Pushcart Stories

Who doesn't find hope in pushcart stories, America's best? Pasquale took Will and me on a tour of northeast Bronx where he has made a home for 35+ years. As we crossed the Bronx River Bridge, we stopped for the raising of the draw in order for a barge to pass. Then we went on City Island to go to Sammys (no apostrophe) Fish Box which has been a huge enough success that Sammys Shrimp Box was added across the street. Sammys is a pushcart story as he started out with simple fare and built the cart into an enterprise. Lee, the waiter, happily recounted his odyssey from Thailand as a teen with ten dollars in his pocket. First stop Germany. No, he didn't speak German, only a little broken English. America, the land of dreams fulfilled, came next. He proudly showed us the I.D. cards of his daughters': University of Chicago, MIT, Cal Tech, and UC Berkley. Lee had wanted to be a physician. Instead, he worked seven day/14 hour shifts to help his daughters achieve. His wife stayed home and assisted the family in her motherly, wifely ways. The girls' names translate to Blessing and Peacefulness. The paper placemats had a map of City Island with drawings of signal flags, ships--Yawl, Brig, Sloop, Schooner, Cat Boat--but the map didn't give a hint of the winsome cottages with exuberant window boxes and container laden steps. A church called Star of the Sea captured the nature of the place. Singular and beautiful.

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...May the blessings of good friends ad tucked away surprises be yours...

A Friday in Chapel Hill

I was thinking today of a story in Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about the "Merry Pranksters." In it was a repeated line comparing the bus to Life. You were either on the bus!!!!or not. My excursion to Carrboro, which is across the street from Chapel Hill, involved 4 buses with short rides. It's only about a mile but the bus from Fairoaks goes to town and then I catch the bus to Carrboro around the corner. I knew it was going to be a good day when the two classics profs got on and sat behind me. One of them knows I like to eavesdrop. He was talking to a quieter prof about travels in Italy. The phrase I liked was, "You can get anything at the Vatican pharmacy. The Holy Spirit and all that." Waiting for the bus coming back I started a conversation with a woman who had a page turner mystery in her hand but she wasn't reading it. That intrigued me so I commented on her bookmark, the magnetic kind that saves the place right at the paragraph one leaves. Sure enough, she wanted to talk, not read. We had a lot in common. She liked thrift stores, wondered why we have to hear endlessly about sordid news, asked why people ran for office and why they didn't say, "See this forehead? It's out the door!" when critics circled like sharks. Just as I got on the bus, a woman I can only call Slinky dashed up yelling at a homeless man that she'd be back in an hour. She must have been 5'9" and weighed 105 pounds most of that being the weight of tattoos. She was loud. Her dress was to the floor in shiny fabric unknown in Chapel Hill and backless. She sat opposite me and yelled at the bus driver, "Can we eat on the bus?" Bus Driver said, "No!" Slinky said, "I can't wait for my French fries." I leaned in and sang five words on five notes, "You'll justhavetowait." Her eyes popped open. An audience! She said, "I sing, too!!!!! I have an event on Friday. Can you come? I just got out of jail because when I sang last week my skirt was too short and a wind came up." The police noticed she had no underclothes. This time, though, she was properly attired but admitted she still had no underclothes. Then she said, "I can do pullups, too!" and proceeded to do about 15 on the bar above her. Bus Driver began sighing. A young black woman on the other side of me sat quietly observing. I said to Slinky, "Say! You could join Cirque d' Soleil!" I didn't know if she knew what that was. She brightened. She said, "I could sit on the moon! You have given me a dream! What's your name?" I said, "Mimsey." She said, "I'm Donna. I call myself MyDonna Remax." Suddenly she discovered she was on the wrong bus and tried to get Bus Driver to let her out in the middle of a five lane road. Bus Driver said she could get off at the next stop. I reprised, "You'll justhavetowait." When she sallied off the bus, she waved and said she would see me on Friday. I said to the air, "It's already Friday." I turned to the young woman and commented, "We should have asked for an autograph." Young Woman didn't smile or respond in any way but when it was my turn to disembark, she said, "You have a beautiful day!" as though she also was a friend. One never knows whom one might be influencing. Which reminds me of the car repair shop I saw in Carrboro. The sign read, "Gates of Beauty Body Shop. Peacemaker-Owner."
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....may the road rise to meet you as they say in old Ireland and may the travelers along the way be of good cheer...

Gardens I Have Known

from a 15th century tapestry

Oto's garden

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Lucille noticed something I had not. She took me on a picnic to the rose garden in front of the UNC planetarium. I hadn't known there was a rose garden. I've only been there how many hundreds of times?? When I saw it, I said, "That's landscaping, not a garden." We got into a philosophical discussion about what the definition of a garden is and what our first impressions of gardens were and how these showed the differences in our personalities. My introduction to gardens was in Bahia where I was put out to nap behind the stone house amidst dense foliage, chattering monkeys, songbirds, exotic flowers, and cool shade.There was an element of danger, secretiveness, too. The next garden to impress me was the Garden of Gethsemane when we lived on the Mount of Olives. I told Lucille the cloisters and atriums of the various schools I attended, paintings such as "The Unicorn in the Garden" which was the cover art for a book of poetry by Anne Morrow Lindbergh seem to add up to some kind of clue to why I like small beautiful spaces, set apart places. Lucille needs the freedom of open expanses. I said, "In California when everybody else was marveling at the sunsets on the ocean, I was delighting in the tide pools. Once when at Air Bellows Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Douglas asked what I was doing. He said I was missing the view. I couldn't comprehend such a remark because I was viewing something wonderful--a tenacious tiny wildflower struggling to grow out of a wall of crackling boulders." Lucille mentioned the idea of this being a political bent to see the local rather than the global, to need a purpose as well as a pleasure, to enclose myself to guard against the destruction of beauty. We discussed what I think of as garden material. Yes, I like fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables. Randy Walker of Roanoke asked me to write two lines of his four line poem. He started with a carrot scene. My reaction was, "What in the world could I have to say about this poor doomed carrot??" But we did our assignments. Lucille pointed out two things. One was that, once again, it echoed of a political statement. "It shows what will happen to the other vegetables if they ignore what happened to the carrot." Also, it reflects my contemplative mentality. My gardens have to have a purpose, a boundary; they are guarded in the same way as what I said about being an islander. An island, after all, is the perfect garden. I see now that the Garden of Eden was my most lasting influence--bounded by angels, incomparable, with the purpose of naming the animals and being good stewards of the Earth. I'm back to why I like short stories, aren't I? On the bus today I was thinking about the unicorn and I added something else to my garden definition. It differs from landscaping because of the creatures who live in it--the faeries, gnomes, slitheries, chatterers, and small beings who sing and croak. There is a quality of magical kingdom to my gardens. Whether it's the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park, or Oto's garden as seen above, "my" garden is the "detail" in the larger artwork.
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Randy's poem:
The silent scream of a carrot being diced
could be heard from the vegetable bin.
And yet, amid the ruckus and the din
All looked away, left her, unaided, sliced.
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.....the blessings of secret flowery nooks or panoramic vistas, whichever or both appeal to you, be yours....

