No One With A Nose

CENTRAL PARK ~ WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

" . . . the deciduous idea!
trees die for half the year and talk all else in the universe . . . "
from the poem "Desire, A Sequence" by Lee Perron, 1977
(photo taken on Ben's 21st Birthday, 2 June 2011)

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Another character who lives and dies by the nose:
Cyrano de Bergerac
A couple of weeks ago, on my Quotidian page, I posted the following long poem, which my nearest and dearest (and perhaps a few of my former students) will recognize as a long - time favorite of mine.For those who have not read it before, here is one of the best parables I have ever encountered on the topic of sacrifice and the price of experience. This man does not cut off his nose to spite his face. No, he does it to gain both the world and his soul.

I think perhaps rather than sacrifice, this poem may really be more about an idea that came to attention ~ coincidentally! ~ as I was turning the calendars ahead to July: opportunity cost, i.e., "the cost of any activity measured in terms of the best alternative forgone . . . the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices . . . the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources [ ~ such as true love ~ ] are used efficiently. Thus, opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered opportunity costs" (see Wikipedia for further explanation and footnotes).

An even better explanation is provided by the young entrepreneurs who designed the Indiana Council for Economic Education 2011 Economic Concept Calendar. The featured concept for July is "Opportunity Cost," illustrated by fifth grader, Abbie S.: "When you make a decision, the most valuable alternative you give up is your Opportunity Cost. (Opportunity Cost is NOT what you pay to buy something.) There is always an alternative to any decision, so every decision has an opportunity cost" (click ICEE, scroll down to page 7 for calendar contest winners; clicking on the winning entries link will give you a preview of next year's 2012 calendar).

Another way to think of it is the passage from George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara (but also ascribed to novelist H. G. Wells; a discrepancy that I have not yet resolved to my satisfaction):

"You have learned something.
That always feels at first
as if you have lost something."
If there is a decision, an alternative, something to learn . . . then there will be a cost, something forgone, something to lose.

Following Lee Perron's poem, you will find a couple of letters. All the connections are self - explanatory, I think. So, please, read on and enjoy:

from Desire, a Sequence (1977)
by Lee Perron, California Poet & Antiquarian Bookseller

there are so many innocent little things we want
with application and luck and a good nudge from the gods
we may have any of them

it's those gods -- they bestow all things upon you
and they do not ask for much in return
they will give you everything & they will ask back from you only
some small thing --
for instance, they might ask for your nose

come on, they say, why don't you just chuck it in
put it down the garbage disposal and as soon as it works its way
back into the earth we'll give you whatever you want
the deciduous idea! trees die for half the year & take all else in
the universe
-- i can hear what's going on in your mind: what, my nose? oh
no, not me, you must be thinking of some other guy
but you know, a man might do it
he might take a knife & cut a little deeper every day
and if by the second week he's still only through the skin and
hasn't really gotten to the bone yet
in that second week he decides to lob off the whole thing at once
and there he is with no nose
people laugh at him
but immediately the gods start bestowing their gifts
they give him patience & application
he learns how to do things right
slowly he grows in command of his will & intellect
and with these he acquires whatever he feels he needs:
a wife, lovers, respect in his community, a drum set
the capacity to drink limitless quantities of gin

but what is hard right from the start is that nose
he sighs often (through his mouth) and is heard to say
without my nose sometimes none of it seems to make sense
his friends show up and remind him of the cold hard facts of
his noseless life
they tell him to apply himself
and he's back at work again, gathering his desires

sometimes he wonders if he really had to go out & cut off his
nose just to learn how to get things
maybe he could have just gone out and gotten them
but no, he looks around & sees that no one with a nose has
anywhere near the things he does, not a tenth so much,
not a hundredth

whenever he takes a trip to one of those big medical cities --
boston, baltimore, houston, he'll go & talk to the medics
what can you do about this nose? he'll ask
what nose? they reply
he has learned to be earnest always: can you do anything about
getting me another one?
but when the doctors hear the circumstances
-- his confused early life,
his vow to the gods, the garbage disposal
-- they won't touch him with a ten foot pole

there are good years and bad
he goes through periods where he is a great complainer
what is the point of it, he says, if i have no nose?
his friends show up to console him
well at least you'll never have to rub your nose in your own
filth, they say
his friends become his tormentors
there is a long time he won't speak to anyone
night after night he dreams his nose has come back
each night it's the same shape, but a different size
somewhere along the line, tho, he stops fighting things so hard

there are always people to make jokes, even upon the wealthy & successful
he makes them himself in moments of despair
he will howl, every yes must have a no
but every ass must have a nose!
and on his tombstone the universal jester gets off a last good one:
an excellent man / got everything a man / could want; said yes
to all / but could have used more nose

so they laugh at him in the graveyard
but you listen, when that man died he had finally achieved every-
thing:

children, grandchildren, troops of friends
the warm feelings of all who knew him
earlier on concubines & no desire left unfulfilled
an animal park named in his honor
real progress in the field of cancer
a fully benevolent philosopher-king in charge of his country
universal justice prevailing throughout the land

at the end they hear him say
you know, if i had it to do all over again, i'd like to try it with
my nose the next time
and he dies
& it is nothing like the death of priam or macbeth
or any of those other simpletons
this man got everything

