Saturday, November 29, 2008

Happy Birthday Jr, November 28, 1966


The Saturday after Thanksgiving. Kids eating oatmeal on the couch in front of the TV, after 50,000 nasty squirmishes since they fell out of bed. The new particularly annoying call for justice is "ma-om, ____ (insert child's name) is being meee-een." More and more, fantasies of taser ownership fill my head. "Ma-aaa...arghhhhh" and blessed silence.

Thanksgiving was actually lovely at the Velmar homestead. Boss did the turkey and it was the best one yet. And hurray for Jr's crab hush puppies which had everyone begging for one more as they came out of the frying pan. The ladies indulged in maybe a little too much Cabernet, but it was all good. Oh god, more fighting behind me, they are done shoveling oatmeal and now they are slapping each other in the face with pillows. Dear god, make it go away....

On Thursday morning my brother-in-law Troy June of Verdon, Illinois, kept me company in the kitchen as I made the stuffing and sweet potatoes with marshmallows. We talked about the beat poets, and whether Robert Creely was really a beat, and who the founder of City Lights Books was. We are both old and forgetful now, and so resorted to the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Lawrence Ferlinghetti of course! Also couldn't remember who wrote Spoon River Anthology and looked that up too...Edgar Lee Masters. Troy waxed enthusiastic about Charles Bukoswki. Was the blue collar drunken bum thing a shtick? I think yes, Troy thinks maybe not.

Jr. and I went to the courthouse to make my final restitution to the traffic court. Then we went to Home Depot where we were given free coffee and Dunkin Munchkins in honor of Black Friday. Jr. bought a mini Xmas tree and I got screws to put the bedroom door back on. Little missy slammed it and it fell off. Hurray for Jr. again as she put the door back up. We scored BIG at the Dollar Store, three big rolls of x-mas paper and a gift for Uncle Troy for UNDER FIVE DOLLARS.

I wrote out my Christmas cards last night, as I like to do on Thanksgiving weekend. Had to make a few calls for addresses, inviting the wrath of my loving friends and family. "You're doing WHAT?" Followed by name calling, like freak and bitch, and by statements like "I hate you." This is about the only organized thing I do all year so I think I should be cut some slack! Speaking of cards, Buddy, please email me your address.

Oh yes, yesterday was Jr's birthday. She poked me awake at six am to make her coffee, and she almost became a birthday casualty. Jr. is 42! Sending lots of birthday hugs to Weezer, Jr., and a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem...

The Plough of Time

Night closed my windows and
The sky became a crystal house
The crystal windows glowed
The moon
shown through them
through the whole house of crystal
A single star beamed down
its crystal cable
and drew a plough through the earth
unearthing bodies clasped together
couples embracing
around the earth
They clung together everywhere
emitting small cries
that did not reach the stars
The crystal earth turned
and the bodies with it
And the sky did not turn
nor the stars with it
The stars remained fixed
each with its crystal cable
beamed to earth
each attached to the immense plough
furrowing our lives

Lawrence Ferlinghetti




America

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.

Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back

what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.

Robert Creeley

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Weekend Chatter


Kingston

LC has been located and has a great new place in Kingston, NY. He lives surrounded by buildings built as far back at the 1700's so we are psyched for some paranormal investigating and EVP recording. Kingston is not far from metro NY so bad movie night will continue! LC is especially eager to check out Jr's haunted Weehawken digs. Troy June saw a teenage girl in braids run past the bed and disappear into the wall on Friday night.

I have been doing some investigating about Kingston. It was settled by the Dutch, and was the third Dutch colony after Manhattan and Albany. The Dutch got rid of the Esopus Indians, then they got rich farming and later on selling cement, bricks and bluestone. Kingston industries eventually faltered, but the chamber of commerce says they are on the upswing again, making stuff like multimedia packages and solar powered boats. Boy doggies! LC says Kingston is a very pretty place with a great bus system and everything he needs within walking distance of his apt, which is the bottom floor of a house built in the 1940s with quadruple the space of his NYC apt. Hurray for LC making a smart and happy move!

I have been Xmas shopping online. The boy (who is currently in disgrace for failing English and who will once again have mama combing his school binder and assignments) has asked for a sock monkey, a flying pig, and an ant farm among other unusual things. Litte missy, who kicked ass this past school quarter and has become a "dynamic" classroom leader, wants lots of techno expensive stuff and Calvin and Hobbs books. I want a new Ann Taylor wardrobe and a trip to Scotland, but will settle for refrigerator magnets, potholders, and a rooster and hen statue set. From the kids I mean. I would like Jr. to get me new speakers for my computer!

