A Little Strange Reason for the Day
"...Love
releases playful sensations even from serious things providing a life
to think about. Take R-the only thing
R could credit herself with was having lived
her life and so she not only kept an account of it
but did so not in the privacy of a diary but in the form of letters
-- abundant, porfligate, indiscrete -- that I want to write
to you so as to note something that I read
this morning: "It's not that this or that means something
to me, but this! or that! -- means something to me." Musically
R beqeaths herself to posterity as a scholar might
bequeath his or her library blowing twisted veils of rain
past the narrow and curving windows in the last hour that will carry us
along
to the time when those who come after us will learn what we know--"
(Lyn Hejinian from Fatalist)
***
This coming Friday my mother is remarrying her high school sweetheart who was not my father but could have been, if he hadn't wanted to move to Mexico all those years ago. My six syblings and their nine kids and I, my many cousins who I can not count, aunts and uncles, and family and friends excluding my grandparents (all deceased) will be present. And Chuck's family who none of us have met until now, will also be there. We will be meeting my mother's new family for the first time. I can't even describe how odd this all is. Two years ago my mother was one of the saddest people I knew. Working as a housekeeper, cleaning doctor's offices and wealthy people's oversized homes for much too little pay because she couldn't bring herself to charge more, and living in her tiny house with my sister and brother in law and their two daughters, she was lonley and tired. Now, she has met (re-met) the man who will love her for the rest of her life. A man who can take care of her, show her the world, hold her in the dark--away from the dark she dreaded. My father abused her mentally and physically for many years, so she became the smallest size a person can be while still seeming to exist. Now she has grown large, like a magnolia tree in bloom--and smiles and laughs and jokes and even gets angry when she should. For all this I and my siblings are both stunned and happy. But with her happiness comes sacrifice as we will have to let her go to live in California with Chuck. By the end of the month she'll be moved from Arizona, where she has lived for over 30 years, to move into Chuck's house in San Jose. How maudlin I sound! It's hard though, and so I mention this as this is what's going on with me these days...preparing for big changes...how love changes us...for good.
***
Of new and old friends: Last night K and I went to bed discussing how continuously blessed we are. We had a very down to earth, relaxed, and stimulating backyard dinner last night with new friends we feel confident will become old friends soon. So many interesting and dynamic people come through our lives here at Casa Libre, and we seem to make connections with each one...some you love over time, and some you just adore immediately. Kinship, I think they call it. We have been aching and missing our dear friends M & K who recently moved across the country from us, and it's been strange to miss friends as you would family. But we are fortunate to have met and begun cultivating friends and new family here in Tucson. I mention this, because I'm grateful to know good people, and, I'm a cheeseball.
***
I hope soon to be able to afford Jen Tynes new book, The End of Rude Handles, and read it again and again. It's really good. I recommend it. I am confident a captivating reader review of this book will soon appear on OAR.
***
Recently read? Lyn Hejinian's Fatalist, Brent Cunningham's Bird & Forest, Harpers, Cue, Cutbank, a very strange book published in 1950 by a man named Stephen Potter called Lifemanship: The Art of Getting Away With it Without Being and Absolute Plonk, a very old children's book [I collect children's books and read them regularly] called The Monkey Who Would Not Kill, and some of Laura Riding Jackson's The Telling--even though I would have rather been reading her Four Unposted Letters to Katherine [excellent prose/poetry/epistles]. On a side note, in some ways I feel like I identify with Laura Riding, as she was so disturbed and conflicted by the egomaniacal climate of the literary world in her day she quit writing poetry--quit poetry really--and devoted the rest of her life to writing about writing and poetry instead. She was caught somewhere between Tolstoy's What is Art? mindset and a suppressed Song of Myself headset. In my opinion anyway; she never stated as much. Kristen reads Don Quixote to me at night in bed [this has been going on for months now.] I want to re-read Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel after that. I was gifted a very lovely two volume set of Rabelais works a few years back and haven't touched them. While in Cincinnati I purchased a copy of The Praise of Folly for M & K, intending to read it aloud to them, but I never did.