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

you have seen it perhaps
there is always the time the car stops
in front of the big white house
or gray house, or blue
it will not go any further with you
the car is stopped
and one of you must get out
and the other drive off
it is all that simple
-- do you think i am talking of love?

or you will be driving down a country road
and there are two sparrows
or buntings or bluebirds
and you hit one of these and it lies by the roadside
and its mate circles about chittering
and then sits on a fencepost
and sings something
this mate, perhaps, is inconsolable
please --
i am not talking about love

your mate dies, or parents
or one of your other friends
there is nothing fearful in the death
the deadman is not the problem
his letters perhaps
some phrase he spoke that rings every after
the way he died, what the surgeons did to his brain, or kidneys,
or heart
what you & he would have been doing now
next week, all summer long as you always did
the deadman did not die
your plans died
and this is what is so upsetting
this makes us so sick we cannot even think

i have seen all the trees
and the great views from mountains
the stars
the tiniest flowers within inches of my eye
but i have seen nothing more beautiful than human desire
in the country, the lawns just going purple with violets
we would have these violets and one particular friend
we have shattered the glazed bowl and make another
rounder, or less symmetrical, or with a plainer glaze
who could blame us? at sunset, we ask for wine
in white dawn we take coffee
we make lovely worlds more & more lovely
and then we see they are better simple
and then we make them simple
this desire is very much like song
our melodies everywhere about us
like butterflies, our desires hover about our heads and our hands

in this beauty the car stops
the arm reaches for the doorhandle
and there is nothing left to it but the pulling up on the handle
there is a way the eyes have of gazing intently downward
the legs slide onto the pavement
and one of you looks back through the car window
you may touch one another's lips, or not
it hardly makes any difference, so beautiful is desire

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

Letter from Ben McCartney to Lee Perron

28 March 2003

Dear Mr. Perron,

I am a 7th grade student, writing to you from St. Peter's School in Philadelphia. I want to tell you what a remarkable and memorable impression your poem "from Desire, a Sequence," has made on me.

Every month, every student at St. Peter's has to memorize a poem and recite it before his or her class. Then a few speakers from each class are chosen to recite their poems before the entire school. About a year ago, my mother showed me your poem, about the man who cuts off his nose in order to get whatever he wants from the gods. After reading your fascinating poem, I knew that I wanted to recite it at the next poetry declamation. I was successful in my class presentation and went on to win the award for the month and the all-school Declamation Award for 2002. I had several other successful poems throughout the year, but yours was the best of all.

In our family, we refer to your poem as "The Nose Poem," and we all love it. My mother (Kitti Carriker) learned of this poem years ago when she was a student of Professor Jim Barnes and Professor Andrew Grossbardt at Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville. She discovered your poem in The Chariton Review, 1977. After college, she became an English teacher, and she told me that she taught this poem to her students every year. But I think what made her the happiest was being able to share it with me and my dad and my brother.

Since your poem appears in The Chariton Review titled "from Desire, a Sequence," we have always wondered if there is more to the sequence than appears here. We would all be greatly interested in learning more about this poem, as well as other poems that you have written. Please let us know where we could look for more of your work (so far we have not been successful in the library or on amazon.com).

Thanks again for your wonderful poem about the man who understood the price he had to pay in order to get everything!

Sincerely yours,

William Benedict McCartney

P.S. I hope you will enjoy the enclosed video tape from Friday, April 26, 2002. Despite my very best efforts to do your poem justice, I accidentally omitted a few lines right near the end. I was mortified, but luckily no one in the audience (except maybe my mom) seemed to notice.

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

Letter from Lee Perron to Ben

25 April 2005

Dear Ben,

Your letter was a most pleasant surprise. Thank you so much for it, and for the tape of your reading, and for the news that you and your mother have memorized my 25 year old poem. I'm quite honored by your appreciation of my unassuming anti-hero. In truth, I had long since forgotten the poem. I can hardly describe the eerie, wonderful feeling of learning that it lives in the memory of people two thousand miles away and is still mentioned on occasion in classrooms.

The situation reminds me of a matter in the life of the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, who wrote a poem of protest against the imprisonment of her son by the oppressive regime of Joseph Stalin. She was able to recite it in public one or two times before the authorities stepped in and destroyed all written copies of it and forbade her to recite it again. Twenty years later, under a somewhat more open government, she wanted to work on the poem once more, but didn't have a copy. However, there were people from her audiences years before who, having heard it just once or twice, had memorized it. They were able to bring the whole text -- many pages in length-- back for her.

