Sing A Song About Singing

A MELODY WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Musicians, 1979 ~ Ferdinand Botero
"No human would enjoy my singing --
only maybe an old house that can't be choosy."
~ Jessamyn West ~
The Friendly Persuasion (50)
No doubt, it's best for me to take Jessmyn West's advice and constrain my singing to old houses and locked cars with the windows up. However, I did earn an unexpected compliment awhile back, when I was singing along with an old favorite from Marie Osmond -- "Paper Roses." Gerry called in from the other room to say that my voice was sounding really good that day! He was obviously a little confused, but I was honored that he thought Marie Osmond was me.

I'm hoping that in my next lifetime, the gods remember to endow me with
the gift of music as described in these rousing tributes to the meledious, harmonious, songful muse:

Thank You World ~ The Statler Brothers ~ 1973
I want to thank you, world, for lettin' me belong
I'm just one fourth of one small group that sings your songs
I know that there are others who have served in bigger ways
All I can do is sing your music all my days

It makes me grateful just to know, to know that I can be
Unique and fill a spot beside the other three
Without a place here in this world, I know that I'd be lost
Thank you, world, for lettin' me contribute to the cause

I may not ever stand like Stonewall Jackson stood
But standin' on that stage to me is just as good
Now I may never be a heavy or a great
But you've given me the strength, the strength to pull my weight

Oh for the part I sing is truly part of me
and it does its part to lock the other parts in the key
and it does its part to pull, to pull that sweet applause
Thank you, world, for lettin' me contribute to the cause

Oh world, you've given me a place that I call mine
Though I've stepped out of it & I've gotten out of line
Sometimes I sing the music slightly out of key
and I know I make it harder for the other three

I've always done my part the very best I could
and it's done the other guys a world of good
You've let me sing your praises, world, and harped about your faults
Thank you, world, for lettin' me contribute to the cause

It makes me grateful just to know, to know that I can be
Unique and fill a spot beside the other three
Without a place here in this world, I know that I'd be lost
Thank you, world, for lettin' me contribute to the cause
Without a place here in this world, I know that I'd be lost
Thank you, world, for lettin' me contribute to the cause
Thank you, world, for lettin' me contribute to the cause

Lyrics
Written by Don S. Reid, Lew Dewitt
• Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group, Music Sales Corporation
[and this retrospective of their early years with Johnny Cash]

1979
I Write the Songs ~ Barry Manilow ~ 1975
I've been alive forever
And I wrote the very first song
I put the words and the melodies together
I am music and I write the songs
I write the songs that make the whole world sing
I write the songs of love and special things
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the songs

My home lies deep within you
And I've got my own place in your soul
Now, when I look out through your eyes
I'm young again, even though I'm very old

I write the songs that make the whole world sing
I write the songs of love and special things
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the songs

Oh my music makes you dance
And gives you spirit to take a chance
And I wrote some rock 'n' roll so you can move
Music fills your heart
Well, that's a real fine place to start
It's from me it's for you
It's from you, it's for me
It's a worldwide symphony

I write the songs that make the whole world sing
I write the songs of love and special things
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the songs

I write the songs that make the whole world sing
I write the songs of love and special things
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the songs

I am music (music) and I write the songs

Lyrics
Written by Bruce Johnston
• Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group

1991
Thank You For the Music ~ Abba ~ 1977
I'm nothing special, in fact I'm a bit of a bore
If I tell a joke, you've probably heard it before
But I have a talent, a wonderful thing
Cause everyone listens when I start to sing
I'm so grateful and proud
All I want is to sing it out loud

So I say
Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me

Mother says I was a dancer before I could walk
She says I began to sing long before I could talk
But I've often wondered, how did it all start?
Who found out that nothing can capture a heart
Like a melody can?
Well, whoever it was, I'm a fan

So I say
Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me

I've been so lucky, I am the girl with golden hair
I wanna sing it out to everybody
What a joy, what a life, what a chance!

So I say
Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me

Lyrics
Written by Benny Goran Bror Andersson, Bjoern K. Ulvaeus
• Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group

Though I'm always inspired to sing along with the Statlers, Abba, and Barry Manilow, as they extol the great good fortune of their musical talent, I think a better message for me comes from the Carpenters: "Don't worry that it's not good enough / For anyone else to hear / Just sing, sing a song!"

"Sing" ~ Carpenters ~ 1973
Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad.

Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last
Your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.

Sing, sing a song
Let the world sing along
Sing of love there could be
Sing for you and for me.

Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last
Your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.

Lyrics ~ Portuguese-American composer songwriter and pianist,
Joe Raposo (1937 - 1989)
Naturaleza con mandolin ~ 1998

DON'T MISS

More Botero on Artsy

Women at Music

Piano Paintings

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

AND MANY THANKS TO MY BROTHER BRUCE
for these additional connections:

"I Believe in Music"
Mac Davis

"Where words fail, music speaks."
Hans Christian Anderson

"Music expresses that which cannot be said,
but upon which it is impossible to remain silent."
Victor Hugo

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
Berthold Auerbach

And the quote that most fits with our
online musicians in residence, Post Nuclear Trash:

"Can you imagine a world with no music? It would suck."
Harry Styles

Naturaleza muerta con Instrumentos Musicales ~ 1993
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, September 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
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A Twin Sister For Jesus

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels, c. 1390
by Florentine Artist Agnolo Gaddi (c. 1350 - 1396)
It turns out that I'm not the only one
who believes that Jesus needs a sister!

Here are a few more:
1. In the 1980 Thomas Henry Huxley ~ Memorial Lecture, social anthropologist Edmund Leach asks not only " 'Why did Moses have a sister?' but also 'Why did Jesus not have a sister?'" (emphasis added).

Concerning the above painting of Christ crowning his mother as Queen of Heaven, Leach writes: "Apart from the fact that Christ is already wearing his crown and the Madonna is not, the two figures are represented as virtually identical; they might as well be twins" (57).

2. Contemporary American novelist James Morrow gives Jesus a younger sister in Only Begotten Daughter:

"Sister and brother, side by side, day after day, comforting the damned. It was like tending a garden, Julie decided, like watering flower beds of flesh. They divided the labor, Jesus cooling the bodies, Julie dispensing the drinks. He had the most wonderful hands, two featherless birds forever aloft on sleek, graceful wings. As he moved them, air whistled through the holes in his wrists." (182)

3. In The Friendly Persuasion, Jessamyn West allows an elderly Civil War era gentleman this forward thinking opinion:

"'God's only begotton son,' said old Eli Morningstar, leaning across the fence rail in his earnestness. 'Why only one, Jess Birdwell, and why a son? Whyn't a daughter? Something fishy there, Jess Birdwell, and the more you think on it, the plainer it becomes. Something mighty fishy. Something mighty fishy.'" (151)

4. In The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd recounts the day that her eyes were opened to this selfsame "Something mighty fishy":

Now sitting in church I was full of questions. Why was God always the God of Abraham, never the God of Sarah? Why was it often impossible, rare, or difficult for a woman to hold real power in the church? Women had been the largest consumers of church, yet we'd held a vastly disproportionate amount of power compared to our numbers and commitment there. . . .

The congregation stood to sing. Unbelievably, as if all the irony in the world were crashing down at once, the hymn was "Faith of Our Fathers." I tried to sing, but I could not open my mouth. It was as if something had given way in my chest. I lowered the hymnbook and sat back down. I was fighting tears.

. . . I felt too heavy to move. Until that moment I hadn't fully understood. I was in a religion that celebrated fatherhood and sonship. I was in an institution created by men and for men.

By the time I got home I felt disbelief that I'd not seen all this before -- that the church, my church, was not just a part of the male - dominant system I was waking up to, but a prime legitimizer of it.

I was too dazed to be angry. Mostly I felt disillusioned, sad, betrayed. . . . How could [the church] negate and exclude us this way? How had this happened?

. . . As de Beauvoir put it, religion had given men a God like themselves -- a God exclusively male in imagery, which legitimized and sealed their power. How fortunate for them, she said, that their sovereign authority has been vested in them by the Supreme Being.

That night I couldn't sleep. I slipped out of bed and went to my study. I stood by the window, looking out at the night. The tears I'd suppressed that morning in church finally rolled down my face." (50 - 51)

I know that's a long passage, but I had to include the entire segment because Monk Kidd expresses the disillusionment so well, the intolerable hurtfulness of being excluded by sexist language and male emphasis. Even at Christmas it's a struggle not to feel disgruntled and saddened by focus on father, son, and baby boy (thank goodness they "abhor not the virgin's womb"). The liturgical readings may be beautiful, historical, intellectual, and literary; yet the patriarchal, exclusive language in The Book of Common Prayer and the hymnal can also make girls and women feel like non - entities. Sadly, although in many instances, the language could be easily modified, the editing process does not seem to be a priority and, as ever, egregious old habits die hard.

