Complacencies of the Peignoir*

Enter the Mermaid Room

Instead of around the neck, drape scarves over doorway stains.



I lay in bed this morning, casual. When she screamed a thin, long nearly ecstatic sound, I knew it was a seizure. You know what we do. Later, I told a friend, and she asked whether I was scared. No, I said, I am hard and resigned.








While listening to another person (not Lou) sing take a walk on the wild side, sit at a light in Silver Lake and look forward. A flock of birds flies over, maybe 50 of them, their wings casting shadows. They circle and swoop. A convention that settles on a wire. Birds on a wire. Why? Is their path ordained or are they, pardon the pun, just winging it?





Too Many Birds






The Everyday Enchantment of Music

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound,
which was polished until it became music. Then the music was
polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when
tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was
polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty
home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the
music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at
the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was
thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the
memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what
happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would
also begin.

Mark Strand












*One of my favorite phrases, from the poem Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

How We Do It: Part XXIX in a series***

I'm lying next to Sophie in her room. The sun is going down, and we're watching the light dim through the palm fronds that hang outside her window. They need to come down, but they'll cling there, dry and brown, rustling, until some wind makes it too much. When they fall, they crash. Husks are not supple. Sophie's seizures are elemental like that. They come, errant, and they stop. Dry palms, then clammy, then dry again. A glass mermaid hangs from a paper mâché elephant trunk, and a line-up of Japanese dolls look on. Pillows and rolled up blankets and a thick carpet cushion the fall. Bill Callahan is singing about too many birds. If you could only, if you could only, if you could only stop. If you could only, if you could only, if you could only stop your. If you could only, if you could only, if you could only stop your heart. If you could only stop your heart beat, if you could only stop your heart beat, if you could only stop your heart beat for one heart. If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat. Sophie and I are lying here on the purple bedspread, our arms entwined. I'll remember this, the rustling palms, the dry, small palm of her hand, mermaids floating and too many birds.

One more bird, one last bird, and another.






**inspired by Bill Callahan's Too Many Birds which you can listen to by clicking on the title

Questions about too many birds -- Random Poetry Sunday with Music

Listen to this while reading the following poem:




A Question about Birds

I am going to sit on a rock near some water
or on a slope of grass
under a high ceiling of white clouds,

and I am going to stop talking
so I can wander around in that spot
the way John James Audubon might have wandered

through a forest of speckled sunlight,
stopping now and then to lean
against an elm, mop his brow,

and listen to the songs of birds.
Did he wonder, as I often do,
how they regard the songs of other species?

Would it be like listening to the Chinese
merchants at an outdoor market?
Or do all the birds perfectly understand one another?

Or is that nervous chittering
I often hear from the upper branches
the sound of some tireless little translator?

Billy Collins, from his collection horoscopes from the dead

Farmer Elizabeth

So, we have a break in the big city life that I usually describe. A tiny little bird lay on the patio outside the garage apartment in my backyard, and in lieu of The Dog eating it, we picked it up with an old tee-shirt and debated what to do. We looked up and noticed a nest practically perched on the edge of a light fixture, and on closer inspection, saw the two little birds, above, nestled together, there. The whole thing was kind of nasty, to tell you the truth. The little bird had clearly either fallen out or been pushed out by its siblings or Medea, its mother. What to do? We called over Big Strong Manly Neighbor, who inspected the surroundings and agreed that putting the baby back in the nest would probably be futile. I almost don't want to type out what we decided because it seems like heart of darkness material, particularly for those of us who aren't comfortable with -- ahem -- the natural world. We left the little bird in the tee-shirt, on top of an ivy-covered wall that is often frequented by The Neighbors' cats.

I'm going to listen to this, but what would you have done?

Friday Surf Report - Things I Love

• I know I've posted this video before, but I came across it again and I just about adore it.

My Brightest Diamond | I Have Never Loved Someone | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

• Ms. Moon of Bless Our Hearts has rocked my world with this post about those annoying word verifications and captchas. 

• Here's another perfect song:

• I'm going to give THIS a whirl. Hold me to it. Otherwise I might start using an exercise wand. I envy her waist -- it looks doable.

California woman in 1912, holding an exercise wand

• When Sophie has a lot of seizures, she drools. Sometimes she doesn't have a lot of seizures and she drools. I imagine the sensations in her mouth, in her salivary glands are shot. For all I know she feels nothing in her mouth. In any event, she craves sensation and we want to give it to her. I found these online -- made for babies, but non-toxic -- and they serve the purpose. I think I found them on an autism site, but I can't be sure. If you recommended them, and I haven't given you credit, I'm sorry!

1997: Sophie has had a long love-affair with beads.

• Don't forget about my giveaway of Karen Gerstenberger's book Because of Katie. Leave a comment and if a giveaway isn't your cup of tea (too much of a gamble? hate the suspense?), then please go to Amazon and buy it!

• Catch up on my food blog How to Eat.

• My old college friends, writer Dean King and his beautiful wife Jessica have four daughters. Two of them created a video for a great cause. All you have to do is click and vote. I urge you to do so, even if you're "not the type." Here's the info with all necessary links :   Willa and Grace King recently produced a video for the Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School, which was selected as a finalist in a competition that awards $100,000 quarterly to educational and humanitarian organizations around the country based on a popular vote. Over the next couple of months, people can vote on the short videos. Anyone can vote up to once a day for the duration of the voting process. Anna Julia Cooper School, a middle school operating in the low-income East End of Richmond, provides promising students there a great opportunity to succeed at the next level. St. James's supports the school, and parishioners Alex Slaughter and Tom Horton serve on the school's board of directors. Registration and voting is quick and easy.

If you could only stop your heartbeat,

for one heartbeat. That's the final line of songwriter and singer Bill Callahan's Too Many Birds and one that set me to weeping in my car yesterday as I drove back home from a cake delivery. I don't know why it made me cry and I don't know how to say it but that I was who I was, who I had been, that slither of feeling when music takes you to within.

Too many birds -- one last bird -- turns around and hopes to find the place it last knew rest