to sing goodnight to
I am absolutely adoring Marvin Pontiac’s No Kids. The layering is lovely in the second verse (or is it the chorus?). I think it’s difficult to say it in songwriting these days, like “Where is my mom?” and “I have some pain,” so this is very refreshing.
And because I must leave Rachel Ray’s scarf fiasco to my Dad, her biggest fan, I suppose I’ll turn to poetry instead and include some newish poem here. I don’t know why I’m having trouble breaking lines all of a sudden. It might be because I’m pushing toward the new year of non-fiction writing.
HIGH CULTURE: A PILCROW
In the lower worlds, where all things are slowed but not gone, they take the old diseases and give them new names. Suffering is a human cholera. It takes the nape of a child. Turns the skin in on itself. It’s easier to watch a skeleton become a skeleton after all. Who am I to question water’s holiness? Dip two fingers in. Take it to the forehead, chest, shoulder to shoulder. Take a rainforest by the mouth and see if it is a blessing then. In Yellowstone, half the bison herd died this winter. Herds once in ten millions that survived since prehistory on the grasses starved to death on the mountainsides. Or, animals of instinct, left the park for food and ended face to the slaughter cull. The bodies are sunken now. Thawing in the sulfur pits. Steam rising over their hides like claws.
shadows fields herons
There are a few things that I truly adore about Ohio. The first—fields.
As I pack my stuff for the old country, I keep asking myself how a lass like me, a sort of small town girl will make it in a big, cosmopolitan European city. I never thought about myself as a Midwestern girl growing up, even though living in Bath, going to Revere, I really was a pretty classic example of it.
At 18, when I went to Indiana University, I really thought I was going to be so different and out of place among the farms and small lakes. The townies who cut the limestone for the lovely buildings in Bloomington weren’t going to be anything like me. Of course they were, and so was the place, and the quietness I felt when I lived in Indiana was probably the reason why I stayed there for six years and almost didn’t leave at all. Though there was always the pull, the curse of the Cuyahoga, as Dr. Ray Craig calls it.
So when I came back to Ohio, I started seeing it in a different way from how I remembered it as a kid and young adult. I could finally appreciate it, and why the people who live here in their adulthood (especially in the NE) can never really explain why it’s wonderful, but for their personal catalogue of images. And how no matter how far away you get from it, you always see things with Ohio eyes.
This morning I drove past the blue heron nests. Many were bringing sticks to their mates. Many were tending to their little blue heron babies. Another one of the core things I love about this area:
Now, as I’m getting together my writing books and pens and moleskins and sitting here writing Budapest from Ohio, maybe it will turn out that I’ll do exactly the opposite from my little flat in the budai várnegyed: write Ohio from Buda.
Oh, and the other thing I adore about Ohio? Better stock up on those flat-rate prepaid priority shipping boxes Mom and Dad!:
HYSTERICAL WOMEN ON LOOSE—GET THE HOSES
In the Victorian era, nearly 25% of all women were diagnosed with “female hysteria,” for an array of symptoms, but especially the tendency to cause trouble. Though the diagnosis no longer exists in a medical sense, there is still a persistent, albeit unsaid social diagnosis with much of the same implications as in the 19th century. It really has permeated popular culture (and literary culture—as I have often seen discussed in Women’s Lit. theory books). And I haven’t thought about it for a while, until last night when I saw on CNN this graphic headline covering the Kentucky primary:
ANGRY WOMEN GATHER TO VOTE FOR CLINTON
Really CNN?
Did this graphic get bumped at the last minute?
or this photo?
This whole election coverage has become so distasteful. As someone who has a picture of my dad and Walter Cronkite hanging on my bedroom wall, I can barely even watch the evening news anymore. At this point I don’t care who wins the Democratic nomination. Obama is really inspiring and I think he would really make a great President, a Kennedy hope even. But I’m also really glad that, as James Carville pointed out last week, Hillary hasn’t just given up yet, which has become a kind of plague of the Democratic party of late. Hopefully, though, these kind of little disasters will be over soon, and the gender and race faux pas that have gotten pretty ugly can get cleaned up before November.
