Mini-Me

I may not post for a little while, due to some all-consuming work, so here's a picture of mini-me in the meantime. I'll be back, but I can't guarantee to be more grown up when I return.

I had a fabulous Slattern Day. Beautiful sunny, warm fall day. I walked by a piano in a driveway (garage sale) and many autumn leaves. I cut back the balsam in the garden and found the maroon mum and yellow roses still wildly blooming.

I was a friend of the arts at a Friends of the Arts event this evening: improv comedy + dessert for dinner + red wine + fabulous conversation + cake pops to bring home to our daughter. Now my husband is picking out a tune on the piano. Obama is still President. What could be better?

Two Women Talking

I’ve been reading The Logic of Opposites, by Alane Rollings. She was a favorite of Chris Al-Aswad at Escape Into Life. 

(Here she is there.)

Excerpts from this book: 

From “Spiraling Upward”:

            I’m no intellectual, but I think a lot.

Love gets me started.  I turn it around and around in my brain

as if it’s meant to embrace everything.

From “Positions of Strength, a poem that has for an epigraph the Chinese proverb, If you have to be a human being, don’t be a woman. This stanza incorporates the proverb:

            If you have to be a human being, don’t be a woman.

Your happiness and even your grief will depend on others

in whom you’ll see things that may not be there.

Your self-possession will keep changing hands;

your endless battles—against, dirt, friction, sobs like fists in your throat,

and spells of adoring sickness—will be yours alone.

I admire the simplicity of statement here, side by side with wit.  As the title suggests, this is a book of opposites, paired poems looking at two sides of things: peace/disorder, illogic/logic, outside/inside, escape/return. They are longish poems, pursuing their topics thoroughly, with richness and subtlety, each one often containing the seed of its opposite. 

But I must return to those women in “Positions of Strength,” noting the wonderful calm title:

A couple of women talk to the fire, ask why it dies, ask why men

embrace them, erase them, use them to get born or get a leg up to heaven,

leaving them behind, Bodhisattvas at the gate,

and in the rain and cold of interiors that no man knows.

            There are no sexual mutilations here, no bride burnings.

Just two women talking.

Just one woman, really, with nothing left

but that she can still blush, fall in love, extend herself to anything

as if it were as sentient and complex as she.

            Nothing left but that when the columbine opens wide

and the trees seem female, she can cry for them.

For the delicate evergreens, and for the chestnut tree as it pulls itself to leaf again.

For any man, for each hour, for every brick and creature,

and for the dust that will be back every other day

on the street paved with oyster shells, in the faded yellow house

where a woman’s glad to say

how much she had that she could give away.

Thanks to JJ Harrison and Peter Ruhr and Wikipedia for the columbine. Thanks to Alane Rollings and all the strong women who have so much to give away.

Is that Walt Whitman on a Seahorse?

I am much relieved this morning that nothing changed overnight re: election results. Congratulations to President Obama for being re-elected, and may we have a good "four more years"! Thanks to Mitt Romney for a brief, dignified concession speech. Best wishes to all, and thanks to everyone who voted. Everyone. Voting is good.

I think most of the world is relieved by the results of this election in the USA, too. And here is a fun "real time" account of it all by an American in France: from Two Beans or Not Two Beans. Next time, I, too, will get hold of some "alcoholic chocolates."

The new poetry feature is up at Escape Into Life: Lauren Camp, with fabulous art by Andrea D'Aquino. Is that Walt Whitman on a seahorse? AKA Seahorse + Existential Cowboy.

Tonight is book group. We'll discuss The Innocents, by Francesca Segal, a sort of re-seeing of The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, as if it took place in a contemporary London Jewish community. I look forward to the discussion, and I really want to watch the movie again--based on The Age of Innocence--as I think that was one of those book-to-film movies I saw first, sending me to read the novel, and sending me on an Edith Wharton binge. Or maybe it was the other way around, as I didn't see it on the big screen.... My mind is more and more like a big (window) screen, resembling a large wire sieve.

I've been mulling over various movies and movie-book treatments lately. Every year I try to see To Kill a Mockingbird on or near Halloween (because of the ham costume, the school pageant on Halloween), and it's hitting movie theatres again on November 15, if you want the big (movie) screen experience.

I watched Meet John Doe because of the current election season and to ponder things for a recent talk in church, called "The Mop and the Microphone," posted here. Cloud Atlas also worked its way into that.

And that's enough for this Random Coinciday Poetry Someday Hump of the Week.

Already Drinking Wine

Yes, it's true. It's 4:17 p.m. and I've already started drinking wine. I believe this is an Election Day tradition, yes? Vote, and go drink. Or vice versa.

Today, the election worker who signed me in said, "I remember you from the cemetery walk. The last time I saw you, you were dead." This was a delightful dead voter joke, and I was glad nobody prevented me from voting, nor carted me back to the cemetery!!

I promise I was alive. And only voted once.

It's red wine, so it is good for my heart, right? Still, I am nervous and scared, troubled by rumors of election-machine tampering, and so on. That kind of thing will ruin us as a country for sure, if it's going on. Again.

My polling station did make a point of saying, "No cell phones." Was this: 1) a courtesy? 2) to prevent interference with electronic voting?* 3) to prevent photos or videos [evidence!] of vote tampering?

I hate to be a cynic (but I am) or a conspiracy theorist (not yet!), but....yeesh!

*I chose a paper ballot. But it still goes into a machine for tallying....

Fragility...

...transparency, and other good stuff.

Some days I have to remind myself that my fragility (vulnerability, sensitivity, excruciating shyness, etc.) is a gift. Other days, I find this--Greta oto, the glasswinged butterfly!--and I'm OK.

I'm excited, and scared, about Election Day tomorrow. I'll vote before exercise class, unless there's a crazy long line or something; in that event, I'll vote after. Some locals I want to vote for are not on my ballot, so I supported them in other ways, but the President will be!

My parents voted early, as did a lot of other people I know, but I do love voting on Election Day!!