I myself have stopped many times in the middle of a hymn (or at the beginning or sometimes declined to join in even before it starts), dismayed by the exclusivity of the masculine pronouns in every stanza. How can I keep on singing these songs? I recall Anna Quindlen writing a decade or so ago, "Well, we stick around because it's our church too" (still searching for source). But you know what -- when I hear those hymns and readings, it sure doesn't feel like my church. It's all about something that's not about me, and it hurts my heart.

Sometimes under my breath, I just change all the words to include women too, but this can be exhausting and should not be necessary (e.g., "With God as our father, brothers all are we"). Subversive murmuring may work in the short term, but we need a feminist revision. I guess it worked out okay for my sons -- Sunday school and choir -- but if they had had sisters, I'd have been worried for those girls and the negative impact on their psyches. Wouldn't it be nice to have a religion that included everyone? A Heavenly Mother (and I don't mean Mary; I mean a Goddess) as well as a Heavenly Father?

Wouldn't it be nice if God had a wife and Jesus had a sister?!

[See also To Forgive: Reprove, Restore, Reclaim]
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Belive It Or Not
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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my running list of recent reading
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Longly, Longingly

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Lady Lavery Banknote

James Joyce Banknote

Why can't the United States of America ever have writers
on our paper money like Ireland and England?
In a novel of so many unforgettable lines and phrases, one passage more than any other stood out for me when I first read Joyce's Ulysses as an undergraduate. It was this:

"A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom's heart. He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.

His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly longingly.

Wine."~ James Joyce, Ulysses, 172 - 73

The ache in Bloom's midriff brought to mind a few lines from a poem that I had loved back in highschool:

"I felt a soft caving in my stomach
As at the top of the highest slide
When I had been a child, but was not afraid . . ."

~ John Logan, "The Picnic"
So unexpected to encounter in fiction, poetry, or otherwise, such a visceral sensation described so accurately -- and the word longly -- had I ever heard it before? I don't think so. Though I've never fancied myself a poet, Joyce's strong, sad imagery inspired me to attempt my own rendition of heartache in the gut:

The Ache You Wear

You fall into her arms like crying,
feel her lips in your hair,
soothing like a parent
and something else.

Wooden and broken,
you lean rigidly.
Your forehead rests against breasts
which must be like your own.

With each soft motion,
the ache you wear like a brace
begins to melt, drips
slowly down your back.

Like congestion, it seeps inside,
fills the space between every rib,
then tatters into loose bits
that choke upward and sink within you.

Yearning for a familiarity,
you move toward this woman
and this one comfort
after taking leave of him.

For this time you fall away
from any pain.
Thick rags are floating
now in your stomach.

As connection and coincidence would have it, I recently came across the following within just a few months of each other:

1." . . . The feeling
resembles lumps of raw dough

weighing down a child’s stomach on baking day.
Or Rilke said it, ‘My heart. . .
Could I say of it, it overflows
with bitterness . . . but no, as though

its contents were simply balled into
formless lumps, thus
do I carry it about.’ . . . "

~ Denise Levertov, "Life At War"
2. "The pain he had felt in his chest after breakfast was gone: in its place he now had in his middle a curious, dry, empty, swollen feeling. As if he carried something inside him, hollow, but beyond his size and growing bigger."

~ Jessamyn West, Friendly Persuasion, 73
3. "For weeks, thinking of that made me feel like a chute had opened in my stomach and my heart was descending through it."

~ Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife, 20
4. "This is what I liked about my friends: just sitting around and telling stories. . . . I couldn't help but think about school and everything else ending. I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them -- it was kind of sad I didn't mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in mine, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way."

~ John Green, Paper Towns, 215
5. "They were nowhere near butterflies in the stomach. They were electric bricks. They sunk. They zapped. They made me want to keel over."

~ Heather Kirn Lanier, Teaching in the Terrordome, 37
6. "You wake up and you feel -- what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces have been rubbed raw."

~ Carolyn Parkhurst, The Dogs of Babel, (252)
(see Highlights from 2006 & 2007)


7. "But in a few minutes it was back again,
that ugly jagged ache beneath her rib cage."

