pharsong

So many things are down, down, down, but sometimes all it takes is a good dream to put you in a good mood for the rest of the day....


I had a totally goofy dream.

In it, I was part of some sort of small troupe -- I think we were musical performers, and there were three of us. We were dressed up, well, I was dressed up in a shiny, bright red brassiere with a white blouse over it, open to show off said shiny, bright red brassiere. We were in a hurry, making our way through a crowd, someplace like a college campus. It was night but brightly lit, and as we moved through the press of people we became separated.

I was not sure where I supposed to be going, so I kept walking, hoping to run into my comrades, and people began giving me "looks." You know those dreams where you are naked in public? Well, this wasn't like that. I grinned at everyone and decided, what the heck, I unbuttoned my blouse all the way. People started stuffing bills into my shiny, bright red brassiere. I obliged them by slowing down and turning toward whomever was currently attempting to stuff.

Eventually I ended up somewhere, inside. I was quite cheerful. Some friends were there, not the rest of my troupe, but people I knew. I began unstuffing my shiny, bright red brassiere, and the total gains came to five thousand dollars!  Like that would fit in a bra. But a nearby photographer was impressed at my money gathering skills enough that he decided he wanted to photograph me as Little Red Riding Hood. He threw a red, hooded cape over me and proceeded to instruct me to look scared. I did my best, posing and making my eyes wide and my mouth in a round 'o' of, um, terror. The photographer aimed and shot, aimed and shot, saying encouraging things like, "Good, now here comes the wolf, you're all alone, what're you gonna do? Good, now look more scared. Are you going to run? Fight? Who will save you?" And so on.

I do not remember anything else. I woke up chuckling, and it still makes me chuckle.  Maybe I will inflict this experience on Holly in my NaNo.

I really had good intentions to blog about twenty-five years of marriage. But there are so many much more fun things to write about.

HERE is what we got for our silver anniversary, because when we were first married we used to cruise through the Amana Furniture Society and tell each other that ONE DAY we would own one of the exquisite grandfather clocks built right there in Amana, Iowa.

     

It's oak, and the inlays are something exotic, I forget what. Anway, it's cool. I love it. It plays 3 different kinds of chimes.

Not from the book.

I found this poem while rooting through an old box of papers looking for something that I had calligraphed in seventh grade. I did not find it, but I did find this poem. It is marked "Fall '84" which would mean I wrote it soon after moving into a tiny married student housing apartment in Iowa City. I would have been newly married and even more newly 21. And, no, the poem is not about marital bliss. Anyway, it is kind of amusing.

Why am I sitting here writing,
When I really have nothing to say?
It sure isn't very exciting
But it's better than staring all day

At four walls of white that surround me.
Well, maybe a bit more than four.
But, do you know, it just astounds me
How white can become such a bore.

I wish I could hang up some pictures
To brighten this space where I live,
But a lot of these walls won't take fixtures:
Can't put nails into bricks; they won't give.

These boxes of books are frustrating.
Can't see where they'll ever all fit.
In boxes they may still be waiting
When six babies have gnawed on my tits.

I got panhandled three times today....

Being panhandled in Oakland, CA, is not that uncommon, I think, but the way it happened to me, I think, is. Or maybe not.

As I was cruising a parking lot with my window rolled down (probably my first mistake), a woman approached me and asked for money for a sandwich. Her daughter, she claimed, was homeless and had not eaten all day. I noted the young girl with her was probably about the age of my own daughter (eleven). "I think I have a few bucks," I said. I opened my purse and a five-dollar bill was staring me in the face, so I handed it to her.

So I'm a soft touch.

Upon exiting the drug store, I was approached by the same woman who asked if I could spare some change for her and her daughter. My brow furrowed and I said, "I just gave you five dollars earlier." She said, "Oh, was that you? You see how my memory is going?" She laughed and apologized. "That's okay," I said, reasoning that she had not gotten a good look at me through my car window.

