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