To answer your questions: I'm not sure now whether or not I had other poems in a group to be called Desire, A Sequence. At any rate, no such book appeared. While writing has always been an important part of my life, I have tended not to publish work. Someone once invented the term "privishing" to designate printing & distributing written work to a few friends, as distinct from putting work out to the publish ("publishing"). I've been a privisher, customarily sending one poem a year -- a winter solstice greeting -- to family and friends. Something in this practice gives just the right amount of emphasis to the fact of my existence, and I take satisfaction in it and don't seem to want anything more of writing.

It happens my wife and I are moving . . . this spring. In order to avoid moving excess baggage from one attic to the next, I'm attempting to look over every piece of paper in 8 large and ponderous boxes of old poems and daily journals. Somewhere in the mass I'll find a copy of from Desire, a Sequence and will look at it for the first time in all these years and consider whether or not to hang on to it. To hear that both your mother and you have memorized is sure to land it in the keeper file.

Are you a writer yourself? If in the future you should publish a poem I would be delighted it you'd make a photocopy and forward it here.

Many thanks again for keeping my poem alive and for you your letter.

Best regards,

Lee Perron

P.S. Enclosed a copy for you of a small "book" of mine that did manage to find publication -- something to be carried around in a shirt pocket.



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

Letter from Jim Barnes to Kitti

6 May 2003

Dear Kitti:

Thank you for the nice letter -- and the copies of your son's and Lee's letters. Happenings like this make all my years of editing worth it. The reward is the work and the knowing that it has meant something to someone out there in the world.

Let me hear from you: what you are up to, where you are teaching, what you are writing. You have a near - teenage so! My goodness, where has the time gone? Rhetorical question, of course. The mirror tells me each day: I am not Dorian Gray.

Peace and love,

Jim Barnes

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

Letter from Jim Barnes to Kitti

8 July 2011

Dear Kitti:

Did I tell you of my encounter with Lee--after having published several of his poems in Chariton? Spring of 1978: I was giving a reading of my work at U. Cal.-- Berkeley. I dropped a hint that I needed a ride, after the reading, back to my hotel at the San Mateo airport. Several offers were presented. One big fellow (6 feet, 6 inches, I'd say) stepped forward barefooted and stuck out his front paw. It was Lee, who'd seen the announcement of the reading in Poetry Pilot and had driven up from Walnut Creek. We had a great drive to my hotel and some really fine conversation. As it turned out, I discovered that Lee had a good friend in Lafayette, Indiana, at the university--Neil Myers, who ten years later, was to be one of the editors for my Purdue book La Plata Cantata. But now Lee and I somehow have lost contact . . .

Peace and love,

Jim

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

See? In every encounter there's a coincidence!
Now, we just need to get this blog post to
Mr. Perron to complete the connection!

[Additional posts on Jim Barnes, Andrew Grossbardt, and The Chariton Review include: Missouri Poets, Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy, Parallax, and Penelope]

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, July 14, 2011

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

Parallax

A MUSEUM & LIBRARY WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

THE ROSENBACH:
"A WONDERLAND FOR LOVERS OF BOOKS AND ANTIQUES"
Two special days this week:

Tuesday, June 14th: Flag Day, since way back in 1777 (officially established in 1916).

Thursday, June 16th: Bloomsday, ever since 1922, (officially established in 1954).

My maternal grandmother, Rovilla Heidemann Lindsey, died forty - five years ago today, on Flag Day in 1966. That year, like this year, June 14 fell on a Tuesday; and Grandma Lindsey's funeral service was held on Thursday, June 16.


Her husband, my maternal grandfather, Paul Jones Lindsey, died seventeen years later, on Saturday, June 11, almost to the day of my grandmother's death, but not quite. His funeral, however, was also held on the Thursday, June 16. For all those intervening 17 years, Grandpa kept the 1966 calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, turned to June. Every January, he would place the new one on top, but you could always see the 1966 calendar just underneath.

By the time 1983 rolled around, I had read James Joyce's Ulysses several times, studied it thoroughly, and worked as an intern on the James Joyce Quarterly. I was well aware of Bloomsday that summer and the literary significance of my grandparents' two funerals being held not only on the same day of the week and month as each other's, but also on the anniversary of Leopold Bloom's legendary day in Dublin ~ Thursday, June 16, 1904 ~ when he too attended a funeral ceremony. The uncanny coincidence was not lost on me.

I sent a letter to my undergraduate Joyce professor, Jim Barnes, telling him of my grandfather's Bloomsday funeral service and sharing with him the remarkable symmetry of my grandmother's funeral taking place seventeen years earlier, also on Thursday, June 16, way before I knew anything about Bloomsday. I was honored when he wrote back to let me know that he read my note aloud to his Joyce students that summer, as an example of how life can echo art. [My previous posts on Professor & Poet Jim Barnes include: Missouri Poets, Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy]


I guess that's why I can never let Bloomsday slip by unnoticed, especially when it falls, as it does this year, on a Thursday, something which happens at repeating intervals of every 6 - 11 - 6 - 5 / 6 -11 - 6 - 5 years. If you get a kick (as I do!) out of the Perpetual Calendar, you can easily figure out that the next time June 16 will fall on a Thursday is 2016 (then add 6, 11, 6, 5, and so forth, in order to identify the years to come).

