fog of time

"I ordered a seat for you, in the theatre,for next spring
And a message for you, for the summer after next...
As well as one storm, two flowers, three starry skies..."

I hold six pieces of clouds from five years later
(the clouds I ordered from three starry skies...)
Calmly and brilliantly, in the seat next to yours
With numerous raindrops which are not yet broken

I describe to you the storm, the storm
Frozen in the spines of a school of fish
(The storm I ordered from the darkest trench of the Pacific...)
And afterwards, two flowers, three starry skies...

Excerpts from Zheng Danyi's Fog of Time

Images by Wai Lin Tse, with thanks

Vuillard's yellow studio

Vuillard's studio, Château des Clayes . . .
The corner is hard to judge
where the paintings in the painting are pinned
on the yellow wall (the mise en abyme
will be the end of me)

in this gleaming Institute of Donors,
this imperial temple
raised from the muck and blood
of the stockyards, out of hog-squeal
and cost-efficient slaughter

at the end of the Millennium Park
where the towers crowd and crane
in an ogre's silver egg,
the concentration of capital
in a cunning device.

I stare with nostalgia, with homesickness
into Vuillard's yellow studio
and I know the place
absolutely, it is that humane
heaven of drapes and turpentine

where I shall at last lie down
on the lumpy mattress
with the stripy bedspread
below the little skylight —
my sweet, autarchic rest.

-Stephen Romer "Yellow Studio"

Image found here

get your dim sum on

Happy holidays! Our own slightly haphazard family tradition is to go out for dim sum on Christmas day. If, like me, you are not very good at telling a white turnip cake from a taro cake, you can order this very useful pocket guide by Kit Shan Li.

Photo by Annie Lee found here

this is to be my symphony

 
To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury and
refinement rather than fashion;

to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy,
not rich; to study hard, think
quietly, talk gently, act frankly;

to listen to stars and birds, to babes
and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely,

await occasions, hurry never. In a
word, to let the spiritual, unbidden
and unconscious, grow up through

the common. This is to be my symphony.

- William Henry Channing

Image found here

poems folded up like tired travelers

Poetry for me is an antidote to the poisons of everyday life. I often read it furtively, secretively. I use this space to think about it. Sometimes it's only a line. Tonight it's this, "I remember my poems folded up like tired travelers/ Then I fainted/ Then, no banquets... no cheers."

Image found here

the things you tame

The fox fell silent and stared at the little prince for a long while, "Please... tame me! he said.
"I'd like to," the little prince replied, "but I haven't much time. I have friends to find and so many things to learn."
"The only things you learn are the things you tame," said the fox."People haven't time to learn anything. They buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends. If you want a friend, tame me!"
"What do I have to do?" asked the little prince.
"You have to be very patient," the fox answered. "First, you'll sit down a little ways from me, over there, in the grass. I'll watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you won't say anything. Language is the source of misunderstandings. But day by day you'll be able to sit a little closer..."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince

Image found here

One Woman Orchestra

Whenever I want to cheer myself up I think about Zoë Keating. She is an incredibly talented cellist, and I love her scrappy style. When asked how she deals with rejection, she responds, "I get rejected all the time. I think I have some kind of bloody minded, self-preservation streak that makes me honestly believe that the person or group who rejected me is just ignorant and/or maybe didn’t get the right impression me…and then I forget about it and try again. I’d still be making music even if no one was paying attention." And here she is, making her music in the San Francisco airport. I would have stopped. I hope.

monsieur le loup

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge  by Nathalie Lete on Le Divan Fumoir Bohemien

while you've been away I've

dressed Tadzio in his peacock costume (twice)
broken the coffee carafe
dressed pirate dolls in smocks and hats
dirtied every teacup in the house
attended a puppet show performance of the Jabberwocky
slipped in the ice
watched a new Zhang Yimou film
missed you.