***
I just received an email from a guest I thought was coming tomorrow who is now coming today...I have a lot of work to do, and my coffee cup is now drained.
releases playful sensations even from serious things providing a life
to think about. Take R-the only thing
R could credit herself with was having lived
her life and so she not only kept an account of it
but did so not in the privacy of a diary but in the form of letters
-- abundant, porfligate, indiscrete -- that I want to write
to you so as to note something that I read
this morning: "It's not that this or that means something
to me, but this! or that! -- means something to me." Musically
R beqeaths herself to posterity as a scholar might
bequeath his or her library blowing twisted veils of rain
past the narrow and curving windows in the last hour that will carry us
along
to the time when those who come after us will learn what we know--"
(Lyn Hejinian from Fatalist)
***
This coming Friday my mother is remarrying her high school sweetheart who was not my father but could have been, if he hadn't wanted to move to Mexico all those years ago. My six syblings and their nine kids and I, my many cousins who I can not count, aunts and uncles, and family and friends excluding my grandparents (all deceased) will be present. And Chuck's family who none of us have met until now, will also be there. We will be meeting my mother's new family for the first time. I can't even describe how odd this all is. Two years ago my mother was one of the saddest people I knew. Working as a housekeeper, cleaning doctor's offices and wealthy people's oversized homes for much too little pay because she couldn't bring herself to charge more, and living in her tiny house with my sister and brother in law and their two daughters, she was lonley and tired. Now, she has met (re-met) the man who will love her for the rest of her life. A man who can take care of her, show her the world, hold her in the dark--away from the dark she dreaded. My father abused her mentally and physically for many years, so she became the smallest size a person can be while still seeming to exist. Now she has grown large, like a magnolia tree in bloom--and smiles and laughs and jokes and even gets angry when she should. For all this I and my siblings are both stunned and happy. But with her happiness comes sacrifice as we will have to let her go to live in California with Chuck. By the end of the month she'll be moved from Arizona, where she has lived for over 30 years, to move into Chuck's house in San Jose. How maudlin I sound! It's hard though, and so I mention this as this is what's going on with me these days...preparing for big changes...how love changes us...for good.
***
Of new and old friends: Last night K and I went to bed discussing how continuously blessed we are. We had a very down to earth, relaxed, and stimulating backyard dinner last night with new friends we feel confident will become old friends soon. So many interesting and dynamic people come through our lives here at Casa Libre, and we seem to make connections with each one...some you love over time, and some you just adore immediately. Kinship, I think they call it. We have been aching and missing our dear friends M & K who recently moved across the country from us, and it's been strange to miss friends as you would family. But we are fortunate to have met and begun cultivating friends and new family here in Tucson. I mention this, because I'm grateful to know good people, and, I'm a cheeseball.
***
I hope soon to be able to afford Jen Tynes new book, The End of Rude Handles, and read it again and again. It's really good. I recommend it. I am confident a captivating reader review of this book will soon appear on OAR.
***
Recently read? Lyn Hejinian's Fatalist, Brent Cunningham's Bird & Forest, Harpers, Cue, Cutbank, a very strange book published in 1950 by a man named Stephen Potter called Lifemanship: The Art of Getting Away With it Without Being and Absolute Plonk, a very old children's book [I collect children's books and read them regularly] called The Monkey Who Would Not Kill, and some of Laura Riding Jackson's The Telling--even though I would have rather been reading her Four Unposted Letters to Katherine [excellent prose/poetry/epistles]. On a side note, in some ways I feel like I identify with Laura Riding, as she was so disturbed and conflicted by the egomaniacal climate of the literary world in her day she quit writing poetry--quit poetry really--and devoted the rest of her life to writing about writing and poetry instead. She was caught somewhere between Tolstoy's What is Art? mindset and a suppressed Song of Myself headset. In my opinion anyway; she never stated as much. Kristen reads Don Quixote to me at night in bed [this has been going on for months now.] I want to re-read Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel after that. I was gifted a very lovely two volume set of Rabelais works a few years back and haven't touched them. While in Cincinnati I purchased a copy of The Praise of Folly for M & K, intending to read it aloud to them, but I never did.
***
I just received an email from a guest I thought was coming tomorrow who is now coming today...I have a lot of work to do, and my coffee cup is now drained.
posted by name at 11:04:00 AM
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