Googling "Bloomsday" has led me to another Quotidian blogger (no! I didn't steal my name from him). Interestingly, he maintains that June 16 can really only be considered Bloomsday when it falls on a Thursday, i.e., every 6, 11, 6, 5 years or so! Calendrically, this idea appeals to me, though it seems a shame to pass up a yearly opportunity to visit the nearest Irish pub -- or perhaps the Rosenbach Museum & Library, if you happen to be in Philadelphia -- in celebration of the life and times and peregrinations of Leopold Bloom.

Bloomsday at the Rosenbach,
#2008 & #2010 Delancey Street, Philadelphia
**************************************

Some Quotations for Bloomsday, by Joyce and others,
in honor of wandering the streets of Dublin, or wherever:
It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life)... It is also a kind of encyclopaedia. My intention is not only to render the myth sub specie temporis nostri but also to allow each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the somatic scheme of the whole) to condition and even to create its own technique.
James Joyce (Irish novelist, 1882-1941)
Letters, 21st September 1920

"Think you're escaping and run into yourself.
Longest way round is the shortest way home."
James Joyce, from Ulysses, Chapter 13

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"
William Shakespeare, from King Lear

"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive
where we started and know the place for the first time."
T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

"Happy Bloomsday, citizens, phenomenologists, throwaways, foreigners, gentlemen of the press, evermoving wanderers, weavers and unweavers, pedestrians in brown macintoshes, Wandering Soap, sailors crutching around corners, no-one, everyone! Hoping you're well and not in hell!"
Kathleen O'Gorman, my friend and fellow Modernist

P.S. Is reading Ulysses still on your "to do" list?
Well, for a few milliseconds of entertainment, you can
enjoy this minimalist version: it will quickly bring you
up to speed, or serve as a quick review if it's been awhile:
Ulysses for Dummies
Haha!

P.P.S. End of June 2012: my mother has written to let me know that her first cousin Mildred (my grandmother's niece) died earlier this month, on June 14th & the funeral was held on June 16th.

P.P.P.S. Bloomsday 2015: thanks to Michael Lipsey for this amazing photograph: "Happy Bloomsday! The inside cover of my dad’s copy of Ulysses, which he read and reread for over 70 years. The last two were from tapes, as his eyesight was failing. Between the third and fourth he notes that I read Ulysses in 1967 — quite a bit of it on a long camping trip in the Smokey Mountains."

see also his notes below in "Comments":

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, June 28, 2011

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

Ad Hairenum

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSLADY LILITH, 1866 - 68 ~ BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828 - 82) "Rosetti makes Lady Lilith's long flowing hair the central focus of the composition." ~Breanna Byecroft

***************
In keeping with my recent hair-stories, Gerry picked this birthday card for me (and carefully added the glasses by hand). Cute!

Also arriving on my birthday was this little hair-story:

Tight Perm:
If you get a tight enough perm, she told me,
it's almost as good as a face lift.
But she had worked around a lot
of toxic chemicals in the 60's,
so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
by Brian Andreas . . .
"telling people about a better way of seeing."
"Tight Perm," showed up as my "Story of the Day." and immediately brought to mind a recent discussion with my curly - haired friend Eileen about a hair "relaxing" treatment called the Brazilian Blowout; she is also the one who said ad hairenum, which I stole for my title! Because of our natural curl, we have both been receiving numerous suggestions to try the scary - sounding "Brazilian Blowout," because it will make us shinier, save on styling time, and give us a "more professional" look. But she says, "No! It's fun being curly girls! Curls are purty! And our products have clever names like Be Curly, Bed Head, Control Freak, Deva Curl, and Mixed Chicks."

Repressing natural curl: why do we do it? In my last post (scroll down to read Scary Hair), I described a few fictional characters who struggle between accepting, changing, and apologizing for their natural curl. In real life, I myself have been known to straighten and oppress my hair upon occasion; but Eileen is adamant when it comes to the implements of hair torture, e.g., giant rollers (that was the old days), flat irons, and so forth: "I will not do it!" And her opinion of the Brazilian: "I think it's the botox of hair!"

See the connection here?
Tight perm = face lift,
Brazilian blowout = botox!

I know there is truth in Eileen's observation that behind the desire for fake straight hair lies the troublesome issue of conforming to "the rules of mainstream white beauty" (Anne Lamott's phrase). Not to mention various other issues of acceptance and celebration, surrender and control, prejudice, aesthetics, and personal insecurity. In Traveling Mercies, Lamott describes her first - hand experience with extremely curly hair:

"Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you're secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction but to gauge, miserably the odds of rain? Can you imagine how discouraging it was for me to live in fear of weather, of drizzle or downpour? . . . Obviously, when you really want this [spiritual] companionship and confidence but you're worried about your bangs shrinking up like fern fronds, you've got a problem on your hands."