I drove to a Mexican restaurant about a half mile away that a trainee had recommended and was busily wolfing down the biggest burrito I have ever seen, when who should walk in but this same woman with her daughter.  They sat at the table next to mine to eat.  Don't make eye contact!  I thought.  Maybe it isn't them, I thought.  At least they really are using the money for food, apparently,  I thought.

As I finished up what I could eat of the burrito, the woman approached my table and said that she needed bus fare for her and her daughter. "Didn't I just see you at the drug store?" I asked. She looked confused for a moment, then said, "Are you the one that gave me the five dollars?"  I nodded. She wondered if I could spare her some more money. Times were hard. She had a part time job. She was trying to get back on her feet. "Or would that put too much hardship on you?"

She did not say this in an ironical fashion, and, no, I couldn't say that it would put a hardship on me to give her a few more dollars. But I guess I'm not that soft a touch. I told her no, I told her sorry, I told her I had no more cash, which was a lie, and I got out of the area pretty quick, not wanting to get hit up a fourth time.

Some people would say it was a sign from God. But a sign of what? Nah, it's just one of those things.

Afterthought: I wonder if I can put the $5 on my expense report?

Going to California on Monday.

Oakland, CA, that is, to provide training to personnel of two newly converted communities.

And it brings up the question:  Is business travel fun or not?

It depends.

If you are traveling with coworkers, you can feel obligated to socialize with them all evening. This is fun if you like them, awkward if you don't.

If you are traveling alone, you can get... um, lonely. And/or bored. Or scared.

Personally, I like having time to myself, and that's what I enjoy about traveling. When you get married, you give up a lot of alone time, and once you have kids, you give up most of the rest of it. When I travel, I get entire evenings all to myself! I can read! I can write! I can watch whatever -I- want to watch on TV!  *chuckle*

I hate eating alone in restaurants, however. And this particular hotel does not have room service. Oh well, it's a small price to pay for having time ALL TO MYSELF.

I even like airports.

Yeah, I'll have fun. I don't care what happens, as long as I don't get stranded on the tarmac.

Oh, also, I FINISHED MY CONVERSION TODAY AND EVERYTHING BALANCED.   **does the happy dance**

As promised, here is "The Nymph's Reply," written by Sir Walter Raleigh in response to Marlowe's poem. One wonders, did Raleigh view Marlowe's poem with affection or with contempt, that he felt compelled to write this reply?

As far as I'm concerned, this could also be called, "Vivian's Reply to Todd."


THE NYMPH'S REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD
~Sir Walter Raleigh

If all the world and love were young,
  And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
  These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

I was not. But 20-25 people were. I do not even know all the results yet, because people who were laid off just cleaned out their desks and left, they did not come around to say goodbye.

Interestingly enough, my book titles this poem "The Shepherd to his Love," but when I look it up online it is invariably called "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love." Hm. 


THE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE by Christopher Marlowe (ca 1590)

COME live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber-studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

((Tomorrow:  The Nymph's Reply))

 

EEEEE-

YAAAAAAAUUUUUU

GGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!


Okay, I feel a little better.

I do love this poem! I am always having one character or another say, "I am a-weary, weary."  For some reason, that is the way I hear it in my head. Probably because the syllables come out iambic that way.

Back in the olden days, when I first read this poem, I assumed that "he" did not come because he had died. Her grief, and her haunted-sounding surroundings, all seemed to me to point to death. Now, to me, it seems more likely that he does not come because he has dumped her. The reader wants to say, "Get over it already!" But it is always easy to tell others to get over their griefs.

Tidbit: if the first line sounds eerily familiar, you may have heard it in My Fair Lady; Professor Higgins gives this to Eliza to read after filling her mouth with marbles.

Mariana in the moated grange

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
    Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
    That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
    Unlifted was the clinking latch;
    Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
        She only said, 'My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said;
        She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!'

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
    Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
    Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
    When thickest dark did trance the sky,
    She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
        She only said, 'The night is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said;
        She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!'

