Huey Lewis and the News - I want a new drug

In the middle of the journey of our life,
I came to myself within a dark wood where
the straight way was lost.

Dante


*

How many times have I asked that question?
How many times do I misquote and say,

In the middle of the journey of my life...

Many...perhaps many more to come.

A life and a death. My aunt, my father's only
sister...the last remaining of that family. Gone.

Of course, we are here. We share the blood.
We share the lineage.

*

I am scratched and bruised and aching
from my labors. I should not feel these things.

Young as I am. Middle as I am.

*

Finished rereading The Half-Blood Prince.
Glad I reread. Time to start the other.
Reading takes us away. Away from the reality
of this war and the immediacy of death.

Away from siblings arrested and siblings
working themselves to death and siblings
settling for the best that comes.

Away from dead fathers and very alive mothers
who cannot give of themselves.

Away from joblessness and rootlessness
and inability to find peace in acceptance.

*

Damn if Huey Lewis and the News didn't
just pop in my head.

I Want A New Drug.

*

Out. Out, damned spot!

Struggling, struggling, struggling

Maybe May be

that it is time to reread

perhaps

The Dispossessed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed

Rereading The Half-Blood Prince

as I have forgotten too much to go forward.

The Deathly Hallows sits on my bedside

and I am oh! so anxious to read it!

Wet brain.

Going now to research that topic.

Entering the World


...of dreams. Sometimes I wonder if we do leave
our bodies and travel in our dreams. Maybe the body
is lying in the bed, but we have stepped out of it and
into another world.

I woke this morning choking. In my dream, a woman,
who looked like Mammy from Gone With The Wind
(from the back--never saw her face), was washing clothes
in the kitchen sink of an upstairs apartment. She told me
to go outside and tell Enrico he had to come home.

I saw him across the street and called to him, but he ignored
me. Some other boys on the street yelled out to him and pointed
at me. I knew I must not be speaking the same language.

Then, out of nowhere, comes this line drive, and I catch it
bare-handed (to applause and shouts of disbelief), and then
comes a football, spinning fast and furious, and I lift the other
hand into the air and catch it one-handed. And then I remember
thinking I was choking on a piece of chewing gum. I couldn't swallow
it and I couldn't bring it back to my mouth. And I woke up with this
big cough and gasp and I really thought I had a piece of gum
in my mouth.

I never thought about the dangers of running or swimming
with a piece of gum in your mouth. And then, one summer, a
young girl--maybe 12--drowned at the city park pool.
The newspaper report said that she could have been resuscitated
(perhaps) had she not been chewing gum. It was stuck in her
throat, so mouth-to-mouth didn't work. After that, I made
my kids swear they wouldn't run track, play
ball, dance, etc. with gum in their mouths.

So, maybe I was in that neighborhood calling out for Enrico,
choking on my piece of gum. Who knows.

*

Because I am becoming more anal and insecure the older I get
(I thought the older I got, the better that would get), I never
trust that I can spell anything any more. I was the queenie-bee
of spelling bees and what-not in my day. So, when I typed in
line drive, I wondered if it should be hyphenated, so I typed it
into Google and what a strange story I found:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/baseball/mlb/07/23/coolbaugh.dies.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us

Weird.

*

Don't know why I feel compelled to write about my dream.

I had many more. One filled with such vibrant colors
and strange people. Beautiful fabrics and the smell
of good food cooking. Tables overflowing with wines
and cheeses and fruits. Women laughing. Wearing
beautiful caftans, salwar kameezes, saris. Lots of light
everywhere and temperate weather and the sound
of water.

*

Time to go mop while Molly is outside. After that, I am taking
all the pictures and artwork off the walls in the hallway. I am
going to start stripping paper. Who cares if the kitchen
project is done or not? It just needs a few things that I can
do as I do the hallway.

Then outside to weed. My poor flower beds. I have never
neglected them like this before. Best get out there while
the mood strikes. Of course, my moods being what they
are, I am very likely to be out of the mood by the time
I finish typing this.

*sigh*

Seeing What You Cannot See

There are times when being myopic
is not such a bad thing, times when
you lay your head down on the pillow
after a night of crying and the first
light that hits your eyes is this huge
illuminated dandelion head in the sky
and it's shining all over you, and if you close
one eye, the image is less intense, but if you open
both because you really need intense, then you see
an even greater dandelion head watching over you
and if you think it might be worthwhile to put
on your glasses to see what you don't really see,
which is a crescent moon disguised
as an illuminated and grandiose dandelion,
which seems to want to own you in a sense,
you know you don't want your glasses on your face
any longer because you are so happy you cannot see,
and you don't mind so much not being able to see
what seeing people see, so you turn your head to the left
a bit on the pillow and then the light is less bright
and the trick less grand but no less special,
and if you turn to the right a little then the leaves
on the trees play tricks and look like little shadow
figures threatening to take all your light and life
away and so you turn back to the first position
and wonder whether you should put your glasses
on again and see what you cannot see when you know full well
it's better the way you see when you cannot see.

On the road again...

going to spend the next 4 days in Lexington
with my new grandson. I can't wait to hold
him again and kiss his little feet and tiny hands!

Been a hard week for me in so many ways. I know
being with him, and with my son & daughter-in-law
will help.


*





103. There was a Child went Forth



There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had lately risen,
And the school-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

His own parents,
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and birth’d him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him.

The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay’d—the sense of what is real—the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they? 30
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat slack-tow’d astern, 35
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by itself—the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

I am Much Too Alone in this World


I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.



Rainer Maria Rilke