Thursday, February 27, 2014



I'm off to Seattle this afternoon, where I'll be meeting some new people and attending the Caregifted benefit on Friday night. Word is that Molly Ringwald will be singing jazz and the great poet Robert Pinsky attending. Heather McHugh, the Master of Ceremonies, Saint of Caregiver Recognition and Poet is responsible for this beautiful event, and I'm very excited to be a part of it! If you haven't already, please visit the Caregifted website and look around. There's a wonderful video, photos, testimonials and even a place to donate, if you're so inclined. I look back on my week in Victoria, a grant from Caregifted, and realize, yet again, that what I received was literally life-changing.

On another note, are ya'll watching the second season of House of Cards? No sooner had Downton Abbey finished then I opened up my Netflix and watched the first episode. I won't type any spoilers here, but what happened churned my stomach. I was into the first season, and have just now finished the second and third episodes, but I'm wondering why exactly I'm watching such vile people. I've never been a big fan of Kevin Spacey, although I concede he's an incredible actor, and the relationship between him and his scary ice-queen wife, played by Robin Wright, is something to behold. But, it's just gross -- the whole thing -- and at the same time sort of boring, the way perversity is sometimes boring.

Stupid Meditation on Peace

BY ROBERT PINSKY
        “He does not come to coo.”
                    —Gerard Manley Hopkins

Insomniac monkey-mind ponders the Dove,
Symbol not only of Peace but sexual
Love, the couple nestled and brooding.

After coupling, the human animal needs
The woman safe for nine months and more.
But the man after his turbulent minute or two

Is expendable. Usefully rash, reckless
For defense, in his void of redundancy
Willing to death and destruction.

Monkey-mind envies the male Dove
Who equally with the female secretes
Pigeon milk for the young from his throat.

For peace, send all human males between
Fourteen and twenty-five to school
On the Moon, or better yet Mars.

But women too are capable of Unpeace,
Yes, and we older men too, venom-throats.
Here’s a great comic who says on our journey

We choose one of two tributaries: the River
Of Peace, or the River of Productivity.
The current of Art he says runs not between

Banks with birdsong in the fragrant shadows—
No, an artist must follow the stinks and rapids
Of the branch that drives the millstones and dynamos.

Is peace merely a vacuum, the negative
Of creation, or the absence of war?
The teaching says Peace is a positive energy.

Still something in me resists that sweet milk,
My mind resembles my restless, inferior cousin
Who fires his shit in handfuls from his cage.




(lifted from the Poetry Foundation page)

9 comments:

  1. Now THAT is a powerful poem. One that I can sink my teeth into and drink from.
    Thank you.
    Now have a great time.

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  2. Journey mercies, Elizabeth! And do call if you have the energy for a visit, but don't if you don't. I feel perfectly certain that we shall meet in person one day, so if not this time, another. As for House of Cards, Bubba and I watched it last night and both gasped audibly two times - once at the wife's audacity and once in the subway scene. Wow. Despicable. But at least these completely over-the-top vile acts make me believe less and less that the show is a true reflection of what politics are like in DC. That's something, given that the first season gave me heartburn to think that the shady maneuvering and moneyed power-grabs were accurately portrayed.

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  3. Have a nice trip to Seattle. Now, why have I not ever heard of this poet before? That was a hell of a poem. Many thanks.

    Greetings from London.

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  4. I saw Molly Ringwald sing in New York several years ago. She's not bad! Have a great time in Seattle and yes, we are watching "House of Cards." I like it but I think it's dangerously near the shark-jumping precipice. I just can't see a congressman really doing the things that Kevin Spacey is doing, you know?

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  5. What a beautiful organization CareGifters is! So happy you have been connected with this amazing group!

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  6. Finished House of Cards. I have always loved Spacey's acting. He and Robin do a great job of portraying evil political animals. I watch it with horror and fascination. Perversity times a gazzillion. I imagine DC really does operate this way.

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  7. David likes House of Cards; Gregg watched two episodes and found it too depressing to continue. It's probably too close to the truth to be comfortably viewed as "entertainment," but the acting is fabulous. Watching Spacey and Wright is like looking at two sharp knives, glittering in the sunlight, ready to cut everything nearby to ribbons.

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  8. My husband and I are 3 episodes into Season 1. So depressing, yet fascinating. Not sure how much I can stomach.

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