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Since last week, this phrase, almost like an excavated mantra, has been echoing in my head. Something with the sense of time running out, or the preciousness of days, with this turning 50 and daring to be realistic and not pretend I’m not likely more than halfway there, my life halfway gone.
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While most of Saturday was consumed by periodic searches for the missing car key—I’d driven myself and the car home on Thursday, it had to be here somewhere—I made time to whip up a batch of Moosewood’s Cream of Broccoli soup, updated by Mollie K.
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A friend turned me on to the four-book series of poetry collected by Roger Housden. Seems the first volume, Ten Poems to Change Your Life came out in the middle of 2001, with the others, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart and Ten Poems to Set You Free, following close behind…
Words to buoy the soul on a sunny February day of snow slowly melting from the winter-green grass and the drip-drip accompaniment from rain gutter eaves:
Walt Whitman in the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass—
“Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.”…
Absolutely fabulous (yes, I know I’ve stolen those words, homage, homage) day here today—sun, blue sky, more than the tops of snow-capped volcanoes visible 100 miles off in the Cascades. Dryness is…well, amazing…after months of excessive rain, sodden ground
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Coretta Scott King’s funeral today. Six hours. Orations, presidents, standing ovations for truth tellers. Every now and then, the waters of justice and earnestness break through. We are talking about a woman
Monday night. Rain gone for a bit, well, the past two days. Which translates, predictably, to colder temperatures here. E-heat just kicked on in spite of the wood stove in front of which two blue-eyed, half-Siamese cats lounge on Presidential rockers…
Here I am. Back to my life. C. gone, back to Ithaca, his home, the sense of home I gave him, all those years living there, I guess…
We’ve been back two days from our trip to western Tennessee, Nashville then Memphis via the Natchez Trace. I’m finding it hard to construct a coherent narrative of everything we saw and did.Maybe that’s all a travel tale ever really is, a patchwork of sights, tastes, and sounds?…
Medieval holiday music on the radio, Trio Medieval, singing Norwegian Christmas music, three women’s a cappella voices, the rain on the roof, the ground outside becomes an accompaniment, quiet drumbeat rhythm rather than the bleak…