[almost] a techie household
We have to figure out what we’re doing for dinner so I need both of your attention now. Jessica, get off your computer. Mary get off your atlas.
–RSJ 6:07 PM
the perfect night in little italy
1. Corner table at gusto!
2. Stirling Sauvignon Blanc
3. Perfectly cooked roma muscles
4. Caprese di Bufala, Pasta e Fagioli, Pappardelle con L’aragosta ed i pettini, and Saltimbocca alla Romana
5. The two songs the accordion master played at our table
6. The 91-year-old Italian man standing to sing two songs, in a perfect tenor, as the accordion master played along
7. Dinner conversation: plans for Dublin at New Years and recollection of new things I learned about Budapest earlier in the day
8. Did I mention the handmade pappardelle with lobster and scallops in a saffron cream sauce?
9. My parents heatedly debating who would look better naked: Rachel Ray or Giada De Laurentiis
10. Espressos, cannoli, and lemoncello gelato
11. Corbo’s bakery for tomorrow’s breakfast biscotti
12. A Capri sun setting over Murray Hill
how the clasp of nothing takes her in
Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond
by Mary Oliver
So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings
open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks
of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.
Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is
that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed
back into itself–
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.
And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn’t a miracle
but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body
into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.
Back in the Buckeye State. I never read Mary Oliver unless I’m in Ohio. I’m not sure why, but the poems make the most sense here. This is one of my favorites. Tomorrow, I’m going to drive down to see the blue herons. I hope I’ll be able to get some good pictures.
The trees here are about a month behind Georgia, as is the weather. It’s been rainy, though I’d expect that from Ohio, especially as a welcoming. This afternoon was beautiful though. I was able to sit out in the warmth and watch two male chickadees compete at the feeder for the female. And then, suddenly, a black squirrel came through the ivy, which startled me at first, confusing it for a giant black rat since I haven’t seen one in awhile. I read that at one time the Ohio River Valley all the way north to the Lake was so thick with trees that the black squirrels were able to move all the way from the Ohio to Erie without ever touching the ground.
And still, to me, Ohio seems pretty much the same, and there’s such a great comfort in that. I haven’t been down to the valley yet for a run, but hopefully this week I’ll be able to stop making lists and packing and worrying about the move to take a few still moments among the marshes. They are my best memories here, and I no doubt want to take it with me.
On the music side of life, I’m so delighted that Duffy finally made it to the US, even though the CD has been out in Europe for months. I hope she doesn’t go the way of other soulster Brits. And since I couldn’t decide on which to post, I’m posting both Mercy and Rockferry.
bringing only empty boats
Writing about this year, at this point, is both bane and boon, as Dr. P would say. But this second semester has been, despite the six classes, really amazing. Even though I was in the hospital for pneumonia and exhaustion, these students, especially the night students, were the best I’ve ever had.
For my birthday, S got me tickets to see Josh. The concert was at the Melting Point here in Athens. It was, as are all of his concerts, amazing.
Ingrid Michaelson opened for him. I am now in total adoration of her. If you don’t own or have downloaded her CDs, do it now. Seriously. Do. It. Now.
The best moment during the show was when she played her song, the hat, and she got the audience to sing along with her. I took a video, though I wish I would have recorded more. I’ve tried to find the round on youtube, but, actually, the Athens crowed was clearly the most spirited:
So my time in Athens is at its end. It’s bittersweet. It’s sweet, even. It was the best place for me at the best time. And now, as the world demands, things are on their elliptic still and I’m moving and moving. So, after Ingrid, Josh played. I took many many videos, but Girl in the War is one of my favorite songs, and so I will post this one. This is the first encore. The audience is trying so hard to be quiet and sweet too, but by the second verse, they just seem to need to sing it, and loudly. And Josh–he is just so delicious.
a little case of the gradies
The semester is almost officially over, but the massive grading and university-demanded-filling-out-of-assessment-rubrics has begun. I may not emerge for several days, but when I do, I will be a lot lighter and no longer tattooed by felt tip pen marks.
Listening to this to get me through: Paul Devro’s mix of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere.” Kind of a sacrilege, though one well worth the sin.