Lamott recounts the liberating scene in Shawshank Redemption when Andy stands in the pouring rain with his arms outstretched. She confesses, " . . . if I were the prisoner being baptized by the torrential rain, half my mind would be on how much my bangs were going to shrink up after they dried." Ultimately Lamott concludes that "it would be an act of both triumph and surrender to give up trying to have straighter hair."

Sure you want to have the right priorities and keep your mind on higher things, but you also have to live down the prejudiced notions: "good children have shiny combed hair, while bad children, poor children, loser kids, have bushy hair"; the unkind remarks: "did you you stick your finger in a light socket"; even racist insults in Anne's case, because, though fair in color, the texture of her "crazy hair crown," tends toward wiry and kinky -- making it perfect for the cool dreads that she now wears. I admire her soul - searching explanation of making the switch to this new style:

"First of all, I felt it was presumptuous to appropriate a black style for my own liberation. But mostly when I thought about having dreadlocks, I felt afraid and disloyal. Dreadlocks would be a way of saying I was no longer going to play by the rules of mainstream white beauty. It meant that I was not longer going to even try and blend. It was a way of saying that I know what kind of hair I have, I know what it looks like, and I am going to stop trying to pretend it's different than that. That I was going to celebrate instead" (all quotations are from Traveling Mercies, 6 - 13, 229 - 37).

Anne Lamott







Alice Walker









Interestingly, both Anne Lamott and Alice Walker cite over-investment in haircare as an impediment to spiritual liberation. In Walker's terrific essay, "Oppressed Hair," she explains why accepting your hair on its own terms is crucial to a larger sense of self-acceptance and personal growth. She personifies her hair in the most delightful way: "I discovered my hair's willfulness, so like my own! I saw that my friend hair, given its own life, had a sense of humor. I discovered I liked it. . . . I would call up my friends around the country to report on its antics."

She describes her realization, practically an epiphany "that in my physical self there remained one last barrier to my spiritual liberation, at least in the present phase: my hair. Not my friend hair itself, for I quickly understood that it was innocent. It was the way I related to it that was the problem. I was always thinking about it. So much so that if my spirit had been a balloon eager to soar away and merge with the infinite, my hair would be the rock that anchored it to Earth. I realized that there was no hope of continuing my spiritual development, no hope of future growth of my soul, no hope of really being able to stare at the Universe and forget myself entirely in the staring (one of the purest joys!) if I still remained chained to thoughts about my hair."

Well, it requires thoughtfulness and fortitude to break those chains! However, if there's anyone who can put the issue into perspective, it's these two admirable women: wise Alice Walker who asks if we can ever achieve equality as long as woman aspire to look another way than what they are: light instead of dark, tan instead of pale, blonde instead of brunette, straight instead of curly; and honest Anne Lamott who points out that surrender is not all bad: "giving into all those things we can't control," letting go of "balance and decorum," befriending our hair.

Complete Picture from which above detail is taken,
face of Alexa Wilding, 1868
Original Version, face of Fanny Cornforth, 1867Also by Rossetti
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, June 14, 2011

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

Scary Hair

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in our hair."
~~ Mixed ~ Up Shakespeare ~~
Moon & Stars Garden Mosaic by Ben McCartney, at age 12 (2002)

****************
Gathering Electrons
This hair gathers electrons
from the atmosphere & uses it
to perpetuate new ideas about
hair's role in the history
of civilization.
by Brian Andreas . . .
"telling people about a better way of seeing."
Go to the StoryPeople website and you'll notice that an appreciative reader named Becky has nearly taken the words right out of my mouth:

"This must have been written by someone who has natural curly hair like me! This is the story of my life... every day is a bad hair day... but only if you let 'them' dictate what beauty is: long, straight hair on a stick thin body! I prefer to let my curls express their own beauty!" [ellipses in original]
I know just what Becky means about "them" and their dictates. Most recently it was the television show, Arrested Development. I had the ill-timed fortune of sitting down to watch right at the part where they start making fun of the girl with glasses and frizzy hair. Writers seem to love that tired cliche, but I don't. Besides, it's such old material, it's not even funny, especially if you happen to have glasses and frizzy hair. Remember Princess Diaries? Anne Hathaway is "beautiful" when she puts in her contacts and straightens her hair but "ugly" with her curly hair & glasses. Now why is that?

What a treat when "Gathering Electrons" turned up as my Story of the Day! It seems that I have been telling hair stories for as long as I can remember. I could go on and on upon the topic and often do. Even my Royal Wedding tribute was a story about my hair:

See "Royal Hair" on the Quotidian Kit
Scary Hair / Scary Glasses !
In this picture from college days, my twin brother Bruce says that I have "Scary Hair." We also have fun describing an earlier photograph, from 8th grade [sorry, I don't have a copy] in which he appears to have his arm around my shoulder but is in fact suppressing my springy hair behind my back! My friend Eve, blessed with a texture similar to mine, refers to this as our "Easter Grass Hair."

