I can't sleep", "this apartment never gets warm" (meanwhile, you can parboil an egg on the dining room table, and there are TWO space heaters going.)
Oh Lord, I love her, but she is predictable. Thorny, too. After sitting an hour and 20 minutes in traffic after being at work by 6:30 in the morning, after the dinner and the shopping-- after I put everything away-- I want to hit the road and get my own groceries settled on shelves and cupboards, feed the cats, put on a pot of coffee, take the SupportHose off my swelling dogs and get a damn HOUSECOAT on, minus the elasticky, biting underthings- and I get, "Going already? You just got here." "Yah, ma. But I have to get back up for work in another 9 hours and I haven't even been home for a piss yet." LOL! We are a pair. And I bet one day I'll be just like her.....
February 20, 2007~ 7:00pm
There's been a discovery of bones in Pittsburgh. An entire skeleton, as a matter of fact, the powers that be think date back to 1956. He was found with a book of poetry, a couple of guns, and the remains of what looked like a campsite. Well, Wayne emailed me about this and said, "It's obvious to me that this was probably a suicide." I had to agree. That led to some volleys back and forth that took us to a very interesting place. I told him that if John Berryman was the poet, or Robinson Jeffers- (and I quoted this Jeffers poem to him)-
..........Suicide's Stone by Robinson Jeffers
..........Peace is the heir of dead desire,
..........Whether abundance killed the cormorant
..........In a happy hour, or sleep or death
..........Drowned him deep in dreamy waters,
..........Peace is the ashes of that fire,
..........The heir of that king, the inn of that journey.
..........This last and best and goal: we dead
..........Hold it so tight you are envious of us
..........And fear under sunk lids contempt.
..........Death-day greetings are the sweetest.
..........Let trumpets roar when a man dies
..........And rockets fly up, he has found his fortune.
..........Yet hungering long and pitiably
..........That way, you shall not reach a finger
..........To pluck it unripe and before dark
..........Creep to cover: life broke ten whipstocks
..........Over my back, broke faith, stole hope,
..........Before I denounced the covenant of courage.
- I told him that would have locked it for me. Wayne then googled Jeffers, whom I know from only from a handful of poems, usually anthologized, and from hearing his voice on an old Times Books tape collection from the 1970's (which I treasure) called "The Poet's Voice". I knew little of his poetry- and nothing of his life. Well....it seems that Jeffers fucked up big time during WWII, by being a vocal, non-supporter of the war, and his made him anathema. Though his reputation at the time was nearly as great as T.S. Eliot's, the proliferation of Jeffers poetry in schoolrooms and colleges, etc. - was squelched. (It seems we can tolerate anything in this country-- child abuse, incest, grand larceny, murder, cheating thousands out of their retirement funds, lying under oath..........but we will NOT COTTON TO A LACK OF DAMN PATRIOTISM, BY GOD!)
That, for Americans, is the cardinal sin. And during a time of war-- it's grounds to cut a person's voice and their legacy right off at the knees, by gum! He's lucky he wasn't drawn and quartered in Times Square! If you've never known much about Jeffers (and I imagine not many do, for the aforementioned reasons) have a look at Wikipedia's fine synopsis of his life. What an extremely interesting man! And look at this blurb-
"ROBINSON JEFFERS. Never heard of him? You're not alone, and it's rather a wonder. One of the bestselling American poets ever, Jeffers (1887-1962) once ranked alongside T.S. Eliot. Time magazine put him on its cover in 1932, and The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers was reprinted so many times that Random House lost track of sales. Tor House, the stunning, invincible granite cottage Jeffers built with his own hands in Carmel, Calif., remains the focus of literary pilgrimage. Yet, as California poet Dana Gioia, '73, MBA '77, wrote in his essay "Strong Counsel," "No major American poet has been treated worse by posterity than Robinson Jeffers." Jeffers's pessimism about the human race didn't sit well during the dark Depression years, and his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II turned respect to ridicule. His exaltation of nature above humankind also ran counter to 20th-century sensibilities. "I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk," he wrote."
