Tumbleword

Last night I sat up late, watching the Red Sox win.  My mother even called after midnight to whoop it up!!  She isn’t allowed to call past nine, her rules, she likes to settle into a peace before bed, and I can’t blamer her there.  I do have a secret guilty pleasure!  I watched on a split screen the Red Sox game and a new series on Masterpiece Theater called, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard which I loved.  It is all very women, one runs for office and becomes the Prime Minister.  If you’ve ever seen Absolutely Fabulous you will recognize (sort of) Bubbles in the lead character… I read a review of this early in the day at N.Y. Times and had to check it out.

This morning, all I wanted was the clarity of water–nothing catches my eye like water in a glass held into the light.  It is always new, the shadow and color reflected from the room.  I drank a few pitchers full, and while cranking up the laptop I noticed the light.  That was at 8:00 am and spent most of the day photo-ing the shifting light’s influences on glass and water.  I filled up (finally, oof) my hard drive on the regular computer.  Lots of images to look at.

 

Now I must break out one of the larger portable Hard Drives I got in September…. little slim things, until I replace what I just filled… or wait till Christmas.  You too must also be getting Christmas stamps and Christmas labels in the mail… they all want donations.  Next, the cards will come in, hand drawn by someone with her mouth and my guilt will increase.  I hate to toss out someone’s hard work.  I always think, There is a soul who could use this, if not me.  I put it aside to take to Good Will, and then other things happen.  Like today, a day of nothing but grace and quiet and creativity for a change, I was lit with something to do I never dreamed would burn and burn the candle of my day… and now I am spent.  How do we spend our lives?  Guilty? Pleased?

  We all have so much to do, and Christmas, New Years, and the Thanksgiving rush is just around the next exhale.  Then, on Jan 1 we will guage things, look at all we have done or not.  We will sit and judge ourselves, and I fear we do most of it harshly.  Why not choose to only focus on what we achieved this year, and let the rest finish at its own pace.  Life will catch up to us.

I allow myself NOT to do things.  I allow myself, NOT to fit in too.  Its willful now.  Its easier every year I live.  Weird to you might be perfect for me or someone else.  Not my mother, but she will not be here forever to scorch me with her eyes.. … will she?   

In Mansuetude, this is a good Tumbleword: Suffer the little things, its easier, honest, to give now of our politeness, our time, a little at least, than to wonder when someone is gone, “Did I offer my full share?” Not that anyone does ever do enough.  We can’t.  We’re just human.  Nobody really ever dies either… they just …ahh… as my mother says, “I never say Goodbye, I say See You Later.”  She means it.  Nothing really leaves a soul.  Unless we ask it to.  Command it to!  Alright headache, get the HELL out of my house!  See.  I need no Advil now!  No Excedrin, no Asprin, Pamprin, Aleve, Tylenol PM or AM.  Nope.  But you can have it all if you need it.

Once in a while, since we all have a little “Random Blog” button at the end of our blogs, I decided to open a book off my poetry shelves and post a small poem from a writer some of you may not yet know.  I know, you’re saying, oh Mom not Peas again!!

Well, I can’t even say, “Shut up. Peas are good for you.”  Cause I don’t think they are nutritionally compact as eating poetry.

 Random Poem

Yehuda Amichai:  One of Isreal’s most well know poets. 

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/125

 

Ein Yahav   

A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert,
a drive in the rain. Yes, in the rain.
There I met people who grow date palms,
there I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees,
there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.
And I said to myself: That’s true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field.

 

Sometimes we forget to honor something or someone, and this post is for them… forgive us!

Forgetting Someone

 Forgetting someone is like

forgetting to turn off the lights in the back yard

so it stays lit till the next day.

 

But then its the light

that makes you remember.

 

This post is for all of us who are often insisting on being right, and then left dealing with the hardness it leaves.  Sorry you’ll!

The place where We are Right

From the place where we are right

flowers will never grow

in the spring.

The place where we are right

is hard and trampled

like a yard.

 

But doubts and loves

dig up the world

like a mole, a plow.

And whisper will be heard in the place

where the ruined house

once stood.

Windows; looking in and out…….. post # 1

1. Want ** about little witnessed things; things we make note of inside

2. as we go through life, but hardly ever tell anyone about… isn’t that about 90% of life?  We are as Thoreau said, mostly living lives of quiet desparation… hope to God this comes with spell check as i have those hours ( a bliss to me) of not remembering

3. how to spell *** L*I*F*E*
4. like a new  apartment at college, a space of one’s own, to make Virginia Woolf
5. happy, ?… what would VW write on a blog?  with all the traffic jam of which can and should go on in a city as big as the Internet.
7. so what matters? … language is not an isolation chamber, lest we sit in our head and never talk to someone… that is supposed to be why God created humanity, to share some of his grandeur…
8. copy of Hopkins poem, The world is Charged with the Grandeur of God…
10. Wondering:  when people go off to college, especially from out of town, its like stepping out of your skin isn’t it and leaving all you loved behind, except yourself, perhaps??? 
12. Is this education? To rise to the top nonetheless when tossed into a new kind of navigable waters?  … we are living in the dark ages, or the dark waters, when flashlights, people, flashlights do exist.
14. Why is it so hot?  In the south? We are licked by flames and drying up by the gallons when our souls are forever refreshed… and full to bursting with life’s watering tools.