unreasonable

Seven indications that you may be feeling unreasonably irritable:

1. This afternoon's birthday party fills you with feelings of dread.

2. You stop speaking to your husband because he sprayed herbicides on the lawn.

3. You refuse to pick up the phone when it rings.

4. All of the slow-moving people at the market irritate you.

5. Your daily poem from Poets.org seems trite.

6. You wish that Buddhists would stop shaving their heads.

7. It's a beautiful sunny day, but you are inside typing on the computer.

Image via Aela

equestrienne

See, they are clearing the sawdust course
For the girl in pink on the milk-white horse.
Here spangles twinkle; his pale flanks shine,
Every hair of his tail is fine
And bright as a comet's his mane blows free,
And she points a toe and bends a knee,
And while his hoofbeats fall like rain
Over and over and over again.
And nothing that moves on land or sea
Will seem so beautiful to me
As the girl in pink on the milk-white horse
Cantering over the sawdust course.

"Equestrienne" by Rachel Field

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the magic mountain

It's Tuesday afternoon, and Tadzio is asleep on the couch in the living room. This is a bit of decadence for him. I usually insist that he nap in his bed. I, too, am being decadent. I'm sipping a glass of wine and reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. We are on vacation together. Earlier today we went out and bought a new bicycle. I love bicycles. I love looking at them, riding them; my bicycle tends to be my most prized possession (along with my books). I have to hand it to Portland, as an American city it is pretty magical. Where else could I write about Dutch bikes and French schools?

When Tadzio was a little over a year old I bought a bakfiets or Dutch cargo bike to ride him around in. I loved that bike with all of my heart, and wished I still owned it today. It moved so beautifully through space.

We sold the bakfiets last summer to pay for Tadzio's tuition to the French school. The French school is not affordable for our family. It is a bit of madness (perhaps like the Dutch cargo bike) that is all about dreams and ideas. Tadzio is finishing up his second year at the school. He speaks French beautifully, and his teachers tell me that he has a gift for language and they must be careful about what they say as he "understands everything."

Despite Tadzio's insistence that we buy another bakfiets, I bought a bicycle that was basically a Dutch commuter bike with a special extension for Tadzio to ride on the back, an Xtracycle. I have to say there is something incredibly cute about his little legs straddling the back while he holds onto the handlebars. I was proud of him for mysteriously foregoing the foot rests and choosing the recycled cork hand grips.

Mille fois Merci.












Images; bicycle, bakfiets, school

spring cleaning

I've been tidying up a bit around here in anticipation of the start of a couple of classes I'm taking this spring. I shifted the name of the space over to a different title with a similar theme. I apologize if that surprised anyone. Speaking of surprises, it is remarkable how spring keeps us waiting here in the Northwest; or actually, it isn't keeping us waiting; it has begun, but it is like the opening of a show: Nothing has been finished. Yesterday we went on a hike amidst great disorder. Everything was thawing and muddy, yet still blooming most recklessly: if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

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sleeves flowing, passing through hurried crowds

Tell me, do you believe in the gods living above

Listen, blessed child, there are so many

Children rushing to their souls; in the sky above

They each have a corresponding star. Oh

Tell me, do you believe in the gods living above.

Since you have chosen me among all people

Let me choose a star among the stars to illuminate you

Sleeves flowing, passing through hurried crowds. Believe me

I am only a shell, shielding somebody fiery and smoky

Since you have chose me among all people.

I am only a shell, shielding somebody fiery and smoky

Look, the air around my skirt is slowly rising

So that my skirt floats, and I may reach out

To bare my white ankles. Oh, dancing in the wind

I am only a shell, shielding somebody fiery and smoky

Excerpts from Zheng Danyi's "I Believe In the Gods Living Above"

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childhood poems

I memorized this poem when I was ten. After some thought, I find that I can still recite it from heart. I'm not sure what that says about me. Only this and nothing more?

Image via We Heart It

my veins bud

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. .... Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.


Excerpt from In the Village by Derek Walcott


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