Under the Influence of Short Stories

How many times have I heard the question, "What book has influenced your life?" My comment is, in reply, "Tell me about a short story." I remember the story which changed my mother's life. The Dream Dust Factory, first published in 1947. Apparently, it was about a man who transported himself to this magical location when the going got tough by pushing an imaginary button in his brain. My mother even had a little hand signal when she was about to drift off from some tedious conversation; it involved touching her face with one finger and shooting me a wisp of a smile. Traveling on the train last week reminded me of a cautionary tale about expectations: a man working on a train route passes a house by the tracks on his run and waves to a woman and a child. Over the years, he begins to think of this as coming home. Eventually, the man retires and decides to go visit the woman. I don't recall whether the woman had also fantasized about the man waving at her through the years; I only remember the disappointment and shock (for the man, for the reader)when the man discovers the woman is not at all what he had hoped. Because of that story, I have been careful not to build up expectations, although generally, events in my life have exceeded the wild white mares of dreams. Another story which influenced me was O'Henry's, The Last Leaf. It taught me that death is an appointment we all have. The story saved me the wrenching, "If only I had..." In the story, the bedridden woman looks out the window at a tree in autumn and knows she will die when the last leaf falls, not before, not later. Nothing can prevent or alter this appointment. Poe's stories testified to the importance of mood and Isak Dinesen's, the spell of place. Arthur Conan Doyle made plotting and deduction as essential as a title. A short story is what my friend, Ellen, calls a "baklava event"--small, sweet, intense... and I would add, the taste lingers. Henry thought of Ray Bradbury's Golden Apples of the Sun and Billie Lu talked about the metaphorical imprisonment of women in The Yellow Wallpaper. Jenny said Gogol can't be beat for understanding the nature and propulsion of "habit" in our lives, that the world could be changed by discarding the pettiness of these daily decisions. Another form of entrapment? Frank O'Connor influenced my writing simply by his love of revision. His widow wrote a preface to a collection of his stories in which she said it would be the final version since he was now dead. I didn't know this about him but applauded when she said he rewrote stories after they were published. Like Mark Twain, Frank was a believer in getting the right word in the right place and having the lightning strike. John wrote: "I know you're looking for a short story by a writer who -- as Joyce might have put it -- succeeded in crafting an epiphany to fit into an economy size package. Perhaps like a small toy box in an animated cartoon. It opens and up pops a gigantic, fearsome clown. Two stories -- both read a hundred years ago and reread from time to time -- helped open a universe-sized door for me. The first was Salinger's A Perfect Day for Bananafish. I didn't know you could do that! It was a just a little grenade, but the shrapnel could have leveled a city. The second was William Faulkner's The Bear. Granted it's really a novel in disguise, but great writers deserve to get away with anything. Let bean counters color between the lines. Faulkner says 'Here is life in a universe that happens to be set in a place called Mississippi.' And it was and am I glad I got in." Will said he was affected by the struggles in Toilers of the Sea. Charlie's vote: "When I was in the Navy I read a Hemingway short story called, I believe, Up in Michigan (or maybe Minnesota). It made me realize how awful a woman's lot in life can be at the hands of a callous man." Perhaps because I am a descendant of the southwestern peoples who sat around fires under starry, expansive skies and told stories complete in one night is why I love a short story. Or it could have come from parables, as I thirsted for sermons using the illustration of a mustard seed or the lilies of the field. This is not to say I don't like novels. They are my favorites but if you list your ten best, one of them will always remind me of a short story. Short stories are the candy eggs with the dioramas delicately constructed inside, fragile ships in a bottle, or geodes cracked in half in a display case. They are exquisite miniatures bringing a particular lesson from the outer world. They are a wink, a blown kiss, a sudden smile, a notebook with extra pages, a tiny gift of prophecy, a brief concentrated glance of recognition. In their brevity lies their strength. They are the poetry of prose.
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...may the blessings of fleeting golden moments be yours...

Setting the Stage

I was born in the late evening on the eve of the summer solstice, south of the equator(12 degrees, 58 minutes) where summer is winter during the time of the Festa da S?o J?o, a harvest festival.Throughout June, there are fireworks. I arrived to the sound of forro bands (accordions, hand-drums, triangle)and starbursts in the city by the Bay of All the Saints of the Savior. In the short form Portuguese, we called it Bahia. On a map, it's known as Salvador.
Salvador overlooks a bay. There are 38 islands in that bay. I probably never went to one but the view shaped my outlook. I am an islander at heart--enriched by an enclosed environment requiring a different kind of transportation so visitors would have to want to go there. It's not a loner existence but a special, set apart one. The state of Bahia is bigger than Texas.The cobbled streets near our house were steep. There was an elevator, Lacerda, built from the cidade alta to the cidade baixa (upper and lower city). It looks like a construction project in progress jutting out streamlined, modern, a rival to Rio's more famous massive protective Cristo with outstretched arms. I doubt that I rode the elevator or sailed on the bay. I was content to nest and sing in our beautiful house. I was given the name Christine by my father who had seen Greta Garbo in a talkie playing Queen Christina of Sweden. My godmother didn't like it. She had a silver baby cup inscribed"'Irene" and wouldn't change it. How did I get a godmother when my parents were agnostics? Leo Wrench, married to "Big Bob" Wrench, was a good friend and influential. Leo didn't like the name Della(my mother's name) so Della was arbitrarily changed to Judy, which stuck for forty years. My parents were also good friends with the British consul, a Catholic. Within a month of my birth I was christened Christine. The certificate is elaborately embellished. The christening dress could fit a tiny soft animal. It's curious that the agnostics branded me with a destiny-- follower of Christ. The Hindus say the awaiting soul chooses its parents. I can see it. I can see me also choosing that house in that place. The house was stone and, strangely for a South American house, had a large fireplace. It was a lesson in contrasts. There is a picture of me in front of the wintry fireplace dressed in summery batiste with my favorite object, a flyswatter. No blanket or doll for me. Judy said the bathrooms were like Grand Central station. I laid claim to the garden and my mosquito netted nook where I could hear the birds. I was carried about by the cook and her assistants, Alma and Zsa Zsa. My world consisted of music, comfort, my necklace and my flyswatter. My brother's existence was opposite to mine as he was going to a German school where he tackled his work dervishly and was first in his class by the end of the year. He spoke German & English. I spoke Portuguese in a waterfall sort of way. He was very busy and accomplished. Our encounters were friendly but we were already on differing paths. I preferred to sing all day and sew. Except for the times I almost died (of a fish bone stuck in my throat, a tropical fever going too high) my days were pleasant. My observational skills were honed by the visiting dignitaries. My mother thought it significant that Walt Disney was one of them. The Magic Kingdom coming to me.

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.....may the blessings of an island, a summer garden be yours..