February 21, 2007~ 7:30am
Yes, it's true. I've been browsing internet blogs and I have to say, "I'M SICK OF CLEVER!" Damn, dolled-up places being glib or YouTubed to death. Throwing disjointed, trendy, jazzy things out there, expecting to snag kudos of "oh my! isn't she/he the clever one!"
Let me tell you what's clever....I'm sitting here furiously typing this at work, and chomping on my new favorite snack- whole grain new Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits- and my front tooth pops out.
What did I do??
I keep the SuperGlue with me in my make-up bag, a large safety pin to re-prick the top of the tube, and I just whisked my self right up and went to the ladies room, sat down in a stall, got out the pressed powder for use of a mirror- and glued the thing back in. That's clever, all you Namby Pamby blog sluts. That's using the old noodle.
February 21, 2007~ 4:30pm
The spigot that once was on has been turned off. I'm entering into my hundred year sleep.
It seems I've been under an enchantment, which has ended. There may be gold in Gilead, but this ain't Gilead. This whole, virtual world is one nasty-assed Fata Morgana. I intend to come home from work, read, sleep. That's about it folks.
February 22, 2007~ 12:00am
The above entry was made during a nadir. Some days, the lens just closes completely. The will is gone, the lead shoes too heavy. I have to say that news I had yesterday began to bore so deeply into my core, and so unexpectedly for me, I was speechless about it- so I came home, went to bed at 5:30 p.m. and just woke up a while ago, knowing it was a case of 'the one straw breaking the back'- the one awful thing too much....
Wayne's large office building downtown employed a fella named Kenny. I heard Kenny stories from Wayne from time to time and I didn't even know that somewhere deep inside, Kenny had become some sort of symbol for me of the 'Come Back Kid'. This poor fella had a tough time of it, small and skinny, deviled by drink and heavy smoking but always there at his desk as security guard. Always there until he had a stroke a while ago, and Wayne told me, "Gees, Kenny had a stroke and he's only in his 50's." Well Kenny survived. Gave up that lifestyle, became felled by epilepsy somewhere along the line-- but still showed up, worked long hours, lived with his mother- and Kenny was a kind of touchstone for Wayne when he'd say goodnight to him every evening, and I'm sure Wayne would smile and think, "Kenny"- in the way certain names will make you smile- because I heard those stories, and I know we were both rooting for him and what he epitomized.
Well, late last night, about just this time, Kenny was struck and killed by a car not far from here as he crossed the street after his night shift. All day long, that image stayed with me, the futility of so much of life- the hideous endings for so many of us, and that all the willpower, all the courage in the world, all the pleasant goodwill we have toward our fellow man will do nothing in the face of blind tragedy. There was that- and the news headline tonight that an entire family from the area, burned in a fire from using a space heater in this cold, was buried in a single coffin. Oh Lord.......oh, Lord.....and I realized that silence would kill me eventually. That writing it out is the one thing I do that's positive, even if the subject matter is angry, or despairing or hateful. So I wrote this one. For Kenny.
..........Too Much
..........Yes there was 911
..........many deaths
..........and the death of friendships death of love
..........over the years
..........and there was my father's
..........death the son's
..........year in Iraq the horrible events keep piling on
..........and you'd think
..........a person would become inured or become
..........stronger or
..........become
..........indifferent
..........but today seemed
..........to be
..........the end of the tether
..........when I heard that Kenny
..........was hit
..........by a car
..........sent through the windshield thrown several feet
..........and died
..........that something finally
..........broke
..........inside
..........and the question
..........Why Kenny?
..........seemed to sum
..........it up for me
..........for wasn't he just a 60 year
..........old guy recovered
..........from drink and a lifetime of smoking
..........struck
..........down by a stroke a while ago felled by the Caesar
..........disease to writhe
..........in epileptic
..........ecstasy still
..........Kenny
..........kept coming back like
..........Rocky
..........got
..........up for his job
..........as security guard every day every awful
..........day and made his way to work
..........and rode the trolley
..........stayed
..........overtime
..........said hello
..........to everyone
..........said
..........goodnight kept coming back
..........kept at it hit last night on 51 at 11:30
..........after
..........his shift his mother
..........surviving him her waiting
..........home
..........for Kenny
..........who never came home at all
..........and the way that story
..........made me ..........fall
..........has been
..........complete.
