~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~
Or, in my case, born to make literary connections
but getting a much higher response for my political asides,
so here are some more . . .
but first, a couple of poetic connections:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Duty
I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty:
I woke and found that life was Duty:
Was then thy dream a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee
Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1812 - 1848)
&
The Word
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,
and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing
that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,
but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom
still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,
—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.
Tony Hoagland (1953 – 2018)
[see also]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1.
as described by someone living with dementia:
"I think you're gonna find that it's a very different, uh, warfare out there today. Now, they've introduced a thing called drone. A drone is a little bit different. It makes -- You have to go back and learn a whole new form of warfare, and you're gonna do it better than anybody else." [Photo: Beginner Drone Set]
as described by someone living with dementia:
"We're gonna have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years. In some ways I'm glad I missed that second term where it was because -- I wouldn't be your president for that. Most important of all, in addition, we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics. Can you imagine? I missed that four years and now look what I have, I have everything. Amazing the way things work out. God did that, I believe that too. God did it."
-- to someone living with dementia:
"But we've found things that are unbelievably stupid and unbelievably bad with the Department of Government Efficiency. . . . DOGE has installed geniuses with an engineering mindset and unbelievably talented people and computers. I actually asked Elon one time, what's their primary thing, and they have a lot of primary things, all having to do with being smart."
standing alongside presidential nominee living with dementia:
Ernest speaks sarcastically of Jesus, right along with the tooth fairy: “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
and a fourth grade vocabulary,
so that everything is "big and beautiful"
or "mean and nasty" or "REALLY BAD":
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
for a person living with dementia:
"We're going up to Camp David. We have meetings with various people about very major subjects."
"The U.S could survive without almost anybody
. . . . Except me."
Heather Cox Richardson:
“There is also no doubt Trump continues to demonstrate
that he is more committed to fantasy than reality.”
[emphasis added]
9.
by someone living with dementia:
"I watched it very closely and it was amazing the job that the National Guard did. And by the way, the police were working very hard also. But the police are given instructions to be politically correct. I said, no, no, you don't have to be politically correct, you have to do the job."
 |
| 2024 was a Landslide...for 'Did Not Vote'
Just a reminder: one half of the country did not vote for the current Republican administration -- only about one third. Not the same thing. |
"Mandate," as misconstrued
by a person, living with dementia:
"I won the election by a landslide. I mean, we have a crack -- and we have a big mandate because of that."
"The windmills are killing our country, by the way. . . . Even if they're white ones, a beigey white, ones a darker white, ones a lighter white. And then they start to rust after four or five years. And then they start to wear out and nobody takes them . . . Windmills, all over the place, tall ones, short ones, dead ones, they're all dead."
"I don't feel like a king. I have to go through hell to get stuff approved. A king would say I'm not going to get this. I -- a king would have never had the California mandate to even be talking to him. He wouldn't have to call up Mike Johnson and Thune and say, fellas, you got to pull this off and after years we get it done. No, no, we're not a king. We're not a king at all."
Has someone been talking to Queen Victoria?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click here for FIRST batch:
"I Didn't Even Know Anything"
QK & FN
And SECOND batch:
"A Very Much Different Country"
QK & FN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, June 28th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
Another poem by Tony Hoagland:
ReplyDeleteTHERE IS NO WORD
There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers
—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thin
plastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.
There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from you
as it exceeds its elastic capacity
—which is too bad, because that is the word
I would like to use to describe standing on the street
chatting with an old friend
as the awareness grows in me that he is
no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,
a person with whom I never made the effort—
until this moment, when as we say goodbye
I think we share a feeling of relief,
a recognition that we have reached
the end of a pretense,
though to tell the truth
what I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;
how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—
how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all the
misunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it.