Nirvana - Lake of fire

Started singing this at work today--we were slap happy goofy thank god it's friday crazy this afternoon.

By the way, I can't post anything on my blog. I sign it, I get the page for new post, and then it vanishes. Boo. Things I want to say.

Nude Descending A Staircase, No. 2, 1912
Marcel Duchamp

Nude Descending a Staircase

X. J. Kennedy

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh--
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair
Collects her motions into shape.

The Street
Balthus, 1933












The Street

Across the street, the carpenter carries a golden
board across one shoulder, much as he bears the burdens
of his life. Dressed in white, his only weakness is
temptation. Now he builds another wall to screen him.

The little girl pursues her bad red ball, hits it once
with her blue racket, hits it once again. She must
teach it the rules balls must follow and it turns her
quite wild to see how it leers at her, then winks.

The oriental couple wants always to dance like this:
swirling across a crowded street, while he grips
her waist and che slides to one knee and music rises
from cobblestones--some days Ravel, some days Bizet.

The departing postulant is singing to herself. She
has seen the world's salvation asleep in a cradle,
hanging in a tree. The girl's song makes
the sunlight, makes the breeze that rocks the cradle.

The baker's had half a thought. Now he stands like a pillar
awaiting another. He sees white flour falling like snow,
covering people who first try to walk, then crawl,
then become rounded shapes: so many loaves of bread.

The baby carried off by his heartless mother is very old and
for years has starred in silent films. He tries to explain
he was accidentally exchanged for a baby on a bus, but he can
find no words as once more he is borne home to his awful bath.

First the visionary workman conjures a great hall, then
he puts himself on the stage, explaining, explaining:
where the sun goes at night, where flies go in winter, while
attentive crowds of dogs and cats listen in quiet heaps.

Unaware of one another, these nine people circle around
each other on a narrow city street. Each concentrates
so intently on the few steps before him, that not one
can see his neighbor turning in exactly different,

yet exactly similar circles around them: identical lives
begun alone, spent alone, ending alone--as separate
as points of light in a night sky, as separate as stars
and all that immense black space between them.

Stephen Dobyns

The Fall of Icarus
Pieter Brueghel

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Out of it

Deep sigh. Very much in need of some sleep but found
that I could not sleep in late. I am getting used to the up
at 6 a.m. thing again. I am not a morning person, which makes
it extremely difficult to function in the morning person world.
But, the good news is that I will be full-time in the Mad city
starting Monday. I am most happy that I will be working in town
and will not have to make that almost 80 mile round trip to
work each day.

The work is fascinating. I confess to feeling overwhelmed. There
is so much to learn. I did my first solo assessment yesterday.
I think it went well, and we have a solid plan in place.

I have been absorbing so much new info, and I've been on the road
so many days, and I've gotten home late so many days that all other
interests have been shoved aside. I do so want to write. So much has
happened in the last three weeks. Some of the lines are so ready
to make their way to the page, but I just don't have the energy to get
them there. Soon, I hope.

Cooking has also become a pasttime. I simply can't stand the eat out
thing, so I am going to have to get some kind of plan in place
to make sure we have things in the fridge that I prepare
over the weekend or that are easy and healthy meals to make
through the week.

Tonight I am making an arugula and pear salad with shallot, balsamic
and dijon dressing. I am going to serve it with spinach and gruyere
stuffed chicken breasts wrapped in prosciutto. I'm also going to make
an herbed couscous pilaf (it has carrots, green onions, green peas,
basil, & oregano in it). I think the chicken will go great with the couscous.

The replacement windows arrived today. The color we chose
for the house is called Warm Sand. The trim with be white.
Shutters black. Very classy look. Very appropriate for this
house. I'll have to post pictures when the whole thing
is complete.

I'll have some landscaping to do in the spring.
I had a huge holly tree cut down (broke my heart--
I hate to cut down a tree!), but it was way too large for where
it was. It extended over the driveway and covered about
1/2 of the front dining room windows. So, in the spring,
I'll decide what to plant there. I also had two rather
overgrown shrubs near the front door cut down.
It looks bare, but much better.

Time to go grocery shopping and to get clothes washed and
to clean house and to read a bit and rest a bit (I hope!).

***************************************


The Happiest Day


It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn't believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn't even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day--
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then...
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

Linda Pastan

In Memory Of William Patrick Rudd

This is the first night I've cried for him. And for
his mom and sister, his father and stepmother and stepbrother,
and all who loved him. He was too young. He was a good
man, a good son, a good friend, and a person who gave his life
for what he believed in. I am so filled with sorrow.

In his short time on this earth, he sure did a lot of living.

May the universe surround his parents and loved ones in this
time of loss.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE8pRDkwLlw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgcsRCiJk8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HpCv0grpW4

The one moon among the many moons