ELEGY FOR A HIGHLAND MAN

photo credit: http://healingwoman.blogspot.com

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Douglas C. Taylor 1/16/1919-6/18/1999
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Each year on June 18th, I have set aside a day to do Everything Douglas. I listen to Douglas music (no pop, rap, rock,blues, jazz, or Stravinsky) and play the cd of The Magic Flute which I received as a gift for a donation to WCPE after he died. The Magic Flute was his favorite opera and a highlight for him was when he was cast as a monk in Appalachian State's production. He made a good monk with his beard, basso profundo, and beanpole height. He was amused when at a restaurant someone came up to him asking for a blessing rather than an autograph. My remembrance reading for this day includes parts of a mystery such as something by P.D. James or Tony Hillerman and Psalm 100. I go to a cafeteria. Eureka had a buffet but not a cafeteria so Greek food was the alternate choice. My much loved theory was that Scotland was settled by Greeks rather than Romans. Douglas taught Humanities and was partial to the Greeks. I guess Romans didn't have as good a salad. He was a train lover and said the best part about living in Durham was that one could go anywhere from there. He hated cities. The closest he came to liking a city was Halifax, Nova Scotia. I think that was probably because of his chance encounter with a Greenpeace vessel and the subsequent conversation with a doctor on board. When they became overly animated, I told him that Douglas couldn't be spared as he needed to drive me home to Carolina. It was a close call and a few years later, Douglas was on a freighter going to New Zealand, taking a route very like that of the Rainbow Warrior. As to my attire for this day, I make sure when going out the door that I have my peace earrings and I think about Normandy. How could someone so sensitive and shy and bookish have managed all the horror? He had frequent nightmares about a particular German soldier. I imagine it was his first "kill." He would sob, "He was only a boy!" On the night Desert Storm was announced, we were at choir practice, a small choir at the Presbyterian church in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, as lovely and peaceful a place as one could imagine. I got up and left. I couldn't sing. But I wasn't the first one. Douglas was first. At the end of my remembering day, I try very quietly, Abide with Me, which Douglas sang for his father's funeral, a man who had been "saved" at the Boston boatyards, fresh from Scotland at the age of eighteen, by a Salvation Army quintet and later went to the Philippines to lead the singing at a YMCA. As far as I know, he did not play an instrument and discouraged Douglas from continuing his clarinet after graduating from New Rochelle High School. He didn't play for four decades until I found this out and suggested he return to the stage with the Watauga County Community Band. A lot of no's followed but I could see it was what he really wanted to do so off we went for clarinet buying. When he and my mother and I moved to Durham, he played in three bands and kept three t-shirts for the summer day when there was a gathering of bands. Personally, I thought he should wear his Scottish Country Dance tee. I was overruled. I think now of the evenings at the cabin when the fireflies came up at nine o'clock and the stars shone brighter than anywhere. I pretend he is dong an Amtrak loop or a Friendship Sloop adventure. I expect a postcard to come soon and I say goodbye all over again.

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.....may the years of your life bring joy enough to assuage the sorrow...

An Extravagance of Adjectives, Gently Placed

I like playful words, whimsical words, words with haloes of sparkles around them. I avoid what I call crudities and aspire to gathering images so beautiful that my bucket overfills with a sweetness comparable to a Round Meadow morning. My mother was wont to say, (yes, I like those old fashioned Shakespeare expressions which a Shakespearean scholar friend of mine claims it's good I don't understand as they would be banished from my lexicon forthwith). I like fabricated words and monikers. Sometimes I forget if what I have made up is make-believe until Spell Check asks if I want to "Add to Dictionary;" I always respond with Yes! In a notebook, I have some drawings of my Faerie's Dictionaerie. I'm getting sidetracked (again!). I was about to quote my mother quoting Oscar Wilde, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oh, and that bucket? It's not an ordinary bucket. It's a pail with tin punch cutouts of forget-me-nots and a poem written around the brim in burnished gold calligraphy catching the light. It has the sound of twigs knocking against each other in a summer storm. Oh-oh. I can feel a lecture beaming in about my not living in the Real World. I've heard that one before and before and before. Who needs Tell It Like It Is? This is my Real World. The perfume is heady and the sights dazzling. And it's a catalyst. I received an e-mail while in Eureka which began, "Fear not, my Friendly!" How delightful. How mimsey. How transforming of the day. It caused me to go out and say, "Hi, Friendlies!" to the owners of Dog and "Hi, Friendly!" to Grumpyette and "Hi, Freckles!" to what appeared to be a spotted owl pinata on a porch. And so I say to you, my fine feathered readers, embellish what you write. Decorate your day. I quote my mother quoting Mark Twain: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." Say it better, flufflier, huger, nicelier..you can seed your garden one phrase at a time and the world will come to see it. Butterflies will inhabit it and crawly creatures with crimson dots on their tails will slither amidst its rockery. Imagination will be its maiden name and yours will be the joy. Etymology. What a lovely word. The etymology of exhilaration: it comes from two Latin words, ex "thoroughly" and hilarare "make cheerful."
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.....Add Sides
Stir the pot.
Keep it hot.
Let it not
be all we've got.--CT
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...the blessings of kindely, exuberant words and pineapple mornings be yours...

Member of the Family

In my family, the cartoonists proliferated: my brother, my Aunt Stella, my mother, and in words, my dad. It was hard to be a very serious child. "It's not funny!" was a line I would have used repeatedly but gave it up by age 7 and just smirked instead. The silent treatment worked for them and made me skyrocket in the self-esteem department. I didn't "get it." Why were these intellectuals who could expound on the difference between those old guys Socrates and Plato at the drop of a hat and explicate the origins of Virgil's whatever be such a bunch of bananas? And why were they always laughing at me? What did I do? I remember my mother once saying, "Look! She's standing!" What was that all about? Was this a commentary on naps? In high school, one of my friends made the startling remark, "You are so funny!!!!" My reply brought peals of laughter. "But I'm serious! I am a very serious person." She barely was able to squeak out, "Right!" I began to worry when I took a humor writing class. I was hoping to flunk. It was a project --like my mother putting me in beauty pageants so I could win scholarship money. I tried my best to do poorly. The class, however, always finished up for the day laughing. Yep. Burt kept my stories for last. Then, my dad needed someone to do some cartoons for the retirement community newspaper he had started. I didn't understand why he chose me with all the rich talent handy. Puzzled at my success, I decided that trying to share my serious persona with the world might be like Arthur Conan Doyle's attempt to inform us that there was more to life than Sherlock Holmes. He had to be kidding!! A friend of mine in Eureka finally set the record straight. She said, (laughing),"You are a regular Dalai Lama. He giggles on average 500 times a day." Oh! Now we're talkin'! Now I get it. Really. Seriously! He likes outfits and peace and silly days and writes books. People should have pointed this out when I was a child. I can see why they didn't. I was more fun than a barrel of hoptoads to watch. "Look! She's giving us the silent treatment! Don't disturb her. It's the Heavy Limb pose. It's too funny!" There was a discussion the other day about the Briggs-Meyer personality test. I was in the stratosphere on Service. I would like to tell you at this point that I have been glad to be of service to Earth by being the object of entertainment. Well, sort of. I would rather have been Mother Theresa than the Dalai Lama. She wrote books , had outfits, loved peace and silly days...and best of all, hung out with babies. And everybody took her cerealy.

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.....the blessings of a merry heart and a deeply felt mission be yours....