Jr. is currently very sick with what I think is a sinus infection. She refuses to go to the doctor however and will probably keel over pulling crabgrass in her backyard in the subzero temperatures. I would like her to go to the doctor and get better before she starts making Thanksgiving food with her germy hands! She called me this morning and ordered me out into the cold to buy our Thanksgiving Turkey Lotto ticket. She is extremely bossy when not feeling well.

Been reading Jane Eyre nonstop, and heartily wish for a Mr. Rochester to commune with. I forget how much I love that book. Jane Eyre on men and women:

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

Well I must away to the store and do some domestic stuff as Jr. and Troy are coming to sleep over on Thanksgiving night. And buy a "5 dollar unisex friendly gift" to put in Little Missy's Box of Thanks at school. Perhaps I will walk on the blustery beach, so as not to confine myself to "embroidering bags" this weekend.

Here is a poem for my friend LC who will now create music surrounded by new beauty:

Pleasure

A Short Poem or Else Not Say I

True pleasure breathes not city air,
Nor in Art's temples dwells,
In palaces and towers where
The voice of Grandeur dwells.

No! Seek it where high Nature holds
Her court 'mid stately groves,
Where she her majesty unfolds,
And in fresh beauty moves;

Where thousand birds of sweetest song,
The wildly rushing storm
And hundred streams which glide along,
Her mighty concert form!

Go where the woods in beauty sleep
Bathed in pale Luna's light,
Or where among their branches sweep
The hollow sounds of night.

Go where the warbling nightingale
In gushes rich doth sing,
Till all the lonely, quiet vale
With melody doth ring.

Go, sit upon a mountain steep,
And view the prospect round;
The hills and vales, the valley's sweep,
The far horizon bound.

Then view the wide sky overhead,
The still, deep vault of blue,
The sun which golden light doth shed,
The clouds of pearly hue.

And as you gaze on this vast scene
Your thoughts will journey far,
Though hundred years should roll between
On Time's swift-passing car.

To ages when the earth was yound,
When patriarchs, grey and old,
The praises of their god oft sung,
And oft his mercies told.

You see them with their beards of snow,
Their robes of ample form,
Their lives whose peaceful, gentle flow,
Felt seldom passion's storm.

Then a calm, solemn pleasure steals
Into your inmost mind;
A quiet aura your spirit feels,
A softened stillness kind.

Charlotte Bronte

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Night Walk and Cinnamon



Dreamt of Joyce last night. She was back for a limited stay and had some messages for me. LC, please email me pronto!

Last night it must have been in the 60s, with a strong, warm wind. Went for a walk around the block and it was kind of wild and lovely. The weeping willow in front of the Meade's house was tossing and I could reach up and brush the fronds with my finger tips. Nostalgia mixed with tumult. Tried to choose which house on the block I would purchase and move the kids into when I won the Lotto Turkey Raffle New York is holding this year. Jr. and I are going in halves on the ticket which is ten bucks.

This morning I am having a Yo Plait Light Raspberry Cheesecake yogurt. Unfortunately, there is nothing even vaguely cheesecakey about it. Lying Yo Plait bastards! Last night was shop for the week night and I purchased a Glade Apple Cinnamon Candle. Was hesitant to buy even a little luxury item at this time of year (September through December requires mucho cash due to school starting, Halloween, birthdays and holidays.) This candle placed in my newly cleaned kitchen made me extremely happy! Read an essay by Frank O'Hara on poetry writing, at the kitchen table, with the scent of apple pie in the air and was transformed! Sometimes a little luxury is a very reasonable thing.

Took Kiddies for blood tests yesterday as part of their yearly check-ups. Jack had terrorized Kate by telling her that the needle is gigantic and scraps the bone. Poor Moo Moo Kitty was shaking like a leaf but got through it bravely (I helped by singing the
Mockingbird song, which I don't know most of the words to, in my "beautiful" singing voice.) IHOP afterwards where I had bananna pancakes which were sublime. Jack kept getting mysterious text messages throughout the meal, which were probably from Ashley. I almost fell over when I got the bill. Kate's glass of milk cost almost three dollars. No more eating out for us until after Christmas!

The wind coming in around the cat door is cold so the temperature must have dropped last night. Time for some more warm coffee and to put on a sweater. Last night I was instructed in a dream to move to California. I would miss the fall too much. What's in California anyway?

Autobiographia Literaria

When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!


Frank O'Hara