Image found here

I know a man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

-Robert Creeley "I Know a Man"

Image found here

lantern procession

Image found here

be for me like rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quite, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent--
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

-Robert Creeley "The Rain"

Image found here

the pilgrim

When I was a kid and couldn't sleep at night I would read The Pilgrim's Progress. I realize that admitting to this makes me sound like I must have been born in the 18th century. It just happened to be a book that we had around the house. Actually, I hated Christian but kept on reading the book hoping he would meet an interesting demise. Nobody had explained that The Pilgrim's Progress was an allegory, and Christian's simple, gullible character offended my youthful sense of bravery and honor.

I was, however, fascinated by the burden on Christian's back. He believed it came from his reading "the book in his hand." He obviously had no idea where the burden came from, and I would spend nights speculating on the exact material that it was made from. Was it a rock? I knew that it was held on with straps, and rolled down the hill when he was finally released from it.

It may have been a rock. Some nights I thought it might be a bundle of clothes. My most secret thought was that the burden was actually a small person who clung to his back. Probably a child like myself. A young girl or boy desperately holding onto this incompetent adult named Christian, waiting for him to realize that he or she was there.

Image via We Heart It

inside a family

A family, and a human being inside a family, puts together a picture of their past in voluntary and involuntary ways, carefully constructed, arbitrarily dictated. A mother remembers one particular summer gathering on a lawn, with iced lemonade in a jug, and everyone smiling - as she puts in the album the one photograph where everyone is smiling - and keeps the scowling faces of the unsuccessful snapshots hidden in a box. A child remembers one scramble over the Downs, or zigzag trot through the woods, out of many, many forgotten ones, and shapes his identity round it... and the memory changes when he is twelve, and fourteen, and twenty, and forty, and eighty, and perhaps never at any of those points represented precisely anything that ever happened.

- A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book

Image found here

home

It's good to be back.

image via We Heart It

off to the midwest

We are off to Michigan to celebrate the holiday with Przemek's family. It's going to be a balancing act, blog friends, please wish me luck. Stay warm in the late autumn evenings, I'll be reading your poetry.

Image via We Heart It

for yaya, an autumn song

Tonight, this melancholy heart of mine
Is thinking of you
Happily, or with sadness
Autumn is gone. Last autumn was the same

For fifteen days, your husky voice
Has been reciting a poem and a name
For the sake of your loneliness, they've
Turned these maple leaves into beautiful tales

Yet the most beautiful story never stays
As the water washes away combs and hair
The world changes every day. Even a pear tree
Under the moon would sometimes punish her own fruit

Oh, one tree ripples, a thousand trees weep
Since we came to the world
Parting has always been with us
You in seclusion, me in worries

Oh, how useless, how tiring, this misspent life!
You live in a garden of maple, reminding me
Of a beauty, the extreme kind
In the warmth of her blood she's burning

Minute by minute, burning
Oh, what a melancholy light it sends out
To make autumns alike, and to force me
Into this endless craze, for you, tonight!

Zheng Danyi
Translated by Luo Hui


Image via We Heart It

when we no longer know what to do

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

"The Real Work" by Wendell Berry

Image via We Heart It

I'm reading Wendell Berry's Fidelity, and am deeply enamored with his writing and characters. His loving depiction of the woods and waterways wove through my dreams last night. The loyalty of his characters and their commitment to each other and the land stayed with me through my day.

the blessed and the blessing trees

I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.

Woods by Wendell Berry

Image via We Heart It

An Otter

Christmas day, 4 O'clock,
Stumps of cloud, like yellowing tower blocks,
Lean over
The failing glimmer of Christmas lights
And the quays, utterly empty,

Except

For one dark otter, slick with river slime,

A shape

Made of dark Lee water,
Of thick fluid,
Of rippling muscle,

Swaggering, like any pedestrian,
Up the steps from the riverbed,
Across the street,
Past dim shop displays,shuttered windows,

Toward an empty car askew on the footpath,
Its engine idling, its front door open,
Its headlights ploughing the gloom,

And a girl, its driver,
Standing alone on the pavement,

Innocent, beautiful.
She leans over the otter,
Her long hair hanging down
As a second slinks up from the riverbed,
Like a hand sliding slowly
From a hip to a breast.