Transportation

photo credit: Cheryl Dolby

In 1955, my dad was working the graveyard shift at the St. Petersburg Times as an obituary writer. He couldn't chauffeur Moi around to the various activities so necessary to high schoolers. It was time to buy a car. There were two requirements as I saw it. It had to be the right color (green) and it had to be the smallest car on the road. Fortunately, that was the year that the little green and white Nash Metropolitan hit the dealership in St. Pete. It was perfect. I named her Eileen. I discovered the world of bumperstickers and duly adorned her. Gas at the Pure station was 28 cents and my friends chipped in on our adventures. My mother became partial to road trips, the most memorable of which was crossing the Everglades in the blistering heat with no air conditioning and no windows lowered b/c of the swarms of mosquitoes. We made it through on our sense of humor and her stash of fudge. In Louisiana, there was the little red Renault. When the California years began, I decided to "step lightly on the Earth" and quit driving. There were other factors such as a tight budget but mainly, I felt the need to prove the merits of public transportation. And prove it I did. Then in 1988, after my mother came to live with us in North Carolina, it was time for another purchase. Providentially, (of course!) the Subaru Justy made an appearance in Boone. It was white; I named her Clara. Upon moving to Durham, I painted a poem on her in Carolina Blue and the addition of bumperstickers escalated. I bought a tag which read O TERRA for the environment and for the line from the opera, Aida. When Clara began to falter, I donated her to the American Cancer Society which valued her parts at $1700. I was pleased she was appreciated and little Henry waved goodbye as the towing truck disappeared into the distance. That year, Douglas had a Geo Metro, green, which we named Esme for Esmeralda. When he died, she became mine. She was the grandest of helpers hauling my goods up to Roanoke, Virginia. She needed a new plate and I chose ALL 2 U with a star design which indicated she supported the effort to end domestic violence. When I was leaving for a return to California, I looked around for just the right people to give her to. I wanted something or someone symbolic that related in some way to Douglas. I knew I had found the right choice when I met Jim Galloway and his wife, Rose. Jim had sung opera in New York. Douglas had sung opera and had lived in New York. Being of Scottish descent, he had found a rose ring for me instead of a jeweled engagement ring. Opera and Rose. Bravo! I haven't had a car since. I was delighted to see a photo on Jim's sister's blog, http://www.healingwoman.blogspot.com/ and with her permission I share it with you. Rose, on the left and I in the center and Mr. Hullabullah on the right. Jim was also involved in the Low Budget Comedy Hour on local tv so I felt I was getting an autograph with this picture. Don't we all look happy?! Esme is beaming! She's letting the warmth in with the red sun shield absorbing the light. The bumperstickers are on the back and my favorite simply said, "Peace" in olde English lettering. I hear she's still a fan of the Blue Ridge and tunes float from the radio.
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.....may the blessings of ways to go places and places you want to go be yours....

Remembering Mama in May--the Month of her Birth, the Month of her Death

Greetings friends, followers, and passers-by. That's the kind of hello my mother liked. She was big on recitation and a noticer of time passing. For breakfast I would hear, instead of grace, "Here hath been dawning another blue day. Think! Wilt thou let it slip useless away?" At noon would come, "Full many a flower was born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air."At twilight, it would be, "Time you old gypsy man, will you not stay, put up your caravan just for one day?" In between would be sprinkled snippets of songs aimed directly my way: "Time's running out on you, what will you doooooo?" I got the point early. To live on this part of her earth, one had to be busy. She didn't believe in chores. "Your childhood is golden. There's plenty of time when you are grown to learn how to do dishes." I knew what that meant. A project. A project, of course, should never be a chore. It had to be the freeing of the spirit to do fine things. She did plenty of them (like my favorite, the papier-mache flamingo for a baby shower which she chose over a stork b/c it was her belief storks only lived in Holland). While she and my brother were High Energy, I was the Woolgatherer, a fancy word for chronic daydreamer. I discovered at a very young age that the way to get out of projects was to practice the piano. My mother knew nothing about piano playing so if I practiced scales for hours, she beamed. She didn't know that scales were so boring, I could drift off in minutes to some of my favorite not-hot places like Helsinki or Edinburgh. My brother, on the other hand, was stuck. Because we were a traveling family, every two years some place new, we had trunks. The year my dad was assigned to Washington, D.C., we had something else very useful. Shirt cardboards. In those days when shirts were taken to the cleaner's, they were folded with a rectangle of thin cardboard which my mother rounded up from neighbors. I feared the worst and practiced furiously. To keep my brother from Idle Hands Syndrome, she devised an art project. She was enthralled with Egypt. My brother was a superior artist. She combined the two by having him draw hieroglyphics on the shirt cardboards, cutting them out, and pasting them on a trunk. She then swaddled it in burnt umber and topped it with some kind of finishing touch that smelled like a day in the park with bees. I was fascinated by their work and immediately fell in love with the trunk. It was a spectacular success and my mother knew a good thing when she saw it. Altogether, they did four large trunks and seven footlockers, only one of which she did alone. Perhaps it is because my brother in later years became a minimalist or perhaps because the project was not as fascinating to him, he didn't want them. It landed to Moi to be the Keeper of the Trunks. However, widowhood necessitated letting go in many ways and so I decided I needed to let go of the trunks. The first one I gave to a Wiccan who exclaimed when she saw it, "The hieroglyphics are all happy! There's the giraffe with the palm tree! Do you know what that means???" No, I didn't. I didn't even think there were giraffes in Egypt. I thought camels ruled. "It's good fortune! The giraffe is far-seeing and the tree signifies abundance." Well, I'll be! Obviously she had to have that trunk. When I said, "Take it. It's yours," she almost cried and said the karma would come down in abundant love some day. That worked for me! My daughter was the recipient of the next trunk and in Roanoke, Susan received the one my mother had done alone, a decoupaged trunk in which Susan displayed her skeins. Cheryl received one of the large trunks. I knew it would have a good home at her magnificent mountainside house with the labyrinth in the garden. What I didn't realize was it wasn't the end of the story http://healingwoman.blogspot.com for that particular gift. The photo above is from Cheryl's blog As you can see, she transformed the decades old Lady of the Travels into a museum piece by adding gold leaf to make the figures "pop." My mother would have been amazed and couldn't have imagined where her project, accompanied by the A minor scale on an afternoon of my childhood, would find its resting place: viewed by people all around the world. Sure enough, it was "Time well spent" and "All's well that ends well."

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....may old sayings and exuberant projects be part of your life to brighten all its days....