February 22, 2007~ 6:30pm
I'm feeling less total "blackout" sorrow. Time- even 24 hours- takes us and rocks us like a mother, and sings those words only Time knows that begin a venous drip into the vein of what feels like an amnesia elixir or a gauze of fog. Maybe it's just that we can't feel that down for too long without it having consequences, and the 'fight or flight' thing starts to kick in, and we run away into something for a while and lose the piece of us that's so empty.
I'm about to take 2 sandwiches upstairs, pull open a suspense novel after playing about 20 games of hand-held, electronic solitaire- and will undoubtedly once again have nightmares. And like Old Scrooge, I'll be chasing Jacob Marley away, and telling him he's nothing but "a crumb of cheese", a flake of undigested braunschweiger"....
But if you're interested, I'll send you back a postcard. I believe it'll look something like this-
I'll be carried off by little green men with sharp teeth, and mayhem on their minds. It's never never something tall, dark and handsome- it's always the gnomish, Goya type thing that comes and sits on my chest. Weighs about 40 lbs- feels like 200.
Off I go to meet my little men. Mind stretching, st-t-t-r-r-r-e-t-c-hing toward Friday, anticipating a weekend with better weather, Saturday night with the grandkids, and then the Texas Chainsaw movie we never got to watch last week. (Thank God I don't have to pay late fines on these things.....I believe I kept 'The Man Who Loved Flowers' for a month!) Ah winter, with its cruel, cruel months. I'm ready for it to be over with- I'm looking for the first bud, first shoot, first robin. My world could stand a bit of green....
February 23, 2007~ 10:00am
I have been very remiss here in not mentioning "the holy season of Lent"....
Although I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, I still remember a time- not so long ago- when I was driving to pick the kids up after work. Divorced- (it was my night) and it happened to be Ash Wednesday. Well, the little 'devouts' that they were, steeped in parochial school lore- I knew they'd spy the lack of ashes in the center of my forehead, so what did I do? I dipped my thumb into the car's ashtray and made a cross on my own head, and they never knew the difference! LOL!
We've just passed Fat Tuesday again, entered the season of penitence and self-denial, and I thought you'd be amused by what my fella had to say to me today about Catholic devotees.....lol....here it is-
...
I think he's summed it up quite nicely. One of the reasons I love him so much-- his scintillating succinctness.
February 24, 2007~ 3:45pm
Originally, the weather forecaster (I'm convinced this is a dog who barks in Chinese) was calling for 'mixed precipitation' for this afternoon and evening- meaning, ice, snow, sleet. Wayne and I decided to cancel out (once again) with my daughter for a Saturday pizza dinner, and opted to pop in to see Gary and the two kiddoes last night instead. (Now, of course, that prediction has been pushed back till late, to come in sometime in the middle of the night and continue through tomorrow afternoon, and we'll have cancelled tonight for no reason.) Looks like my Sunday jaunt with mum's gonna be cancelled yet again, with a make up date for Monday after work.
And oh, I just dread the ideer of chipping the ice off of the car tomorrow. That'll have to be done before Monday morning, because there simply isn't time to engage in that, half awake and freezing cold, standing out there in the dark with a hammer in my hand....
Popping in to see Bill and Kay last night (so they keep the 'visual' of what grammy looks like) I again brought 'cheap gifts', but even cheaper! LOL!!! The 25 cents in the gewgaw machine at the restaurant produced slimy, stick to the wall tiny hands, and two PINK rubber bracelets. (BOTH were pink, can you believe it?) Kay delighted in them- but it's so easy to satisfy a one and three-quarters little lady, but try passing that stuff off on an almost four! OH NO....nuthin' doing. "Gram", he said with disgust written all over his face, "these..........these things.....there's something wrong with them. These are not good." LOL! By that time, I was laughing too hard to care.
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