Suzanne Berne, A Perfect Arrangement, 212

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

Not unlike the sunset:
" . . . all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl . . . "

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
~ Longly, Longingly my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Painting by Leonard Orr ~ Handful of Dust in the Wind
Mimi Allin writes:
"land sky heaped feathered leading discouraging
porcupined lit bloated muffled"
This Fortnightly's connections are all about the Ache of Modernism, the sudden tortured awareness of the unlived life, the life which dared nothing -- or not enough. As Carolyn Heilbrun writes of D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930): " . . . he understood that the mortal risk was not, or was no longer, death; it had become the possibility that life, the lived life, might be evaded." Historical discontinuity, alienation, asocial individualism, existentialism, melancholy -- these were the issues at hand. Horror to horror. Dust to dust.

Unlike the Romantic movement, which can be dated from a specific event -- the publication in 1798 of the Lyrical Ballads, Modernism begins less deliberately (unless you ask Virginia Woolf; more on this next time). There is not an initial document, such as the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads," which sets forth the tenets of Modernism and heralds a movement to which writers may rally. Instead, one must look in the works themselves to locate the key concepts shaping the tone of the canon. In chronological order, here are a few of my favorites:

Joseph Conrad / Heart of Darkness (1902):
"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, —
he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath —
'The horror! The horror!'" [emphasis added]

Henry James / "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903):
"So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. . . . It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baffled . . . The escape would have been to love her . . . This horror of waking-- this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze." [emphasis added]

E. M. Forster / Howards End (1910):
"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” [emphasis added]

T.S. Eliot / The Wasteland (1922):
" . . . I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you:
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. [emphasis added]

Jessamyn West / The Friendly Persuasion (1945):
"He, a live man, to die. He extended his hand, recalling its cunning, marveling at the way stiff, unpliable bones could be so cushioned and strung together as to be capable of music, of grafting a tree, of lifting a foal from it's mother's torn flesh -- and that hand to be dust. And the enemy present . . . He saw objects two ways, now, both as more beautiful and more pitiable: those which would stay, endure beyond men, stones, trees, the moving air, had new beauty, that of their own endurance and of his leaving; but men and women were more pitiable . . . Man's a sizeable hulk reared - up on his wagon seat and pulled about the earth by horses; dead, no more'n a spoonful of dust, not enough, spread thin, to take a small - sized horse track" (147 - 150). [emphasis added]

Jack Schaefer / Shane (1949 novel / 1953 film):
In the iconic closing scene, Shane bids farewell and rides off into the valley, ignoring young Joey's desperate cries of "Shane, come back!"

In his memoir 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal writes of the equally iconic moment in his childhood when none other than the legendary Billie Holiday (who was friends with his father) took him to see Shane at the movie theater. As the movie draws to a close and Shane rides off into the sunset, "Miss Billie whispered in my ear, 'He ain't never coming back'" (48).

Alan Sillitoe / "The Fishing Boat Picture" (1959):
"Then optimism rides out of the darkness like a knight in armour. If you loved her... (of course I bloody-well did)... then you both did the only thing possible if it was to be remembered as love. Now didn't you? Knight in armour goes back into blackness. Yes, I cry, but neither of us did anything about it, and that's the trouble." [emphasis added]

Iris Murdoch / The Black Prince (1973):
"The whole room breathed the flat horror of genuine mortality, dull and spiritless and final . . . (38)
"You understand nothing of -- the horror -- no wonder you can write real books -- you don't see -- the horror -- (224, emphasis added)
"The evening was overcast . . . I could smell dust, as if the quiet tedious streets all around me had dissolved into endless dunes of dust. I thought about this morning and how we had seemed to have all the time in the world. And now there seemed to be no more time. I also thought that if only I had had the wit . . . (285)
I awoke to a grey awful spotty early morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me . . . Everything seemed to be covered with soiled dust sheets. . . . I experienced horror, then memory." (341)

William Stafford / "A Ritual To Read To Each Other"
(1977, or somewhat earlier):

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. [emphasis added]

Kansas / "Dust in the Wind" (1977)
Click to listen:
I close my eyes
Only for a moment and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes with curiosity
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Now don't hang on
Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind

Dust Bowl

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, July 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Am I Dreaming?