Every Little Thing

When someone says he or she has a lot of "stuff," I usually think books. This is not true of the Shire. The Shire is packed to the rafters with stories instead. Yes, there are some books but you might not notice them for all the other Things. Every Thing here has a story. Everything. As I look around, I see only a few purchased items: a couple of toys, my loveseat sofabed, a Carolyn Meyer First Edition not left anonymously in the bookdrop of the Humboldt County Lbrary, a bird's nest lamp, and a suitcase. All the rest is comprised of gifts and hand-moi-downs. On the wall is hanging a sweatshirt from Erik & Kate printed with the words, " Careful or you'll end up in my novel." The two clocks came from Julia Miller. She was a young woman in Prelutsky's writing class who called herself a torch singer. Her father wrote music for the movies. She was given to mailing long, impassioned, philosophical letters which I have kept in a box labeled Helpers. I lost touch with her after moving to North Carolina but I have her clocks. Her husband manufactured clocks. She sent me two and told me to keep whichever one I liked. I liked both. One I right off named Donna, after my lovely voice teacher. Donna is a round mirror clock. The other is a sturdy square clock framed in pine. It seemed to shout the word, "Carpenter." I decided to call it Daniel after the Elton John song.The design has the numerals 1,2,3, and then it says,"etc." Donna ran a little slowly. Daniel was ahead by ten minutes all the time. I wrote to Julia to tell her I hadn't made up my mind and would return one as soon as I could. She wrote back telling me she couldn't separate Donna and Daniel and to keep both. This was in '79 and what I have done on all my moves is to keep Donna across from Daniel in the various rooms as though she is pining for him. At some point, as in the poem about Evangeline by Longfellow, I will move Donna next to Daniel to be with him at last. Another story is the string of stars. One summer in Roanoke, the Star City, Barbara and Henry spent some Mimsey Camp time and we made paper stars of all sorts and strung them on a wire. Wherever I go, I have the string of stars with me. I keep two stars in that suitcase mentioned earlier. Then there is the Winston Graham's garden poster--another story which deserves a blob of its own. And the art. Paintings galore. And rocks from my childhood wanderings with my brother. And wooden camels from my mother and scarves from Gone CoCo decorating the left-behind mattress from a former occupant at Lucille's which I turned on its side to become a headboard. There is a trunk rejuvenated by my brother and mother when I was nine. It is whimsically stuck all over with "antique" hieroglyphics. On a table borrowed from Stephanie, there is a playbill from a production of South Pacific from a time before zip codes and out in Bag End, there a cat wind chime of Lucille's. There is a found plank from a backyard in Durham on which I scrawled, "Whatsoever things are lovely." I have a collection of boxes which at one time was my favorite gift if anybody asked. I like the secret surprise aspect of small boxes. I like to decoupage cartons with quotes from old magazines. Oh yes, I forgot to mention pillows. There is a tiny one on which I was able to stitch part of an Emily Dickinson poem, "'It's all I have to give today, this and my heart beside." There is a shamrock pillow made by Daff in junior high and...well, I think you are getting the idea. There is a blue bottle collection b/c I love notes in a bottle and tend to come home from people's houses with a small one they won't miss. One is in the shape of the lighthouse at Cape May. No, I don't steal them. Such a materialist! So many things!

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photo credit: Cheryl Dolby-- from her book, LAYERS

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......may the blessings of simple gifts and pleasures be yours, be they neither a burden nor a task.....

Leavetakings

Graffiti "signature" created by Henry Hobbs who has had a lot of leavetakings in his life and is always ready for a cheerful re-uniting.


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It seems my life has been made up of meetings and leavetakings, separations and re-unitings to a degree that echoes the regular scheduled ebb and flow of the ocean longing for the shore. For this post, I decided to put on a poem I found in my scraps. However, I felt a need for a new ending reflecting the way things go with Moi. It is a poem of parting but I am imagining a sequel. I am fond of sequels. "And then what happened?" is a favorite question. I have been off on another jaunt. It reaffirmed that there is never an entirely goodbye goodbye. This poem was lodged in a notebook from LSU days. Even then, I was collecting quotes and favorites. At that time, I thought it was very beautiful and very sad. I took it to heart. Not anymore. Between then and now, I have come to believe in chance encounters and their re-encounterings. I believe in Universe arranged sequels. I was delighted when boarding the subway to meet my brother, there sat the cellist who picks out the music for the chamber ensemble of the Orchestra of St. Luke's, originally begun at the church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village. She had her cello with her and Will said he recognized her from the many concerts he has attended. We three had a wonderful conversation about violinists. I told her about Appalachian State and James Ogle and Jonesy during World War II. I said I hoped to see her some season in Brooklyn, a happy sequel! Enjoy the poem however you see it. "God be with you till we meet again."
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"Blue mountains lie beyond the north wall,
Round the city's eastern side flows the white water.
Here we part, friend, once forever--
You go ten thousand miles, drifting away
Like an unrooted water-grass.
Oh, the floating clouds and the thoughts of a wanderer!
Oh, the sunset and the longing of an old friend!
We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
While our horses neigh softly, softly."
Li Po
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...the blessings of blue vistas in the distance and the welcome of friends be yours....

Different Worlds

It's Barbara Emily's birthday today, the magical 18. As I hear her speak and read her messages, I see a lot of similarities in her generation with what was happening in mine. There is talk of the prom, majors for college, getting loans, and meeting for movies. I don't have that take on the years that I see often in the Forwards about the good old days being better. I like the good new days myself. However, when Lucille and I were talking about fan letters, I was brought up short and had a reality check. Things are not the same. I told her my first fan letter was to Chad Mitchell. He replied in a handwritten note. I answered it with a poem and he sent a reply, "From a fan of a fan." I have those letters still in a book of Dylan Thomas poems. I also have letters and cards from Robert Lansing, Richard Thomas, Fred Rogers, James Ogle, and Winston Graham. Lucille said it wouldn't happen today as movie stars are advised not to reply because of legal issues, most of them involving later stalking. How sad. One of my fan letters resulted in, not a stalking but a taking. I took a class taught by a writer I had sent a note to. I came across one of the essays I wrote at that time. I'm very glad that in those days, the recipient of praise did not feel obligated to keep silent. This homework piece is called Report Card and it tells of the class:
"My Hungarian friend came by.
'Vhere's your report cart?' she asked.
I began to explain that at the Village there are no report cards and a good thing, too.
'Don give me song and dance. Give me report cart. You make vonn up. I see how you does.'
'All rightee. I give myself an A.'
She looked at me in Hungarian, the kind of look that demands immediate reappraisal.
'How about 3 A's in the fun stuff and a D in what counts?'
'You donna goot.'
Yes, I think I have. Let me explain.
I first came to the Village under, for me, a special set of circumstances: I came alone. I came incognito because my project wouldn't work otherwise.
Before I came, I picked out a name, something lighthearted and snappy but with a serious turn: I adopted an accent, which I had to practice for three weeks, and I polished what I called my tough act, a term borrowed from Raymond Chandler. The essential elements of my character I covered ever so gently. Why did I to this?
Well, as a child, my role was easy. I was the daughter. My father was a respected man: my mother, untiring and winsome. My brother was in charge. My reading was tenderly guided. My opinions examined closely. The friends I had were sifted down from the people they knew. I was never without a friend who was 'just right for Christine.' I went to cloistered schools. I never faced rejection. My only sadness was the death of friends, which I grieved over long and quietly. My only fear was separation. Rebellion, independence, power were strange ideologies to me. I wanted simply to stay with the people I cherished; to please them was my one concern.
Looking back on it, it seems incredible, but there it is: I lived in a wildly isolated, stimulating, supportive atmosphere. However, there was always an unquestioned reservation that, needless to say, in the larger scheme of things, I couldn't survive. When I married, my nomadship continued; I was led from one small circle to another in which my music took up most of my time. There seemed to be a reassuring ringing in my ears that all was well as long as I stayed within the walls, like a patient in a sanitarium. But I came to a point where I felt I'd have to change, to assume charge of myself. I thought perhaps before attempting something so major, I needed a test, a little toe in the wide, cold sea.
Burt's poll column provided the idea. What if I were to go someplace as someone else, where my reputation, my family, my feelings were an unknown? How would I do? The Village seemed a good choice for judgment.
That first morning I came, I made several mistakes.The worst, the largest mistake was during the opening remarks that Burt made. I became spell-bound, entranced with this representative from the outside world. How could I help it? He didn't have to practice his accent for three weeks and his tough act looked as though it had been a part of him since he was eight years old. In those brief opening moments, I placed the matter of passing or failing squarely on him. The next largest mistake was to come back at all under the terms of the test. I loved the class very much; it should have been an outing, nothing more. It was wrong to put it into the framework of survival, as valid as assuming I don't know my magic because I can't hire out as rainmaker. I shouldn't have bothered about what I couldn't handle. And there was a great deal I couldn't handle: I pined over the vanity. I fidgeted over the 'bad words;' bad words I've always thought to be lacking in imagination, repetitive, cliche, and in the case of such a phrase as 'all f*cked up,' just plain distracting--it makes me want to be away somewhere with automatic locks that shut softly. I hated the thoughtlessness, the generalities, the preoccupation with trivia. I felt that people were skimming over the tops of their lives and I wanted to cry.
So we come to the A's and D. I think I deserve an A that only twice I simply couldn't go on. I think sticking with it was foolish; the end result was inevitable, but sticking with it was tremendously rewarding. I think my accent deserves an A. I only stuttered once, just last week. And my name deserves an A because it seems so natural to hear it.
I feel like the D in Geometry all over again, though, because I failed. I failed to make a dent; my philosophy amounts to no more than snobbism to many. And I failed because it's true. I can't survive in the world at large. There's a curious whirring about it that in some way wounds me.
My conclusion is that although I could never keep up in the real world, I do enjoy the visit. I think it's possible for me to sally forth once in awhile to see how things are doing, to preach my little pronouncements and scurry home.
I wonder, does it work the other way? Can you do the same? Is it possible for you to leave the hum and drama and step back for an hour? I would like to hope so. I'd like to wish that one lingering evening you might come to see me. It's easy enough to find--it's the place where very tiny fish swim in a very tiny pond and Hungarians set you reminiscing about things that might have been."