Just last summer, my husband Gerry and I were out in the garden checking out our raspberries, and I mentioned that the mosquitoes didn't seem as bad as they had the night before. In reference to the fact that after swimming I had allowed my hair to air - dry in its naturally unruly fashion, i.e., pretty much standing straight out from my head, Gerry responded: "Maybe they're scared of your hair!" Now that really made me laugh.

I got a similar laugh out of the young heroine in the memoir Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing up in the 1970s by Margaret Sartor. I enjoyed the fact that she has crazy frizzy hair like mine! On 2 November 1976, she writes in her diary, "Jimmy Carter was elected president and Daddy said he won because it was such a beautiful day all over the South. This would seem to suggest a connection between the presidency of the United States and the frizziness of my hair" (198). This reminds me of the boy at my high school graduation (a day of high humidity) who said, "Kitti, your hair looks like the Wrath of God." Gee, thanks! But, really, I took it as a compliment!

Margaret Atwood
Novelist, poet and playwright
And it's not just me and Margaret Sartor; there are numerous literary connections! When I met Margaret Atwood back in the early 80s, in addition to discussing her novels, we shared stories of how people kept mistaking our natural curl for fake and asking us where we got our hair permed. Alice Walker and Anne Lamott have written at length about their naturally curly hair. Even understated Emily Dickinson wrote: "My hair is bold like the chestnut burr." And remember Shakespeare's Dark Lady: "Dark wires grow on her head" (Sonnet 130). Sounds like natural frizz to me!

More recently, take The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, in which two pen-pals describe themselves to each other before meeting for the first time. Isobel warns Juliet: "I do not have a pleasing appearance. . . . my hair is wild and will not stay tamped down." Isobel has seen a photograph of Juliet and observes: "It must have been a windy day because your curls are blowing all about." Juliet responds: "It wasn't a windy day; my hair always looks that way. Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different" (53, 117 - 18).

And then there's The Help, which I'm sure many of you have read in the past few months. Along with all the weighty social and personal conflicts with which the various characters are struggling, there is also Skeeter's relentless quest, urged on by her beauty - conscious mother, for smooth straight hair. With her naturally curly / frizzy hair, she is considered less lovely, taken less seriously. Thus she willingly subjects herself to the "Magic Soft & Silky Shinalator," complete with "Miracle Straightening Cap," (127 - 28). By the end, however, "Her hair's long without no spray on it. The weight of it's worked out the curl and frizz" (461). That also sounds like magic to me, something that might not really work for most people in real life, but still the message is clear: Skeeter has made a choice against convention and repression. She has decided in favor of her own individuality. No more fake straight hair.

Shinalator
The symbolism works differently for Liv, the main character of Jennifer Belle's lovable, sarcastic novel High Maintenance. Whereas Skeeter's long, untended hair represents her independence, Liv's rebirth is symbolized by going from curly to straight, with a little professional assistance. The title -- High Maintenance -- refers not so much to emotional neediness as it does to the condo fees that go along with the properties that Liv sells in her job as a New York City realtor. At the very end of the novel, the phrase describes Liv's newly styled hair: "With my new keys in my pocket, I stopped in at Tortolla to have Tom do my hair. He blew it out straight for the first time. My long black wavy hair became . . . straight and Japanese looking . . . I loved it. I sat beaming in the chair. 'I always want my hair like this.'" Tom warns her how difficult it will be to maintain this look, how costly and time - consuming: "It's way too high maintenance for you," he concludes. But Liv is determined: "I want high - maintenance hair!" Not because she wants to be dependent upon Tom or the dictates of hair fashion; but because she wants to shape her own destiny: "I can handle it" (335).

These are just a few of the many electrons I have already gathered from the atmosphere for perpetuating new ideas about the role of hair in literature.

More to come . . .
Anne Lamott







Alice Walker









Post - Swim Easter GrassFrizzy Hair and Glasses (and Beaumont)
My real hair: somewhere in between
the Wrath of God and Fake Straight
P.S. My advice for the coming summer: if you have to choose between straight hair & swimming, don't fight the curl: CHOOSE SWIMMING!

Hungry Heart

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
" . . . Such lowly ancestry
they have, these sprouts, so plain! They could be beads
or dresser knobs or marbles for a game . . . "
from the poem "Brussels Sprouts" by Catharine Savage Brosman
Thanks to the miracle of the internet and google search, I recently had the good fortune to encounter the work of contemporary poet Catharine Brosman and to "meet" her via e-mail. I had been experimenting with my camera, a pound of Brussels sprouts, and a few leeks, and was so pleased with my results (see "Still Life with Brussels Sprouts and Leeks," above) that I thought to myself, "There must be a poem out there somewhere to go with this picture." How delighted I was to discover Brosman's beautiful ode to the Brussels Sprout, just in time for St. David's Day (March First). Brosman herself observes that not many poems have been written on the topic of Brussels sprouts, and I know she is right, because I have searched! She (and LSU Press) graciously consented to my use of her unique vernal poem on my daily blog (see "My Vegetable Love," on the Quotidian Kit, March 1, 2011).