-Billy Ramsell

dialogue

Outside I can hear the wind blowing the rain against the windows. November is here. Upstairs in the attic, I am stretched beneath an orange tree. I moved it inside when the temperature dropped, and it has decided to flower. I rest in the heavy perfume of the white flowers. Somewhere in the distance a star twinkles, talking to the flowers. A strange exchange on a stormy night.

Image found here

I am the earth

I am the Earth
I am warm, moist soil
I am a single supple stalk
I draw my life
all the way up into corollas of wild berries on the roadside

I am amazed at
a breast of water welling
to flow into the inlet of a muddy rice paddy
I am amazed at
myself being
hot steam blowing fire and sulfur up
from the bottom of the great ocean, deep indigo.
I am amazed at
the crimson blood flow
covering the earth’s surface in human shape;
I am amazed that it swells as the tides ebb and flow, and
gushes out monthly under distant invisible gravity.

A person’s love, a person’s temperament, is
as fragile as a mushroom in its pitiable shape
as helpless as seeking shelter from rain under a shepherd’s purse,
yet I am amazed at myself being a shroud that finally envelops him
at a time when one man is despondent.

I luxuriate and I am the same as soil
I share countless failures and immense waste
with tiny maggots in the dirt
and daffodils quivering at the edges of unknown cliffs

I am amazed that I am the pulsating twilight.
I am amazed that I am a dewdrop
which at a set time rises to the blade tip of a rice plant.

I am the earth.
I live there, and I am the very same earth.

In the four billionth year
I have come to know
the eternal cold moon, my other self, my hetero being,
then, for the first time, I am amazed that I am warm mud.

-Kiyoko Nagase
Translation: 2009, Takako Lento

Tadzio and I took the day off together. I needed some space to think, and spending time with my three-year-old son helps me get my feet back under me. We spent the morning soaking in a hot pool and admiring the steam rising into the cold morning air. We ate a lunch of sweet potatoes and pineapple, took a long afternoon nap, and then admired tonight's full moon. And I am amazed.

Image via We Heart It

water

This week the days rolled on through their cycle of small events. I'm ready for the reprieve of the weekend. We hope to soak in the soaking pool again, and so I'll leave you with a love poem about water. Stay warm and enjoy the whisper of the fallen leaves drifting in the wind.  I'll be reading your poetry.

The certainty of water
is that it slips through the fingers

so

let us hold each other loosely
as we drink.

Miriam Wei Wei Lo
"Three Love Poems: Water"

Image by Wai Lin Tse via Feaverish Photography

at the bathhouse

Tomorrow morning we are going to start the weekend by soaking together in a soaking pool. It's public, located outside, tiled, heated, and filled with soothing salt water. While we soak under the grey autumn sky, I hope that we can enjoy the freedom of being unembodied of all the things that we carry around with us during the week. I want our worries to be disregarded and soaped in the hot water like the yen coins in Ishigaki Rin's "At the Bathhouse."

In Tokyo
At the public bathhouse the price went up to 19 yen and so
When you pay 20 yen at the counter
You get one yen change.

Women have no leeway in their lives
To be able to say that
They don’t need one yen
And so though they certainly accept the change
They have no place to put it
And drop it in between their washing things.

Thanks to that
The happy aluminum coins
Soak to their fill in hot water
And are splashed with soap.

One yen coins have the status of chess pawns
So worthless that they’re likely to bob up even now
In the hot water.

What a blessing to be of no value
In monetary terms.

A one yen coin
Does not distress people in the way a 1,000 yen note does
Is not as sinful as a 10,000 yen note
The one yen coin in the bath
With healthy naked women.