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....the blessings of finding your place and praising whom you will be yours....

Philosophy, Jokes, and Extraordinary Stuff

"East side, west side." Each person reading the Blob today will have been to NYC and has his or her own version of what constitutes the favored 'hood. Clearly, on this visit, mine was Central Park. Upon entering, (and I have no idea where that was) and encountering the dancer, I knew this was my magical, mystical destination. She was one of those statue type mimes, all silvery from the ornaments in her hair to the tips of her shoes. Her eyes had the expressive melancholy that reminded Moi of the little dancer in Carolyn Meyer's book, Marie Dancing, about the young ballerina who posed for Degas. A dollar in the bucket for "my" ballerina bought a short performance which included a hand over her heart and a kiss blown into the crisp April air. She was a prelude, a hint of what was to come: Shakespeare Garden. Oh, the quotes, the flowers, the rustic cross thatch fence, the hilly ascension to the castle. I wanted to plant a stake in the ground declaring, "This is where I will stay forever." Strolling past benches could be a daily meditation reading the inscriptions. " For Carlos, because he was a good man." "In memory of Dr. Blanka & Ivor Spender who found sanctuary in this park and in this country." I lost complete track of time, or at least my track led through the ramble, past the lake, and looped through the strawberry fields. A poet could easily be a songwriter here. Later, when we visited my brother's studio, he asked if I wanted to check my e-mail. I said there wouldn't be any breaking news, just philosophy, jokes, and extraordinary stuff--the best! But really, I wanted to wait to gather my thoughts, to weigh my words so you would know. Will said, "Don't you worry, Mimsey. We'll make plans to get you back here soon." Back to my 'hood. The tiny dance, the quotes, the benches, the walking till feet refused to walk two inches more. Central Park, NYC. It gives a whole new meaning to, "Extraordinary stuff."

"This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath

May prove a beauteous flow'r when next we meet."

artwork: Robert Janz

quote: Shakespeare Garden

........may the blessings of chance encounters, some little histories, and rare plantings be yours...

Concerning Correspondence

They are taking bets in Middle Earth. Will I really be able to go a week without e-mail on my trip? I say yes, confidently. A couple of skeptics say no way. I hark back to those days when I thought computers were for people out in Research Triangle Park calculating the fish levels at Falls Lake. I didn't know about e-mail. After I learned how, the first person I e-mailed was my neighbor who after two days, slipped the address of his brother, (who might be able to keep up with my volume), under my door. Pretty soon, Second Best was giving homework assignments to keep Moi busy and telling her to breathe into a paper bag as she was hyperventilating. Not that I wasn't busy. I was taking care of children, volunteering at the library, assisting an art teacher with grades k-4, dog walking, cat sitting, driving people to doctor visits, and working on that novel which I still claim to be working on. However, there was always a teeny bit of time (thank you, U!)for checking e-mail. It was recommended after Douglas died that I get grief therapy. I called a hypnotherapist and talked to him for 45 minutes about my plight. "My daughter thinks I need help." He said, "You can make an appointment if you like but really you have marvelous coping mechanisms." Yeah, e-mail. I e-mailed him to thank him and received an e-mail reply with a quote from Einstein, natch. E-mailing from Eureka was particularly nice b/c I could "stay up" for the nightowls on the East Coast. Middle Earth today had a perplexed look when I said I was training the cabinet door to stay closed. You see, I have a Theory of Inanimate Objects which includes a kindness clause. Be kinde to the cabinet door and it will be kinde to ye. On that note, I figured it would be impolite to send an e-mail while yawning but in Eureka if I cut off at 11:00 p.m. Eureka time I was still tres Emily Post. I was like my friend, Scott, who never talked on the phone without brushing her teeth first. Her husband had been the "inventor" of the line, "Promise her anything but give her Arpege." As a remembrance of those two fine people, one of the things I do before e-mailing is give myself a good squirt of L'Occitane's Myrrh and Incense so that Recipients will receive something beautiful with echoes of Tunisia. You can tell, can't you? The Blob will be on holiday next week. You might be sent a postcard with whiffs of New York but don't expect the North Carolina e-mail truck. It will be parked in the shade of the dogwood at Bag End waiting for my return.
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.....may the blessings of beautiful things be yours today and through the night, beautiful things like letters and postcards and instant aromatic telepathic messages....

A Rose

peace rose............................>

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Well, maybe, but I have a penchant for renaming which was handed down by a friend of my mother's in 1937. Leo (Eleanor) did not like my mother's name, Della. Leo didn't think it perky enough for my naturally curly red-haired mother who had once been offered a job with the Ogilvy company because of her incredible hair. So Della became Judy, a good combo for Janz. She was Judy Janz until 1991 when I started taking her to the doctor and she would have to fill out forms using her legal name. I noticed a withering going on and it struck Moi that I should tell the doctor that she was Judy. What a difference. It took twenty years off her age. When my friend Sherry Boone was writing her stories she wanted to know what I'd like to be called. Out of spite, to irritate someone named Claudia, I asked for Claudia as my character name. Sherry said no. "It has to have the ring of the cash register...like Christieeeeen does." I had never thought of myself as a cash cow but I enjoyed the years I was Claudine. For the '70s writing class, I chose the pen name, Zeppha (feminine for Joseph, dreamer of dreams) and Wilder for the writer of Our Town. After a year of classes, a ritzy friend, Scott, said I had to have a 3rd part to my name if I were ever going to make it big on The New York Times Bestseller List. I chose,'Neuf" which is #9 in French and, yes, there is a story that goes with that! Zeppha Wilder Neuf. How likely would you be to read her book? Scott became attached to referring to Moi as Neuf. I even received snail mail at the house addressed to Neuf. The mail carrier was very understanding. My latest incarnation as Moi I find touching. I like being Moi so much I may cease and desist the Renaming Game...unless it's part of a longer appellation. Christine (ding ding) Mimsica Moi.
Comments are welcome with the warning; they can be modified.
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may the blessings of remembering who you are at even the darkest times be yours whatever you call yourself on any given day.....