Brosman has written poetry on a variety of other vegetables, fruits and seafoods. The striking imagery of "Artichokes," "Mushrooms," "Lemons," and "Asparagus," was in my mind as I shopped for produce a few days after reading, her book Passages: Lemons "Seasoning the mind"; asparagus offering "all the images you wish"; mushrooms "decomposing in a bitter alchemy." My favorite has to be the secret interior of the artichoke: "A final leaf, and I have reached / the void of things, the emptiness within--but / no! for at the core . . . one finds . . . a hunger of the palate, / of the heart."

Everybody's Got a Hungry HeartPortobello Mushrooms in the Brattleboro Food Co-Op
Photo by Leif K-Brooks
The next two poems, "Portobello Mushroom" and "Truffles," capture beautifully this dual hunger of palate and heart. The narrator of "Portobello" longs for "purity," though not to the point of death. Life itself, as the mushroom exemplifies, can be "ugly," "rotten - looking," "disgusting," full of "nastiness and needs." In "Truffles," the hidden fungus is "almost a disease" yet "the taste of love is there." Brosman writes that "at an appearance at a Georgia university a few years ago, I read, as the last of my selections, the Portobello mushroom poem in front of a large crowd, mostly students; they were wild about it."

Here are the poems:

Portobello Mushrooms
They’re now in vogue, along with fava beans, veggie burgers,
feta cheese: all good for us, perhaps, but not uniquely so—
imported often and expensive, sought in grocery stores
and fancy restaurants by food snobs, vegetarians,
and others who have “principles.” Where’s the bello part
in portobello? Ugly and quite rotten-looking, they resemble
some strange, slimy creature living underground, or rather,
in the sea, a cousin to a sting-ray or a jellyfish, a slug

or barnacle. Good heavens, they’ve got gills! And I’m
supposed to have that in a pita sandwich, or, worse still,
in lieu of steak! Unless they’re finely chopped,
they cannot be disguised, and even then, that dark brown skin
looks awful, surely tough. Cèpes, champignons, morelles—
they too are fungi, like the portobello, but at least
they’re small and delicate and generally pale; yet I’m not sure
that they are not disgusting also. Do we really want to eat

a reproductive organ sprung tumescent from dead leaves
and compost? Gastronomic tolerance is quite amazing,
if you think of it: consider liver, tongue, brains,
tripe, and kidneys, not to mention mountain oysters. Writing
this, I fear I shall end up a vegan or a Jain, not on account
of “principles,” but after much reflection on such things.
I understand the man who starves himself, less from a saintly
impulse than through yearning for a kind of purity,

an unadulterated, out-of-body state, forswearing nastiness
and needs. But that is death. Serve up the mushrooms, then,
well diced and in a sauce, with garlic or another flavor, lest
they seem too close to nature: that my nature, too,
may be transcended, sublimated, borne beyond itself—
a feint (for even Adam and his rib-mate, newly fashioned, ate
of Eden’s fruits) yet an ideal—the being of the angels
without appetite, their wings transparent and their bodies light.

by Catharine Savage Brosman
© 2011.
"All Rights Reserved."

****************************
Truffles
Such a temperamental food—changeable, that is
deteriorating easily, and fitting thus a lovers’
dinner. Earthy too—in Paris, they are sold
still cradled in their soil, all damp and secretive,
suggestive of the body’s appetites—and seasonal,
like love, but more autumnal, being mold,

a fungus, almost a disease . . . Good heavens,
are they really a comestible? But those who know
them swear by the sensation: what aroma
in their pulp, what taste when they are perfect!
(the idea of pigs’ snouts, dogs’, and compost
notwithstanding). —There on my plate, it lay,

that tender truffle, once, with pâté de foie gras
and rounds of toast, intended to be savored
gracefully, enjoyed—a gastronomic jewel,
and more: epiphany, epitome of love. Bon appétit.
—Deep in his sea-blue eyes, the flavor
flashed and flamed. A bite, another bite, a kiss

across the table, more champagne. Thin coins,
they were, those moments of delight,
epiphenomena, mere flickers in a looking-glass,
or little tongues of fire on the river, silvered
by the setting sun, as twilight played
among appearances. The evening ended, wisps

of gustative remembrance on the wind,
and willow branches weaving in embrace. Now
I sometimes buy white truffles, tinned,
and serve them with a trout au beurre, my friends
exclaiming that the taste of love is there—
a luminance in flesh, the dark heart of the woods.

by Catharine Savage Brosman
© 2011.
"All Rights Reserved."

["Truffles" was published in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture in 2003, and "Portobello Mushrooms" appeared in the same magazine in 2009. Brosman's upcoming collection, Under the Pergola will include the above "Portobello Mushrooms" and "Truffles," as well as a number of other food poems -- on Blueberries, Watermelon, Endive, Radishes, Figs, Grapefruit, and "Composition with Broccoli, # 2."]