Image by Wai Lin Tse via Feaverish Photography

Ah, the value of being worthless. I hope that you also find a way to set aside your worries this weekend, blog friends. I'll be reading your poetry.

stones in the marshland

We spent Sunday morning wandering through a marshland located along the east bank of a river. Hawks, quail, pintails, mallards, and kestrels whirled above and beside us in the autumn winds. Great Blue Herons flocked from a rookery on a nearby island.

As we walked through the marsh, Tadzio spotted a simple stone sculpture and called us over to admire it. We glimpsed a second identical sculpture carefully placed in the distance ahead. Both sculptures were large boulders with rough, natural surfaces. Closer inspection revealed carefully placed bands of glass ringing the circumference of each stone.

I can't tell you exactly what the stones meant, but they gave the day noble accents and caused a subtle change in our moods.

This morning while on the phone with Przemek, shortly before a stressful  meeting, I was surprised to find myself staring at photos of  these very same stone sculptures. They were hanging on the wall of a downtown gallery. Moments like these always give me pause. It's a little like the universe is offering me something, but I'm not quite sure what it might be.


Image via We Heart It

they came like swallows

They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman's powerful character
Could keep a Swallow to its first intent;
And half a dozen in formation there,
That seemed to whirl upon a compass-point,
Found certainty upon the dreaming air,
The intellectual sweetness of those lines
That cut through time or cross it withershins.

William Butler Yeats
Coole Park

I was reminded of this beautiful poem last night as I was reflecting on the role of wife and mother and the complexity of family relationships. All of it so exhausting. Yet it is fulfilling to realize that you are a vital part of something larger than yourself.

Image via We Heart It

my blossoms and books

"You kindly ask for my Blossoms and Books - I have read but a little recently - Existence has overpowered Books. Today, I slew a Mushroom - "

Emily Dickinson in a letter to Higginson

Image via We Heart It

I will eat them all when day breaks

This was my thought about a few particularly difficult coworkers today.

No, really, all joking and employment aside, I do love this line from Ishigaki Rin's poem "shellfish." I love all of her poems about cooking and food. I can sense that here is the voice of another woman who gives a lot of thought to her work in the kitchen and its implications in her life.

I wake at midnight.
The little shellfish I bought last evening
are alive with their mouths slightly open.

I will eat them all when day breaks.

I laugh a hag's laugh.
Afterwards there is nothing left of the night,
except to sleep with my mouth slightly open.

Shellfish by Ishigaki Rin

Image via We Heart It

getting my poem on

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that title. Somewhat hesitantly, I've signed up for an afternoon poetry class. We meet for four hours in the local art museum and compose poems to the paintings and sculpture. Maybe I'll find my muse somewhere in the museum. I'm desperately hoping that we won't have to share our poems in class. Oh, please no! I'm already blushing just at the thought of it.

Image via We Heart It.

the unwavering horizontal join

I know, it's autumn and my thoughts should be heading inland. But today I am thirsty for the sea, for the unwavering horizontal join, blue against blue.

I think that's all.

Take good care of yourself this weekend, I'll be reading your poetry.

Oceanic image found here

Mei-mei

Mei-mei,what follows is autumn
Sleep with closed lips, and tenderness

Tender is your scarf, to and fro, in the breeze
What follows is
The palm of my hand - warm and full of memory

Not you, it's a garden that I am watering
Mei-mei, a safe place is spacious
On those delicate petals, what follows is
A silent, fleeting message

Moon, weather, windows lightly open
Clear bright lake
Close your eyes, Mei-mei
What follows is
A gentle rainfall
And my feelings hurt suddenly by the leaves

-Zheng Danyi
translated by Luo Hui

You'll have to forgive me, dear reader, I've been surviving on poetry this week. I'll write something more personal and creative soon. Usually my choice of poems is a personal thing, but I'm not sure that really counts as creativity. I should mention that today is Thursday, and that means its time to get your poem on over at Read Write Poem.

Image found here

You In The Shade of a Tree

For some time now I have been aware

of your eyes fixed on me from the shade of a tree.
You, so fondly treasured by your husband,
are radiant with a fair glow like a Renoir
or a Titian.
I have been tempered by toilsome sparks of fires
all by myself, gasping for air.
Now I stand tall on my ground
managing to speak with your husband.
I am no longer embarrassed
I behave simply as a wholesome human being –
Yet I am aware.
Your eyes, so blue they look dewy, glisten
with worries and apprehensions.
My proud heart grows tender
deeply moved by women’s frailty
I slowly hang down my head.


Your husband is truly exceptional;
It is a small joy for me to stand before him,
as your keen insight tells you.
You see clearly
my tempered skin glowing gold.
Beyond that, you know that I came
in a blouse with many frills like clouds.
Also you know I am wearing a brand-new hat.
You are intent on seeing through everything.
A wistful tide surges inside me.
Honestly I am not trying to take anything from you.
I am simply pleased to be able to speak to him
as a self-reliant person,
ah, not disturbed by anything malicious –

My heart slowly gradually wilts
To think, ah why is it, how frail we are, we women –


-Kiyoko Nagase
Translation: 2009, Takako Lento


Image found here

May I be a great big tree

so big I can’t see those taking shelter under me,
a deep green conical figure wrapped in serenity
Just as I dangle my bare feet in the water
may my roots joyfully draw
from an unknown subterranean current

May I be such a great big tree
that those who look at me
will naturally feel peace and repose

Yet may my luxuriating branches and leaves
whisper to a breeze like stray hair
May they awaken before anyone else in the rosy glow of morning
May their blue shadows be cast on earth
spreading like a trailing lace skirt
May my thoughts be kind
May my thoughts be refreshing
The tree will not move
The tree will not speak
yet may it be a ladder heavenly children ascend and descend

If someone comes and rests by me at the height of day
I will provide deep shadow and infinite comfort

On a stormy day
I will be even greater, more stalwart
I will firmly anchor my roots in the great earth and will not sway
Yet my sap will flow smoothly
even my incised wounds will issue forth a refreshing scent
Soon I will whisper a smiling song
When night arrives I will dissolve into darkness
unbeknownst to people
may the song alone become invisible ripples

Kiyoko Nagase

Translation: 2009, Takako Lento

This is such a beautiful poem. Kiyoko Nagase is very close to my heart with her cosmic, sensual voice. Take good care of yourself in the chilly autumn air. I'll be reading your poetry.

Image via We Heart It

three things

He loved three things in this world:

White peacocks, evensong

And faded maps of America.

He hated it when children cried.

He hated tea with raspberry jam, and

Any female hysteria in his life.

Now imagine it: I was his wife.

- Anna Akhmatova on her marriage to Gumilyov

Image via We Heart It

l'heure bleue

I'm sitting here in the left office very late at night. I'm distracted, as I've perfumed myself with  L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain. As its scent spreads, I am haunted by the sensation that another woman is in the office with me. It smells so unlike my usual smell of soap. I breathe in, "How divine!" then later "How nauseating!" This old perfume has such a sovereign if funerary scent. It makes me think of candle wax, old churches, and the colors blue, purple, and mauve. I can never make up my mind whether its scent is rather nice or perfectly horrid. Nevertheless, tonight I have an interesting woman to sit next to while I work.

Image via We Heart It

what's in a name

My first name is an old-fashioned French name. When I was born my parents had not decided on a name, and asked the family doctor to choose one. "Noisette" he said without hesitation (or something very close to that, anyway). As a result of this one carefree act, all of my life I've been conscious of names and their connotations.

Yesterday I met a man who up until that point I had only talked to on the phone. "Noisette" he said, "You're not at all what I expected" and he made a mysterious gesture above his head as if outlining a large bow or elegant pompadour. I've been musing over that gesture and what it could possibly mean.

I think it can only mean this...

Images via Boubou Teatime

beginning and believing

I like to live always at the beginnings of life, not at their end. We all lose some of our faith under the oppression of mad leaders, insane history, pathologic cruelties of daily life. I am by nature always beginning and believing.

excerpt from the diary of Anais Nin, volume four 1944-1947

charming parisian lovers found here

horticultural exhibits swoon

It's possible that the presence of humans in any number tires plants. Horticultural exhibits swoon and die almost every evening, when people have paid them too much attention. I find myself weary after my friends have departed.

Image via We Heart It

macres

A friend has sent us a package of water-caltrops, or  water-chestnuts. The French name is macres. Water-chestnuts are so unappreciated, and last for such a short time, being considered a delicacy only in places where there are ponds, that I should like to write a little about them here.

This strange water fruit, of ooze and autumn bred, forms with four protective horns when fully ripe a shell of very hard texture. Cracking them open with a good stout knife will leave blue-black stains on your hands and at least a couple of damaged fingers. The flesh has a bluish white color the consistency of candle wax. It neither looks like a chestnut nor does it taste like one. Even when cooked it still calls to mind the pond where it was born and the mud that nurtured it.

"And... are they really good?" you might ask. I don't rightly know, but there is something very nostalgic about their fragrance of riverside reeds, of spearmint, of disturbed water in the early days of autumn.

Image via We Heart It

sworn to be keepers

Finders Keepers we sang when we were children

or were taught to sing

before our histories began    and we began

who were beloved    our animal life

toward the Beloved,     sworn to be Keepers.

On a hill before the wind came

the grass moved toward the one sea,

blade after blade dancing in waves...

A short excerpt from A Poem Beginning With a Line By Pindar by Robert Duncan.

Enjoy the slow descent into autumn. I'll be reading your poetry.

Image found via We Heart It

from eva sounness

I recently discovered Miriam Lo through Poetry International, a worldwide forum for poetry on the web. I've been carrying this poem around with me this week. It may sound silly, but I like thinking about Eva Sounness (she is Lo's grandmother and is featured in many of her poems). I'm thankful to Miriam Lo for sharing her family with me.

FROM EVA SOUNNESS: THE WAR COMES HOME

When the war begins
Eva is feeding her first daughter, Robin, oat porridge
boiled soft for her infant mouth which drops to an O
at the sight of the spoon, the small pink tongue expectant.
Kim, her son, is running around in the yard
rounding up chooks and shouting at sleepy dogs,
pretending to be a farmer.

Somewhere faraway
a place called Austria is annexed, Poland collapses,
Jews are garrotted and pinioned in ghettos.
With the usual burst of wattle and birdsong
spring arrives in the South-West corner
of Western Australia, which is, Robert Menzies declares,
also at war.

In China the blood has been running
for months, years, is dripping off crusted walls
in tight alleyways, congealing in gutters, and all they hear
in Mt Barker is the crackling cut-and-dried
news on the radio: No Real Cause for Alarm and
Business as Usual and Eva is pregnant
with twins.

Canberra bickers. Two heads and a tangle
of limbs press themselves against Eva’s taut abdomen.
Menzies resigns, Arthur Fadden stretches himself
across forty days, two independents take a short walk
to John Curtin’s government. Labor. “Good,”
says Eva, “no more crawling to London.” Cliff scowls
and rustles the newspaper.

Closer to home
there is rustling through jungle. Impregnable:
word like a fortress falling apart, cracking up into syllables:
did not think the Japs would get here so fast. Footsteps at the door
carry the prospect of carnage. The children rush in
suddenly soft and vulnerable as newborns. Eva cradles the twins.
Disaster is one panicked moment: What if I lose them?

Losing is for other people’s children. Here,
the war is a headache that lasts six years,
tightening sometimes into a deep sense of unease—
a little like standing in the kitchen
waiting for the baby to cry itself out.
Pain that belongs to somebody else.

five more days

-- the barking of a dog. autumnal burnings. five more days of summer.

image found here

graphotherapy

There are many types of therapy that would be appropriate for me, dear reader, but this September I am embarking on the great graphotherapy project.

Graphotherapy, the behavioral science that invites the writer to take pen in hand and change self-defeating aspects of the personality by altering specific strokes in the handwriting. Graphotherapists are trained in graphology and have additional training in psychology. Their expertise is to guide the client in altering handwriting patterns as a means of removing negative thought habits and replacing them with positive, self-supportive ones. By changing writing patterns we simultaneously reconfigure the neuropathways in the brain that record our self-image.

I write in the kind of printing we all learned in elementary school. Uppercase letters occur at the beginning of sentences and in other appropriate places; there are also lowercase letters. This is called upper-and lowercase printing. u &lc for short. My writing looks very much like the lines you are reading. Guess what the graphotherapist has to say about this, "Printing is a shield usually put in place by a sensitive soul who has been betrayed in one way or another and isn't about to let that happen again. Printing keeps people at a distance by creating a boundary. The u&lc printer has erected a wire fence around himself... If you want to tap into your creativity in a big way, begin now and again to connect a letter or two within your words." *

What about you? Are you a dedicated pencil user, or do you prefer a felt-tip pen? Does your writing slant back, vertical, or forward? Do you have zonal balance? Angles and curves? Or are you a printer like me?

*Your handwriting can change your life by Vimala Rodgers

Image here

WschodKsiezyca

The moon is like a clean, fragrant body. Sound asleep, it gives off a seductive smell. A night is pressed on either side by two days. Between them all, the dark circles around your eyes stay joyful.


A stanza from a poem I read years ago. If anyone knows the author, you would save me from being haunted by the feeling that I can just almost remember it… It’s beautiful, I think. Please excuse the dabbling in Polish. If I had time, I would study it alongside French.



Image is Moonrise by Stanislaw Maslowski

coq au vin

Feeling extravagant this evening, I decided to start preparations for a dinner of coq au vin. I wondered to myself if it was a bit too early. It's not really Fall yet. But Tadzio is back in school, the weather is cool, and at least one of my co-workers has the swine flu. Fall is here, ce n'est pas? It's time for me to drag my boots and coat out of the closet. Time for me to convince Przemek to read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain with me, one or two chapters per week. Przemek has been reading this book for twenty years, but has never finished it.

Coq au vin is a dish that amuses me to no end. It's simple and delicious, and I get to empty a whole bottle of red wine into our dutch oven. I like to prepare it with game hens. The sweet man in the deli section searched high and low for hens, but only located a goose. It is too early. It's not really Autumn. I do have a recipe for braised goose with white wine and coffee, but I'm saving it for later this year.

Anyway, this evening I was in search of much smaller fowl. Finally, sweetly, the man in the deli section found some frozen hens in the freezer and I was on my way.

Image via wet behind the ears

a season in the life

*****

Anyway, we were serious about the decision to move to Canada. Not tomorrow, but in the next five years. This afternoon I'm flipping through How to Move To Canada: A Primer for Americans. It is a delightful, practical book. This, I would argue, is a practical dream. My favorite part of the book is the section labeled "Where to Move in Canada." It runs two-hundred pages long, and begins, "If you're serious about moving to Canada and trying to decide where to live, this section of the book will get you started."

And because I think about life in terms of books, I'm also thumbing through my copy of A Season In the Life of Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais. I stumbled across this author years ago on a lonely winter evening spent in my local library. I was enchanted by her voice and the descriptions of snowy Quebec City. Somehow, her writing is all wrapped up in my mind with the idea of going north. This, I will admit, is not practical. Here are a few pages from her beautiful notebooks.











Notebook images found here