A Shower of Summer Days

Violet had insisted that she must be allowed to do the flowers in peace before they started out on their long drive to town and to the mountains the next morning. And now she was standing before the piles of snapdragons, their heads heavy with rain, before the few tall spires of larkspur she had been able to save, and the careful faces of the zinnias (rain did not crumple them!) spread out on damp newspapers, covering almost the whole of the table in the study. At her feet she threw the withered stalks from the bunch which had stood there gradually disintegrating for the last two days. Sometimes the fugitive nature of this work into which she put so much thought and care depressed Violet. This was one of those days. They fade so fast, she was thinking. But what a rest it was to be arranging these passive stalks and stems, what a refuge from life with people who never stay put, who developed resentments and jealousies, or began to make demands just when one thought everything was settled.

May Sarton's "A Shower of Summer Days"

Coucou, I'm back after several weeks of adventure. To sum it up quickly, for the past three weeks I've been caring for large bands of children and trying to organize French people into a collective endeavour to start a public French immersion school. I'm happy to report that so far my efforts have been successful (although people never stay put!). And at one point, the highlight perhaps, there was even a pony.

Like Violet in Sarton's novel, I am ready to sit quietly and build my bouquet.

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Mozart in E-flat Major

I turn around.
I fell Monday's well-shaven face lightly
caress my left shoulder

most cherished part
most crucial here and now

Hsia Yu

Image via Audrey Hepburn Complex

Each time you leave, something is lost

I’m the sort of person who sits with her coat on, always ready to leave. It’s a tendency of heart passed on from my parents, who no doubt learned it from their parents. The problem is that each time you leave, something is lost: a ring, a tooth, a last name. Some things replace themselves, but many things do not. At some point I realized that if I kept on living like this, always on the cusp of leaving, I was going to find myself completely alone at ninety sitting in a cramped room in a distant country, unable to speak the language. A small mining town in China, perhaps. So I have given myself the task of learning to stay. This is no small task. There is always the inclination to bolt or simply wander off when things become uncomfortable.

Image by Dusdin Condren

and you felt the old tug at your ankles

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver "The Journey"

Image by Gary Isaac

Wesak

Happy birthday, Buddha. Today we celebrated Wesak, the festival of Buddha’s birth. This is a very precious time when the entire community — adults and kids, parents and those without children — celebrate together. In most forms of Buddhism, the festival of Wesak centers on children. This meant far more to me than a mother's day brunch, and I ate cake before noon.

image by Sarah Jaensch

avignon

"The sound of church bells and a procession of school kids dressed in black headed toward the end of the street where a wide set of stairs wrapped around the exterior of an ancient building.

I caught up and quickly passed without giving them a glance, climbed the stairs and waited at the half way point for them to pass me.

I held my camera low figuring i’d leave it mostly to chance.

Once past the last child gave me a face and stuck her tongue out. I stuck my tongue out in kind and she turned away laughing."

Photo and Text by Gary Issac

Happy Mother's day, tout le monde.

like the passionate daughter of a lighthouse keeper

It is a bright house;
not a single room is dim.
It is a house which rises high
on the cliffs, open
as a lookout tower.

When the night comes
I put a light in it,
a light larger than the sun and the moon.

Think
how my heart leaps
when my trembling fingers
strike a match in the evening.

I lift my breasts
and inhale and exhale the sound of love
like the passionate daughter of a lighthouse keeper.

It is a bright house.
I will create in it
a world no man can ever build.

-Fukao Sumako "Bright House" translated by Kenneth Rexroth

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Compared to the pain Tsugumi gives me, this is nothing at all

Everyone gets annoyed about something at least once a day, me included. But I noticed there was something I did whenever this happened to me - that there was a sentence I would start chanting over and over deep down inside, like a sort of Buddhist chant, without even realizing that I was doing it. Compared to the pain Tsugumi gives me, this is nothing at all. It seemed that during the years I spent with Tsugumi, my body had come to understand in a hazy sort of way that, in the end, getting worked up really doesn't take you anywhere. And there was something else that I understood as I stared into the orange light of the gradually darkening sky - something that made me feel sort of like I wanted to cry.

Excerpt from Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich.

Rereading a favorite Yoshimoto book this sunny afternoon. This story has always been poignant, but recent events has made this even more true. Sitting here I can imagine Tsugumi's response to my musings, probably something along the lines of , "God you're a moron! Keep your mouth shut unless you've got something worth saying." Gallant, wise, and surprisingly unpleasant, Tsugumi is one of my literary heros.

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The best way to eat squid is to catch it first

best if you pull it out of the dripping net yourself,
a gift you didn’t ask for among the ordinary
bone-filled catch you did, and the purple sea-stars, inedible
bad luck you didn’t deserve.
Next to eat squid you waste a fire
To coals, nestling the flaccid bodies
Into the earth for as long as it takes, usually
long. Finally you may eat the small charred
legs, one by one, working your way
to the ink-filled heart. This is a shared
humiliation, and at this stage you are obliged
to press your lips to any nearby lover,
mark him as indelibly as you can.

Suzanne Matson "Squid"

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