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Thinking of the philosopher who did "not know
whether he was then a man dreaming he was a butterfly,
or whether he is now a butterfly, dreaming he is a man."
Zhūangzi (Chinese Philosopher, c. 369 BC – c. 286 BC)
A few weeks ago, I was so mesmerized -- as were many others -- by an inspiring philosophical post from my facebook friend Anna that I decided to record it here, along with a few additional connections of dreams and butterflies and reflective reality. On the way to school, her little daughter Clara had asked her, "Mom, am I dreaming? Am I awake? How can I ever tell if I am really awake?"

A variety of clever responses followed:

She's a philosopher!

A post - modern existentialist!

Definite Descartes moment. Proud.

I think I am; therefore, I think I am.

Very impressive! How did you reply?

I said she was having a Descartes moment. She said "what?" And then I didn't say anything else bc my younger kid started scooting off down the street. Seems appropriate enough.

All in good time . . .

Put The Matrix in!

There's actually ways to test if you're in a dream . . .

I prefer to let her wonder . . . AHAHAHHA! Maybe that's not nice.

What you didn't pinch her?

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: -- do I wake or sleep?
~ Keats (English Romantic Poet, 1795 - 1921)
Not only did Clara's question remind me of Zhūangzi's parable of the butterfly and Keats' "Ode to a Nightengale," but I also suddenly remembered this mysterious prose poem tucked away in my autumnal saved files. Has the narrator dreamed up the entire conflicted relationship? Was she in his dream? Was he in hers?

Free
I was always thinking about her even when I wasn’t thinking. Days went by when I did little else. She had left me one night as a complete surprise. I didn’t know where she went. I didn’t know if she was ever coming back. I searched her dresser and closet for any clues. There wasn’t anything there, nothing. No lotions or creams in the bathroom. She had really cleaned out. I thought back on our years together. They seemed happy to me. Summers on the beach, winters in the mountains skiing. What more could she want? We had friends, dinner parties. I walked around thinking, maybe she didn’t love me all that time. I felt so alone without her. I hated dinners alone, I hated going to bed without her. I thought she might at least call, so I was never very far from the phone. Weeks went by, months. It was strange how time flew by when you had nothing to remember it by. My friends never mentioned her. Why can’t they say something? I thought. I remembered every tiny gesture of her hand, every smile, every grimace. Birthdays, anniversaries — I never forgot. But then something strange started to happen. I started doubting every memory. Even her face began to fade. The trip to Majorca, was it something I read in a book? The jolly dinner parties, were they a dream? I didn’t trust anything any longer. I searched the house for any trace of her. Nothing. I started asking my friends if they remembered anything about her. They looked at me as if I were crazy. I sat at home and began to cheer up. What if none of this happened? I thought. What if there was nothing to be sad about?

~ James Tate (American Poet, b 1943)

Floor Mosaics, here and above,
at the Wynn / Encore, Las Vegas

And lastly, this dreamy poem which my son Ben was asked to respond to several years ago on a college entrance essay. The prospective students were given the poem without the last line and asked to imagine how the poet might conclude his reverie:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

~ James Wright (American Poet, 1927 - 80)

P.S.
MORE CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE

Shortly after posting the above essay, I came across the following passages.
Two in two days! What's the odds?

1. Rereading an old favorite
on Monday, September 29th:
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Dai Sijie (Chinese–French Author & Filmmaker, b 1954)

"At this Luo broke away and started running, faster and faster, in a desperate headlong flight down the steep mountain in pursuit of the Little Seamstress. I went after him, taking a short cut across the rocks. The scene was like one of the bad dreams that had been troubling me lately, with the Little Seamstress losing her footing and falling into the void, and with Luo and me chasing after her, slithering down perpendicular cliffs without a thought of the risk to ourselves. For a moment I lost track of whether I was running in my dream or in reality, or whether I was dreaming as I ran" (193 - 94).

2. Starting a new favorite
on Tuesday, September 30th:
The Friendly Persuasion
by Jessamyn West (American Novelist, 1902 - 84)

"They rode into Vernon [Indiana] together . . . two rawboned farm boys . . . and saw it the way a man who thinks he has been dreaming wakes and sees the landscape of his dream lying all about him, the disaster real, hard and unmelting as sunlight -- and dreaming the only means of escape" (74).

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Tuesday, October 14th

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