Theme Thusday: Water

Water, last fall on a walk with L:



Plus, a link to an earlier water post I did about bottled water (thanks for reminding me, Dine-o-Meter!)

Woeful Wednesday?

My mother used to say, "Why in the world do you listen to that mournful music?" but I listen to Early Music in the car all the time when I'm alon. I love it. What can I say? D and I went to see/hear Anonymous 4 many years ago when he still feigned interest in my enthusiasms, and it was a high point for me. I could rustle up another Early Music duo, Live Oak, which D and I went to see in a church outside Boston so long ago . . . a woman up front kept fussing with her purse. Her companion was impossibly old and immobile throughout her pawing. The purse began to move;

out popped a tiny dog's snout.

Music Monday!!

I love Jazz!!
-L

Goodness!

I reread yesterday's Theme Thursday post. What a downer! Sorry, all. Note to self: stop whining. All comments were appreciated.

In better news, here are my pots of radishes and lettuce, and some tomato, pepper, dill, and thyme plants D got from Sequatchie Cove Farm yesterday.

Thursday theme: fire

Suffice it to say, my feet are to the fire as I transition from being supplemental to primary wage earner.

It's tough out there; but I'm sure I don't need to tell you that . . .

Here's a poem:

Riveted
–Robyn Sarah

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious dénouement
to the unsurprising end — riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

Music Monday

This video is CRAZY!! What do you think it means?
It is "No One Does It Like You" by Department of Eagles.

L

Theme Thursday: Earth

Well, a lot's forgotten, isn't it, as much as is remembered . . . first Earth Day spent in western New England at the ends of, well, the earth itself. That is what it was, my parents having flung us up there from deepest Long Island. Perched up above, looking out at the smoke coming from the commune across the little mountain range. You could see their little buses and yurts, if you looked hard enough. My mother in her element, though. Dirt road out front. That wind against the neck, waiting for the schoolbus. Making the garden, that's no longer there. No hiding this time.

A Physics
–Heather McHugh

When you get down to it, Earth
has our own great ranges
of feeling—Rocky, Smoky, Blue—
and a heart that can melt stones.

The still pools fill with sky,
as if aloof, and we have eyes
for all of this—and more, for Earth's
reminding moon. We too are ruled

by such attractions—spun and swaddled
rocked and lent a light. We run
our clocks on wheels, our trains
on time. But all the while we want

to love each other endlessly—not only for
a hundred years, not only six feet up and down.
We want the suns and moons of silver
in ourselves, not only counted coins in a cup. The whole

idea of love was not to fall. And neither was
the whole idea of God. We put him well
above ourselves, because we meant,
in time, to measure up.

MUSIC MONDAY!!!!

i don't usually listen to music like this, but i can't stop listening to this song. i'm surprised jesse mccartney didn't set the car on fire with his hotness. jk yall!
-L

Friday

Bear, in repose:

Theme Thursday: Egg

Many years ago, when L was just a tot, a friend and neighbor would open her house for a pysanky egg decorating party. She had many sets of the styluses, beeswax, and various dye baths set all over her house and any and all were engrossed in making something lovely.

We were in New England, and it would still be wet and cold, often snow likely. And it was fun to catch up with others we hadn't seen all winter.



While rummaging around for some of the eggs we made (yes, of course I keep everything) I found this little Easter craft book and, lo and behold, a psyanky kit, never used, mint in box, as they say.

I think I know what we'll be up to on Saturday . . .

Finally, a poem, from a different angle:

Easter
–Jim Harrison

On Easter morning all over America
the peasants are frying potatoes in bacon grease.

We're not supposed to have "peasants"
but there are tens of millions of them
frying potatoes on Easter morning,
cheap and delicious with catsup.

If Jesus were here this morning he might
be eating fried potatoes with my friend
who has a '51 Dodge and a '72 Pontiac.

When his kids ask why they don't have
a new car he says, "these cars were new once
and now they are experienced."

He can fix anything and when rich folks
call to get a toilet repaired he pauses
extra hours so that they can further
learn what we're made of.

I told him that in Mexico the poor say
that when there's lightning the rich
think that God is taking their picture.
He laughed.

Like peasants everywhere in the history
of the world ours can't figure out why
they're getting poorer. Their sons join
the army to get work being shot at.

Your ideals are invisible clouds
so try not to suffocate the poor,
the peasants, with your sympathies.
They know that you're staring at them.

Remember

yesterday's unexpectedly snowy post?

Well, I pulled back the covers this morning, after the temperature rose to 48 degrees Fahrenheit, to see the damage . . .



expecting to see some limp, lettucey green things, lying prostrate on the dirt.



Radishes all present and accounted for!



Lettuce mix still extant.



Onward and upward in the garden.

Dogwood Winter

Hey, this wasn't supposed to happen! My seedlings . . .



A fire and the crossword proved too much for Soul:

Music Monday

cute! this is the artists grandma in the video.

Dreams

lately, they've been very vivid, almost Technicolor, in fact. Usually I dream that it is night, a vast dark world without color.

But twice I've dreamt of the most perfect house, cool, large, old. Many rooms, a big garden. A built-in television from the 1950s, with a metal tag identifying the maker. I can't make out the words. Wide windowsills outdoors, concrete. Outside it is cool, a bit overcast. There is a room set up as a nursery, left from the previous owners. I leave it that way, though there aren't any babies, and I don't need a child's room. Maybe this house was built in the 1920s? I feel so at home in it.

Last night I was dreaming of my mother and another house, or rather an old storefront such as you might see in Vermont. All of a sudden a flock of white owls swept around me, settled into a tree, and watched me coolly. They had round, blue eyes. They weren't large, like a Snowy Owl. More the size of a Saw-Whet Owl

The hoot of an owl in a dream is ominous, but owls seem to symbolize wisdom and virtue. Are changes on the way? I'd like to know if the house dream and the owls are connected.

Ten years of things Southern

Ten years this summer I will have lived in the South, after driving all the long way down from New England, through the vastness that is Virginia.

Before then, either I had never heard of or I had heard only vaguely of or never encountered:

banana pudding
pulled pork
double first names
last names as first names, especially for girls (Kelso, Carver . . . MADISON)
luminous springs, with so many shades of red and pink that I never realized were possible
no hint of Mud Season
winter that lasts from Christmas to New Year's
two flakes of snow empty the grocery shelves of bread and milk
three flakes empty the parking lot of cars but leave carts asunder
grocery carts are not carts—they're buggies
smoking in the grocery store (at the beginning of my tenure; could that actually have been?!)
Southern Man hair
the Cotton Ball (!)
May Day (!!)
how blue it is to be so in a red state
upon meeting someone, being asked who my people are
upon meeting someone, being asked where I go to church
adult Sunday School
crepe myrtle
cicadas
being called Mrs. Tut-Tut by all and sundry, from children to adults
okra
collards
college football fans
meat and three
Ted Turner

a foray into film making

A short film by L: