Ezekiel's Bones

Background music: "Dem Bones" by James Weldon Johnson.

I'm not really cranky, but I am really sick--yes, I caught my husband's cold/flu ickiness--so it's a Cranky Doodle Day in the blog. It also helps explain the recent weepiness as sickness was coming on. And it's a Random Coinciday, too, because my last blog post was Bittersweet, and that's the title of the most recent book by Colleen McCollough, who just died and got a shamefully weird obituary that her fans are currently mocking.

It contained this actual sentence: "Plain of feature and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless [sic] a woman of wit and warmth." (Perhaps Australians leave out that expected comma after the "nevertheless." Nevertheless, I had the urge to say "sic.") (Them bones, them bones, them wry bones...) Consequently, other authors are writing their own silly, personal mock obits in response.

Here's mine: "Kathleen, holier than thou, who just wouldn't dye her hair, still managed to write a few good poems."

It pains me, actually, to type that--literally because I started coughing in the middle of it, which hurt, and figuratively (and superstitiously) because I have to stay alive for another 21 days, at least, thanks to the Internet Death Quiz, before I can rest easy....

I've lost 3 pounds in 3 days, from not eating, not a diet I'd recommend, even for the "certainly overweight" Colleen McCullough, not because I have the gastrointestinal "flu" but because, in my case, the upper respiratory case, the lung bone's connected to the stomach bone, and coughing is a general disaster. I do like chicken soup and carbonated beverages.

There are a jillion books titled Bittersweet, and none of them are on my bookshelf. The closest is Eros the Bittersweet, by Anne Carson, and I'm still on page 108 (the perfect number!) of that. But these are all versions of McCullough's Bittersweet. I'm liking the audio book because of the sympathetic and handy nurse, and I love the teal cap, and how about that politically incorrect fur collar?

Bittersweet

I did not mean to sound mopey or weepy yesterday, a Blue Monday in the blog, in a post celebrating The Weepies and their beautiful bubble! (I enjoyed counting the chapbooks in my box in the closet, and many thanks to Maureen E. Doallas for buying 4 of them, which will change my 2015 totals to report to the tax man in 2016!) I think, according to Facebook, that it is Deb Talan's birthday--singer/songwriter in The Weepies. Many happy returns!

I know I am one of the lucky ones in life. I have my health, a loving family, and work I love (even if it is ludicrously un-lucrative!) Today is Fat Tuesday in the blog, and I am celebrating leftover chocolate and the fact that my husband does not have strep throat and thus will not spread it to his volleyball team! In the waiting room, I was re-reading stories by Lorrie Moore, in Bark, a pre-birthday gift from my mom. She knows I read the hardback from the library closer to when it came out and also that I love Lorrie Moore and will want the paperback edition on hand for relentless re-reading of favorite stories and passages.

Here's one, from the story "Wings," which is a sort of re-imagining of Wings of the Dove, by Henry James (just as The Innocents, by Francesca Segal, is a contemporary re-telling of The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, and now I want to re-see the film versions of both The Wings of the Dove and The Age of Innocence, and this parenthetical moment is an example of what I mean by "Fat Tuesday" in the blog; it's not always about food). Anyhoo:

"Bitterness came when one had done the long good thing and then gone unrewarded. Dench would never operate that way. She,* on the other hand, had been born with a sort of pre-bitterness, casting about for the good and unacknowledged deed that would explain her feelings---and not coming up with it. So instead a sourness could beset her, which she had to appease and shrink with ice cream and biographies of Billie Holiday."

*"She" is a singer/songwriter in this story, making this also a Random Coinciday in the blog. And this is bittersweet, its innocent white flower, its two-toned fruit above, with many thanks, as always, to Wikipedia. But see the food? And the perfect definition of "bitterness," the ice cream needed as a sweetness to counter it? And Billie Holiday?! Oh, how I love Lorrie Moore.

In a Bubble

I love this sweet picture of The Weepies, a band my niece introduced me to and one my daughter also likes! Here's their love story! And I love their music.

It's a Blue Monday in the blog. The Weepies. It got cold again, after a great Saturday, 40s, two-hour walk in the sunshine, etc., and now it has snowed. Worse for those in the East, I hear. My friend Paulette is sad, but she also knows how to feel better, so that's good. And my hubby is sick, but has been resting and drinking liquids. (I do not plan to get sick in response.)

It's not just flu season, it's tax season. The organizer came in the mail from the tax man* and the various W2s and 1099s are arriving, and I have been counting my depreciating inventory: unsold chapbooks in a box. (Paulette, that's a little depressing, yes, but I'm oddly cheery, maybe because, despite my math challenge, everything's adding up! Math is fun!) I have 20 copies each of two books, 1 each of two others, and 44 copies of my first chapbook. Hello? Five bucks each. Even the fabulous Dianne Wiest has money worries on this Blue Monday....

In church this past Sunday, we had 10 full minutes of mindfulness and 7 steps to it, etc. I noticed that I did not, in being mindful, block anything out. I let everything in. I noticed the rain that had turned to snow, the breathing and hacking of the woman next to me, my own breathing, the sweet faces of the congregation, poor Colleen rolling her eyes and checking her watch (we hugged and laughed about this afterwards!), the calm music, the wonderful black legs of chairs against the gray carpet like a miniature stylized forest. I don't see mindfulness as living in a bubble. I see it as walking in the wind, fully buffeted, fully alive, fully aware.

*"Tax man! Tax man!" (Dialogue from Stranger than Fiction, a movie I love! My kids gave it to me!)

Valentine Tree

For those who keep track of this, year by year, post by post, and there are a few of you, yes, my tree is still up, but by now it is fully converted to the Valentine Tree, with wintery but non-Christmasy ornaments on it, plus hearts, a red apple, birds, lovebirds, and small greeting cards that are valentiny (meaning small and valentine-ish): "I Love You" in many languages, a sweet opening-night card from an actress in The Language Archive; a New Year's card from poet Molly Spencer, with a red window, red shutters, red curtains; and a New Year's card from poet Jeannine Hall Gailey with a pair of love bunnies looking at the moon. I love my life!

And this is a bunch of grapes, by Jonathan Koch, roughly in the shape of a heart. Right?

I have been busy with various things. Everything happens at once. I was glad to get my 2015 calendar in time to put these things in it before they happened. It's a New York Times crossword calendar, handy for waiting, if 1) I have a pencil 2) I can forgive myself for being so bad at the New York Times crossword puzzle. (I think I can, I think I can.)

The sun has been shining lately, melting the snow and giving me "earth lust." Really, I was re-reading the book Earth Lust, by poet Julie Brooks Barbour, reviewing it for Escape Into Life, and getting sort of lusty and eager to smell the dirt again. If I walk outside, and I do, I can sort of smell the mud.

These are currently available paintings by Jonathan Koch, by the way!

Imagining Plato

In my ongoing discussion of various gifts, I want to thank my friend Kim for her annual Christmas gift subscription to The Sun magazine. She knows how much I love it! Thank you, thank you!

In the January issue, newly arrived, I got wrapped up in the interview with David Hinton, on translating ancient Chinese poetry, and even wrote about it for the EIL Blog on Wednesday ("Thoughts on Translating Poetry"). The cover photo is by Harvey Stein, with more Coney Island pix inside. (That's not Plato.)

In the middle of the interview, I got stuck on Plato again. I love Plato, but I always run into people blaming Plato for all the faults of Western civilization, for kicking poets out of the Republic, and for the mind/body split, for example. I don't think Plato would kick out any poets; he was one. He was just, in a dialogue, having one guy give advice to another guy that boils down to this: Poets will encourage empathy and imagination in the citizen, which will allow fellow feeling and individual thinking, and if you don't want that in your ideal state, you'll have to get rid of the poets.

Anyhoo, in this interview, David Hinton says, "The ancient Greek philosopher Plato came up with the theory of Forms, which said the truest reality is one of abstract ideas. He thought that Being with a capital B was not part of this everchanging reality [mentioned earlier in and throughout the interview] but some nonmaterial Form that sits behind or above reality and doesn't change, because it's eternal. And because it is changeless, it is more real."

In a walnut shell, I think that is Hinton interpreting Plato, and I think I interpret Plato differently.

I think the key here is that Plato "came up with the theory"--that is, he imagined a way of thinking about reality that helps us organize our perceptions into essences but is not to be mistaken for reality itself; we can conceive of a table even if there isn't one right in front of us, but one is a conception and one, the table, is a table. It's not that hard (unless it's made of stone). I can't eat off an imaginary table, but I can eat off a real one. Reality, itself, as a larger concept (with a capital R), contains both the imagined table (Form) and the real table (Table). (Eating [and italics] are extremely important here.)

Back to David Hinton: "Most of the time we take it for granted that we are our mental processes, the analytical back-and-forth. Meditation reminds us that we're not. When you're meditating, watching your thoughts, you see them rise out of nothingness and recede into it. Next comes the question: If I'm watching this mental process, then I must be separate from it. So what am I?"

Um, might you be an essential Form?!

That's my awkward sense of humor. But what I am saying is, I feel connected to others and to life even while I am a separate (temporary) "I" who is a compassionate "I" who is not very lonely in the world because I already feel connected to other humans and to Nature with a capital N, and I still love Plato, a guy with imagination, who has been used and misunderstood, as well as understood, by others for a really long time.