The Yellow Morchella rotunda, a true Morel
photographed in France by Pascal Blachier
My personal introduction to the morel occurred one Spring, thirty - six years ago, just a month before my high school graduation, when my friend Yvonne invited me mushroom hunting. We rode the same school bus, but she lived just a little further out than I did, and in a more wooded area. I was never one for hiking or campfires; however, this particular excursion sounded not only pleasant but practically literary, like Wordsworth and his daffodils, or "gathering nuts in May." After all, it was May, and we hadn't much homework, and the sun lasted long into the evening. Yvonne said we should be able to find a lot; and she was right -- the morels were everywhere! However, I was startled abruptly out of my Wordsworthian reverie by Yvonne's observation that "obviously the brush hog had been through recently."

What? Should we turn around and run home? "No, it'll be okay." How could she remain so calm? She didn't seem the least bit bothered by this fearful news, so I tried to be a good guest and follow her lead, but visions of tusks and wild boars and razorbacks were racing through my head. I picked the rest of my mushrooms nervously and totally mystified by her lack of agitation.

As you might have already figured out, the last laugh was on me when I finally made it home and informed my parents of my brush with danger. It turns out that all the while that I was envisioning something like this:


Yvonne had something more like this in mind:


Well! How was I to know that
a Brush Hog (aka Bush Hog)










was not the same thing as
a Bush Pig?!













SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, May 14, 2011

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

and my previous Catharine Brosman post
on The Quotidian Kit:

"My Vegetable Love" March 1, 2011

Dagmar's Birthday

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Dagmar loved having lunch outside at little places like this!
Photo above taken in Brookston, Indiana
By Dagmar Murray, October 2010
Lunch Friends: Dagmar, Kitti, Katy, Cathy
(My Birthday Last Year)
I'm posting a day early this time ~ on the 13th instead of the 14th ~ because my friend Dagmar was born on April 13th, 1959, and today would have been her 52nd birthday.

Another friend ~ www.jandonley.com ~ also born in April and often mentioned on my blogs, sent a link to the following poem the other day on facebook. Jan wasn't sending the poem, which she describes as "short and so, so beautiful," just to me. Nor did she send it in connection with Dagmar, who died last month, sadly and suddenly. However, as so often happens, Jan's message seemed to come at precisely the right time, thus I share Rilke's poem here today in honor of Dagmar's birthday:

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

by Rainer Maria Rilke
from his Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

Dinner Dance Friends: Dagmar, Katy, Cathy, Kitti
(Keith, Peter, Jack, Gerry)
Dinner Theatre Friends: Dagmar, Kitti, Katy, Cathy, Leta
(2 husbands visible; 3 others taking photographs)

***********************
I also spent an afternoon last week reading Maya Angelou 's Letter to My Daughter because I wanted to find the sections that I heard Dagmar's daughters read at her memorial service. I believe these are the lines:

"I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return. I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories.' I am besieged with painful awe at the vacuum left by the dead. Where did she go? Where is he now? . . . I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.

"When I find myself filling with rage over the loss of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns and questions should be focused on what I learned or what I have yet to learn from my departed love. What legacy was left which can help me in the art of living a good life?

"Did I learn to be kinder,
To be more patient,
And more generous,
More loving,
More ready to laugh,
And more easy to accept honest tears?

"If I accept those legacies of my departed beloveds, I am able to say, Thank You to them for their love and Thank You to God for their lives." (107 - 08)

And this:

"Condolences: For a too brief moment in the universe the veil was lifted. They mysterious became known. Questions met answers somewhere behind the stars. Furrowed brows were smoothed and eyelids closed over long unblinking stares.

"Your beloved occupied the cosmos. You awoke to sunrays and nestled down to sleep in moonlight. All life was a gift open to you and burgeoning for you. Choirs sang to harps and your feet moved to ancestral drumbeats. For you were sustaining and being sustained by the arms of your beloved.

"Now the days stretch before you with the dryness and sameness of desert dunes. And in this season of grief we who love you have become invisible to you. Our words worry the empty air around you and you can sense no meaning in our speech.

"Yet we are here. We are still here. Our hearts ache to support you.

"We are always loving you.

"You are not alone." (111 - 12)

Millennium Park Mirror Ball, Chicago
Photo by Dagmar Murray, February 2009
Back in June 2009, when I started my daily blog ~ The Quotidian Kit ~ I asked Dagmar if I could use her photo of our reflections in the giant mirror ball as the header, because it goes so well with the quoted passage from Quinton Duval. The city looks to me like a big, rounded jar where big ideas might huddle, along with the miniaturized images of our lunch group. We may appear very tiny, but we are not alone!

Here are a couple more pictures taken on the same day:

Riding the Train to Chicago . . .
to have lunch at the Italian Village and see "Jersey Boys"

Dagmar, Kitti, Cathy . . .
at the Chagall Four Seasons Mosaic
First National Plaza
Corner South Dearborn & West Monroe Streets


"The stars were my best friends.
The air was full of legends and phantoms,
full of mythical and fair-tale creatures,
which suddenly flew away over the roof,
so that one was at one with the firmament."
Marc Chagall

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, April 28, 2011

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