Really for My Sister

You're all welcome to read this post, too, but this is really just a shout-out to my dear sis, who has had quite a wild ride of it recently. Not just the usual air-conditioning-breakdown-just-as-it-gets-really-beastly-hot, but also (I'm not kidding) managing hazardous waste cleanup in her own home.

All with three small (and delightful) children.

So, instead of nattering on about how we're trying to get ready to go and it's only two weeks from Tuesday, or about the two major musical endeavors that seem so close to completion but just aren't quite done, I will instead present this poem that I've been meaning to send her.

Hang in there, sis. I love you.



The Lanyard


The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift--not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.


Billy Collins

a little scrumblebutt

In my dream, she is reaching past my hollow core;
And her smile: an "open" sign on an abandoned store.


(from "Mink Car" by They Might Be Giants)


23 days left.

Abbie wants to be a filmmaker. Abbie is going to be a filmmaker. Abbie is a filmmaker.

And I am buying her a video camera. I am resisting the temptation to buy her the beautiful one that will take the amazing images, because I believe she might never actually use it. There are lots of reasons, I think, for that, and some of them are pretty good. For starters, we're going to be in the dirt and the weather and we need a camera that's tough.

On the other hand, there's this problem, which I'm sure you've already thought about, but it's nicely painted here:


The Vacation


Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.


Wendell Berry


I think Abbie can beat this problem. Especially if I can find her a camera that fits. One that she can use easily and without caring too much about it. And one that's easy to turn off and put away.

Only 28 days left in town...!

In other news, we dearly love our nieces and nephew. Georgia came over the other day and Abbie helped us make some stuff out of clay. See:



One last thing: the band had a fun farewell show at the Neutral Ground. Thanks to all those who came or were there in spirit. We have a name now: "The Some Times." Just in time for us to cease operations (at least temporarily).

Hope you're having a peaceful week.

forty days and forty nights, give or take

Flock


It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenburg Bible . . . required the skins of 300 sheep.

--from an article on printing


I can see them squeezed in the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed,

all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible
to count them,
and there is no telling

which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd,
one of the few things they already know.


Billy Collins


(You can hear him reading this poem here.)


in the forty days left before we blow this proverbial popsicle stand, we need to locate some health insurance, figure out what to do with our house, and identify and accomplish about three quadzillion other tasks. wandering around in the desert until we hallucinate is starting to sound preferable.

but really, we're psyched, except for the sadness of missing family while we're gone.

a new song is in the bag, and several recordings are like this close to getting posted here. we promise.

be good to each other and keep in touch.