Upon the middle of the night,
    Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
    From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
    In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
    Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
        She only said, 'The day is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said;
        She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!'

About a stone-cast from the wall
    A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
    The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
    All silver-green with gnarled bark:
    For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
        She only said, 'My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said;
        She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!'

And ever when the moon was low,
    And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
    She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
    And wild winds bound within their cell,
    The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
        She only said, 'The night is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said;
        She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!'

All day within the dreamy house,
    The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
    Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
    Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
    Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call'd her from without.
        She only said, 'My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said;
        She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,'
            I would that I were dead!'

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
    The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
    The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
    When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
    Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
        Then, said she, 'I am very dreary,
            He will not come,' she said;
        She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,
            O God, that I were dead!'

Came across this poem, and seeing as how I deal with lawyers intimately, I found this amusing.

THE LAWYER'S INVOCATION TO SPRING

by H.P.H Brownell 

WHEREAS, on certain boughs and sprays
Now divers birds are heard to sing,
And sundry flowers their heads upraise ;
Hail to the coming" on of Spring !

The songs of those said birds arouse
The memory of our youthful hours,
As green as those said sprays and boughs,
As fresh and sweet as those said flowers.

The birds aforesaid happy pairs
Love, 'mid the aforesaid boughs, enshrines
In freehold nests : themselves, their heirs,
Administrators and assigns.

Oh, busiest term of Cupid's Court,
Where tender plaintiffs actions bring
Season of frolic and of sport,
Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring!

No poem for today, because I want everyone to see this lovely editorial and this cute editorial cartoon. Yes, it's also my current "avatar," but you can't see it very well when it's so small.  And, look! They are also both Steves!!!!

The cartoon is from Steve Sacks, cartoonist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (and, look, I am learning how to do all sort of things in lj!), and the editorial is from the New York Times.

Op-Ed Contributor
Iowa’s Family Values

One of my favorite poems from childhood. I remember I brought home my English book in, like, fifth grade or something, and copied it down (can you say dorrrk?). Someone thought I wrote it myself, which, maybe doesn't speak well for the poem, I don't know. But I still like it.   If you are a cat person, I think, you will know what the writer is saying, exactement.

Also, to go w/ this, here, cool little kitty cartoons. 

Catalogue

Cats sleep fat and walk thin.
Cats, when they sleep, slump;
When they wake, pull in -
And where the plump's been
There's skin.
Cats walk thin.

Cats wait in a lump,
Jump in a streak.
Cats, when they jump, are sleek
As a grape slipping its skin-
They have technique.
Oh, cats don't creak.
They sneak.

Cats sleep fat.
They spread comfort beneath them
Like a good mat,
As if they picked the place
And then sat.
You walk around one
As if he were City Hall
After that.

If male,
A cat is apt to sing upon a major scale:
This concert is for everybody, this
Is wholesale.
For a baton, he wields a tail.

(He is also found,
When happy, to resound
With an enclosed and private sound.)

A cat condenses.
He pulls in his tail to go under bridges,
And himself to go under fences.
Cats fit
In any size box or kit;
And if a large pumpkin grew under one,
He could arch over it.

When everyone else is just ready to go out,
The cat is just ready to come in,
He's not where he's been.
Cats sleep fat and walk thin.
~ Rosalie Moore ~
((Who can't love the mental image of a pumpkin growing under a cat and the cat simply arching over it?))

It is National Poetry Month, as I keep telling people, and I tried to create this journal with the user name "mylastduchess," but it was already taken (like about eight other names I tried) and so I am posting one of my favorite poems, "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning.  Besides the creepily entertaining unintentional confession, what I love is the rhythm of this poem and how if you read it aloud, it is conversational and you don't even notice the rhymes.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
the curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess's cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of you. She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men--good! but thanked
Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
Quite clear to such a one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss
Or there exceed the mark"--and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse
--E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
the company below, then. I repeat
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine dowry will be disallowed
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,
Which claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!