Into the vortex

My parents are visiting us for an "early Thanksgiving" this week, and I have slipped into the proverbial rabbithole.   With my dad's presence, I seem to be teetering somewhere between adolescence and adulthood.    That's a topic that begs for more explanation at some point.  Suffice it to say that for now, I am reminding myself of the sacrifices that all parents make, the ways we often don't really know the inner movements of the thoughts of our family members.  To that, a poem:  Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden.  I am a swooner for last lines, and the ending lines of this poem are lately mantras for me this week.  

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden, 1962

Introducing Mr. Mouse

We have a mouse in our house, but he's the kind you want to keep.  His name is Mr. Mouse, and he has a long and storied history with us.   Someday I will tell you some of his background--it's rather strange, and it involves Martha Stewart.

He is a bit spoiled.  Here he is waiting for tea to be served...

He also has a nicer bed than most regular mice.  

Ada made him a quilt

and I helped make him a futon.

 

 This is the only photo I could get before he got angry that I had disturbed his sleep. (He can be difficult!)

We think that lately Mr. Mouse has been lonely, so we are thinking perhaps he needs to meet a friend, or maybe even a wife.     

Another poet to love

Looking through poetry sites recently, I came across this little gem, "Faucet Song", written by Sarah J. Sloat.   She is a poet worth following.   She keeps a blog, The Rain in My Purse, and there are links to her poems from there, too. 

Here is part of "Faucet Song":

The faucet is the saddest instrument,

its only song: de-plete, de-plete.

All night, its little fists ball up and fall.

Dud percussion makes 

a shudder of the sink,

makes the soap bar blink

from the milk film of its dish.

For the entire poem, look at it as originally published in the journal Prick of the Spindle.

Tuesday treasure

I've been on a treasure hunt lately, looking to find the treasures I already have, but don't use.   Our house, I'm discovering, is full of treasure, but not the stuff pirates vie for.  Rather, the stuff I'm finding are the sorts of things that I would love to find in a catalog, or a little shop.  And guess what? It's already here.  

So this is part of the cutting back, making use of what you have, preparing for tough times...but really it's more about following our family's second rule, which is "be where you are."   

Like so many other people, I get spun up about all the great things that are out there that we could see, or get, or do.  The reality of it is that there is not time or money or energy for doing everything.  That's no big revelation, I know, but regardless of what I may know, what I've been practicing is different.  I do often ooh and ahh over all the great things I could get.   Sometimes I even do get a thing I "love," and then put it away for safekeeping, for later, for the right time.

I'm treasure hunting because I am starting to realize that the right time is really now, and that I have lots of great things or experiences that I'm putting off.  No longer.   I'm seeing the world with new eyes, I'm revising my take on the daily things around me, just a little.   I'm going to post more treasure Tuesdays in the future--I'm eager to see what I'll find, and how I'll use it.

In keeping with that, I've found a treasure for today:  my notebooks.  Some have been well loved, but many of these beauties are waiting for me to decide that what I have to say is good enough for their pages.  Look at this one:   

I bought it for the tree design; the quote was an afterthought.  Pretty telling, hmm.  Even more so, I haven't used it!!   Until now.  This book is going to be filled with words--imperfect, shifting, indulgent, irrelevant--so what.  This little treasure is mine, and this time is mine too.   So I'm staking my claim.

What treasure do you already have that you're not using?

A secret: celestial obsession

I'm going to let you in on a secret obsession of mine. Okay, the secret is not that I have obsessions--that's something that's immediately obvious to anyone who talks to me for more than a few minutes. The secret is my obsession with the sky and all the interesting things that happen up there. 
When I was little, my parents used to tell me to stop shuffling my feet and looking at the ground. I was always surprised by that because so often I was thinking about things in the sky. Not the woo-woo X-files kind of things, but rather the immensity of the sky, and the nothingness of it, the great formations the clouds made, the magic of the stars so far away and so constant. I loved the way the sky changed, too. With each hour of the day, the colors were different. And as the seasons passed, the light shifted across the treeline in such a specific way that, if you looked closely enough, you could almost tell what month it was.