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A Fair and Dear Colleen

It wouldn't be St. Patrick's Day without a tribute to my sweet mother, the singingest nonsinger in all the world. To hear her tell it, there was no place like Ireland which, unfortunately, I never got to see except in the imagination of her stories. She and her best friend, Cassie Main, would walk the prams to the park when my brother was a baby and I believe there was never as peaceful a time as those days for my mother. "It was so good for my complexion!" painted an odd picture: my mother without freckles? I don't know if it was because her mother was a Leahy or because of natural gravitation but John McCormack would bring forth 5 star commentaries. My mother didn't sing around other people but since I made no judgments on her tunelessness, she sang constantly to Moi. I would try to figure out what the tune might be. She often sang, "Lulla, lulla, lulla,lulla bye bye. Does you want the moon to play with or the stars to run away with? Hush now don't you cry." I managed to piece together the tune by trying different notes. She would shake her head until I hit a correct one. She could hear a tune, just not sing it. My family was full of Irishisms as a consequence of the six years in Belfast before I was born. For instance, my father was never referred to by name or Pop, Daddy, Papa, or Father. He was, "The Daddy." If one wanted something in particular at a meal, one would ask, for instance,"Would you like a biscuit?" The other person was supposed to answer, "No, thank you but could I offer you a biscuit?" and then would come the real agenda, "Don't mind if I do." It was considered impolite to come out with a request directly. I hope I can embed The Wearing of the Green which is sung lightheartedly in taverns round the world on this day but my mother knew the history and she was proud of John McCormack. It was a highly charged political song that lost him many fans but he stuck by it and if I embed it correctly, you will see with what passion he rendered it. It is a reminder of what Patrick himself said, "What is more, let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes,
I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders
that were shown to me." Patrick of Armagh
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A poem by The Daddy
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COUNTY DONEGAL
There's a wind that blows with an eerie trill
As it follows the road up a rocky hill,
And passes along by the small thatched hut,
Where the wintry blast finds the stout door shut.

For the wind is loud and the wind is cold,
And it brings weird tales that were best not told.
So the place to stay when the fiends conspire
Is close by the warmth of the old turf fire.


But at night when the work of a hard day's done,
When the pig is fed, when the sheep are tun,
Then the menfolk meet in a sheltered lane
To play a jig with a lilting strain.

For the night is cold but the night is clear
And the wind stops still so it too can hear,
And the harsh, hard life of a Donegal day
Turns as soft as dusk in warmth of May.

Then the whole night long while the village sleeps
The silence hangs on the barren sweeps,
Till the sun comes up through the chilly dawn,
And the mist that clings to the hill drifts on.


For the wind has come and the wind comes fast,
And it scatters the mist while the clouds whip past,
And it gathers force for a new bleak day,
Where the fields are green but the skies are gray.
.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X0mHDs6DcY&feature=channel_page

....may the Irish blessing of the road, the one rising to meet ye, be with you and the green you wear be full o' the meaning of doing the bold & right thing....

The Dumpster Folkhorse

Circa '92, my husby came home with a broken Wonder Horse. He knew it was the best present he could have given and he found it at the dumpster. You see, I have this affection for inanimate objects and as Gwen said, "You can't stand the killing of furniture." The handles were missing but I was able to thread a long wooden spoon through the holes. Ellen said Goop would secure it and so it did. Then began the decorating: beads, a straw hat with a sunflower, fat ribbons, glitter, ivy garlands, and necklace strands transformed the prancing pony with a loveliness she had never known. Children made her their destination. Eventually, when the springs became unsafe, I freed her from her cage prison and propped her up to become a piece of Folk Art. Years later, I printed a photo of her on what Randy/Joel called a "defective" printer. Why defective? The printer was supposed to print in black and white but a big yellow splotch appeared ON THE SUNFLOWER. I felt it was a miracle and a sign of sunny days ahead. When I looked for a design for my memoir, I thought of her and fiddled on Photo Shop to make the just right "cover." She had become a symbol. She incorporated my favorites--stars, Native American tales, found treasure, botanicals, trust, and love. When it came to creating a profile pic, I couldn't think of anything more like Moi. She had my aura to a T. I called her the Folkhorse and when I left Roanoke, I gave her to a Jennifer, a reader of books anyone would love to borrow (and I did),to ride from the ceiling beams of a delightful house. For the dedication of this never-to-be-gotten-around-to-autobiography, I wrote: to the Keeper of the Universe who, like a gentle breeze, sets the merry-go-round in motion.
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....may your days be filled with the music of the painted ponies and the light of sunflowers...

The Pleasure of Thy Company

The Shire is not a B&B, unless you want to think of it as Beautiful and Bustling. Breakfast is not served but rummaging in the pantry is fine and recommended if you are up before elevenses. Posters for Carrboro's Open Eye Cafe are prominently displayed, hint, hint. There are beds of a sort, each with its own idiosyncrasies, with multiple handmade quilts showcasing good fortune patterns and ladders. It takes an adventurous person, to put it euphemistically, to visit but adventure is what life is about, no? First, there is the problem of location. Mapquest cheerfully winds one around the Chapo Heeel Public Library assuming all the while you are not in a hurry. Then, there's the technicality of arbitrary name changing streets and don't forget the sudden, disorienting, "You are now entering" of townships when you didn't know you'd even left. North Carolina's most common welcome sign features a pineapple. There is a story to that but I don't recall what it is. I can tell you one thing, though, I'm sure the pine is for, "I pine and balsam, too," when guests leave. However, the Longleaf Pine being the North Carolina tree of note I feel entitled to go and commune with the pines and my guestbook and do a little bawling to get the toxins out. The Shire has been honored to have as its guests Voloydimir, the Ukrainian engineer specializing in indoor sprinkler systems and philosophy, and this week: singer/songwriter/memoirist/humanitarian/comic/ and commentator, Micah "Meatjacket" Evans. See photo (used without his permission) of when he looked good. The other Distinguished Avocado is Randy Walker who has not been a guest but I borrowed the pic b/c I didn't have one of Voloydimir. The pleasure of guests was all ours, "ours" being The Ditsy Chics of the Blue Mountains, Middle Earth, and The Shire--Dixie's very own enchanted realm. I'm hoping for a 5 star rating but I'll take a half o' one. I would think the plastic chickens out in the front yard would rate at least two. Y'all come down and see Moi sometime.
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....may the blessings of good company and provisions be yours...

Skcenery

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I have a head start on a 5000 word post. The "ancient" glyph on the top far right is a "water" color courtesy of my brother, Robert Janz. The striking bamboo art is entitled, "Harmony."