In the spring and summer, like every other kid who grew up in suburbia of the 70s and 80s, I spent a lot of time running around outside until long after the sun had set. It was a delicious feeling to lie back in the grassy yard as the dusk settled in around me. I would stretch out and stare at the sky where it met the branches of the backyard trees until the contrast was so great it hurt my eyes. Once the darkness was thick enough to blot out the spaces between the leaves, I could sometimes believe I could feel the earth as it spun toward the next day.



So I am a sky-gazer. My love for all things celestial didn't fade as I got older; if anything, it intensified. Among some of my most treasured memories are times that I saw something amazing in the sky: a sundog, a huge rainbow over the bay, the northern lights, an eclipse, a spectacular meteor shower, a towering lightening storm as it charged off the Atlantic onto our island...
The beauty of all of these is that they made me stop, and stare, and appreciate how tiny I really am in the scheme of things. I have been so awed by some of these that I have sprinted inside for the phone (think back before cell phones) and literally begged family members to "run outside as fast as you can and LOOK UP!"

So far, I am still looking for takers to watch the sky when something amazing is happening--will you join me? Tonight there is supposed to be a fantastic meteor show(er) called the Taurids, visible in the Northern Hemisphere just before midnight. If you are so inclined, take a look into the eastern sky, and see if you can see some shooting stars with me.

Gotta Getta Yo-Gabba-Gabba

Whether or not you have kids, if you are a child of the 70s and 80s, you should take a peek at Nickelodeon's show, Yo Gabba Gabba.  

No, if you are a grownup, I'm not telling you to actually watch the show.  Instead you should listen for a minute. Created by members of the band Aquabat and the band Majestic, this show is a gem--with original music that isn't just catchy, but--good.  I mean, like (here's that 80s girl coming out again) GOOD.   

Get ready for a list to catch your interest: Think indie pop, showing strong influences from the music you may have loved in the 80s--think Depeche Mode, Massive Attack, New Order, Violent Femmes (cleaned up), Ebn Ozn, The The.  Now cross it with some more current electronic music like Winx or Bonobo, and some folksy music like the Decemberists, and Ida, and you've got what Yo Gabba Gabba is doing.  

Oh, almost--they are doing that with a DJ and some very strange looking pickle-type people. 

 

They dance and sing with kids on cardboard and felt sets, and it's got a home-made appeal.  Aesthetic aside (and I like the look, don't get me wrong), the themes for the shows are irony-free, and just plain innocent.   Songs like "Please/thankyou" and "Keep Trying, Don't Give Up" are earnest and likable.  

So I do not mind at all when this show is on--unlike Dora's repetitive ditties, these are songs I don't mind running through my thoughts during the day.  So it goes with the pickly-puffy characters.  Somehow I have been suckered into buying a few of the Gabba creatures already--and I have a "no character" rule for our home...hmmm.  Clever marketers.

Now they're featuring indie bands like the Postmarks in little clips.   I am, admittedly, on the wrong side of the demographic target for indie music marketing.  And I'm far from up-to-date on what's newest in music.   But I'm also old enough to recognize what is good in music.  The Postmarks get my vote.  And so they now are on my ipod, too.  Who says being a stay-at-home mom cuts you off from culture?  

Ghost in the machine--so no photos for this one.

I don't believe in ghosts. I do believe in machines. But something weird is happening around here lately because I have "experiencing technical difficulties" with lots of my favorite little gadgets. Here are the happenings in the last two days:

First, it's the light on the garage door opener. It stopped coming on when you open the door.
Then it's the door on the car, which gets stuck every time we've driven for the past two days.
The magnetic strip on the credit card is unreadable (okay, not a gadget, but you get the idea).
My ipod says "okay to disconnect," and that's all it does now.
The card on my camera is shot, and the excellent photos I took of the leaves this afternoon are gone.
The printer fights me with almost everything I send to it.

Is there a ghost in the machine? Probably not. But I'm counting my blessings that the heat works, our modem continues to function, and that our fridge seems to be running strong.

Sorry I couldn't share those great photos of the leaves--I'm chalking it up to an exercise in fleeting beauty.