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The part of my brain in charge of spelling is innovative to say the least. There is something about words with "sc" in them that bring on la grippe. No, I am not prejudicial against South Carolina (well, just a little) but try and get the brain to spell licsense, defensce, or musclesc and I wonder if I shouldn't be composing An Olde Primer on the New Englishk. I have been told that this is a "learning disability" but I don't believe in such things. I think it's a different way of viewing the world. Some of us are scientifically oriented; others are whimsically oriented; some can bridge the differences and be a Whole Skchmear person. Spell Check is my hero, exkcept usually it doesn't know if I mean sole or soul. Doesn't it know by now??? I am want to give the sc's a "k" in there somewhere. K is elegant and it cloaks the rest of the sentence in an aura of a distant language. Whatever happened to the Esperanto idea? Or sticking with Renaissance quirks like magickal? I was drawing kangi (Japanese characters) on a postcard and thought perhaps the world wide web should take up an icon alphabet. I am certain a heart would be understood anywhere in the universes, eskpecially if it were flanked by "I" and "San Franciskco." eye/heart/cable car.
.......
I received a message which mentioned that the replier's favorite sonnet is XXX:

" But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end."
It is a sad sonnet but isn't the ending the best ever? And isn't it the wisest advice? Think on each other and be happy.
........
...the blessings of hieroglyphic messages and harmonious encounters be yours...

A Good and Splendid Night

computer drawing, by special permission, from the collection of Henry Hobbs.

Micah's comment about my brain prompted this post. I like my brain, too. I never know what it has stirring. I once wrote a science fiction short story for Burt Prelutsky's class called, The Night Bunch, about who was manning my brain during the wee hours of the morn. Reminiscing about that wacky crew leads to one of my favorite topics. Night. Growing up where the heat of the day effectively drained away any energy I could muster and the siesta was the highlight of an afternoon, night took on a special drama. As in fairytales, midnight was routinely the time for falling into mysticism. Most of the people around were falling into alcohol and its companionship with foolishness so I spent my time stargazing. I think I named all the stars. Of course, I didn't know what any of them were really called and I was cross-cultural in my choices. The only constellation pattern I recognized was the Southern Cross. I'm fairly sure the Little Dipper had some Aztec name and I was partial to elaborate pretend Portuguese. Like so many things where the facts have become realigned, it doesn't matter. What matters is remembering the magic of those times and hearing my mother recite:

The night has a thousand eyes.
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
.....
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of the whole life dies
When love is done.--Francis William Bourdillon (who wrote 13 volumes of poems but is remembered for this one by mainly moviegoers who saw the title in a 1948 flick starring Edward G. Robinson)
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...the blessings of the rhythm of ebb and flow, nearness and apartness, birth and death be yours....

Extra! Extra!

courtesy of Carolyn Meyer

from the ephemeral collection of

Robert Janz

sea water (Irish?)and igneous rock

arrow of unknown origin
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...."LOVE IS NOT LOVE WHICH ALTERS WHEN IT ALTERATION FINDS.".. ....

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Sondra Ball wrote to say she will publish my poem, After the End of the World, tomorrow in her online poetry zine. I'm not going to declare my poem as fine as Sonnet 116 quoted above of Will Shakespeare's but there is something similar between the two. Will's is more complicated but mine is just as deep. Sorry, Will. Some of us do lay claim to also "owning" the topic of love. I like the open-endedness of my poem. The reader has to decide for himself/ herself what the poem is. Is it a love poem? Or a prayer? Maybe it's a poem about the scattering of families by geography. It could be an unrequited situation with overtones of melancholy or an affirmation that the soul survives the worst catastrophes. It could be a sibling poem or a memorial to a friend. There's a good chance it's a mother/child poem. I know what I thought it was as I was writing it but I'll let you choose. Of course, I welcome your guesses but, shucks, I bet you already have guessed what Moi would write. To conclude my Valentine special edition, I will quote a letter from my dad who would have probably described love as the supreme human grace which comes from the capacity to live joyously. "Charley brought me three cucumbers, which I did not dare eat raw. So I boiled them hard, chilled them, and put lemon juice on them. Try it some time. It’s awful." Robert Janz, Senior Advisor on Visa and Immigration, Liberia 1953
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........today's blessing is a tip o' the hat to Emily Dickinson, Some Enchanted Evening, and Will....

...may Love surprise you, springing up from hidden coves to dance through meadows

and over hilltops and may it never let you go.....

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Of the Not Fully Recognized Class

I didn't want to hear about the cherry tree. Who says George Washington didn't chop it down? I've been to his house. I've seen the cherry blossoms across the Potomac. I know there is a possibility of the story being true or not true. Who's to prove one way or the other? Maybe that wasn't even George Washington's house. Did I have to be told Lincoln wasn't much of a writer? I am weary of sorting through facts, fiction, faction, illusion, and the surreal. Personally, I go for cosmic teachings but whatever floats your boat and doesn't harm children is fine to my mind. I think what I think and I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like. One thing I don't like is the presidential birthdays holiday. I like birthdays and I like holidays but I'm with Aaron Copland and his Fanfare for the Common Man. How about celebrating the birthday of ordinary blokes and blokettes? The day laborer, the charwoman, the behind the scenes guy, the gandy dancer, the tireless nightshift cabbie, the stay-at-home volunteer, the dogged rookie reporter,the grassrooter, the pure of heart--these have emancipated and shaped the country as much as anybody and with fewer sidetrips into questionable behavior involving killing. On Blob this Tuesday, I'm suggesting a cake in honor of the February people who didn't become topics of myth and history, the unsung people who go to work on their birthdays. Go to work! but celebrate with cake. You'll have plenty of company. No, I'm not baking the cake myself. The baker up at 4:00 a.m.(see photo) kept my corner of the Shire aromatic with spun cinnamon and shredded coconut. By special permission from Robert Sims, singing along will be my contribution....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1MarBtUvW4
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She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways

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She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy tone

Half hidden from the eye!--

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!"--William Wordsworth

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...the blessing of the ordinary, the reliable, the beautiful be yours....

The Art of Assemblage

TEST KITCHEN WINNER ....................................................................................FUTURE YOUNG ASSEMBLER OF AMERICA

<-----COUNSELOR BY THE SEA

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One thing you will never see on the Blob is a recipe. I don't cook; I assemble. In the 50's, girls were required to take Home Economics. Have you ever heard such a strange juxtaposition of words? To this day when people talk about the wretched economy, I think of the F- I received for Boil an Egg so that the Yolk is Centered. I attribute that to a compleat (as written in Olde English cookbooks) lack of interest. However, I snagged an A+ for my final exam effort: Pizza Totale. I practically invented the word, "Loaded." I'm a born matchmaker. I knew that pineapple and olives go together like love & marriage and all the relatives have to show up, too. While the other girls fussed over deviled eggs, I shone throwing my pizza. Recently, I visited a friend from France noted for her quiches. I was sampling a particularly tasty one and asked her what was in it. "Leftover spaghetti." Holey Molay. "Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you!" It was instant bonding with a fellow Assembler. Did I mention that take-out is one of my favorite words?

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.......the blessings of good eats be at your table wherever you are.....