On Your Bedside Table

I had a book buying bonanza the other day with a forgotten-about Amazon giftcard. Last night, I poured myself a cold beer in a frozen mug and lay on my bed with books and magazines all around me. I then proceeded to watch three episodes in a row of the new season of Call the Midwife. Have ya'll watched that show? It's fantastic -- and the perfect antidote to a day spent in Placentia as well as my recent binge of the last season of House of Cards which, though compelling, is repellent enough that I felt almost dirty when I finished it. After Call the Midwife, I read some more of Life After Life (which I'm still enjoying, overjoyed to learn that I can indeed get through a gigantic novel).

So here's what's on my bedside table, along with the beer:

Begley's new biography of John Updike, Updike (I'm not a big biography reader -- I think the last one I read was probably about the poet Anne Sexton --  but am looking forward to this one)

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (an uncharacteristic YA purchase -- I generally can't abide YA -- that I made on the recommendation of one of my favorite bloggers, The Diamond in the Window)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' short stories Strange Pilgrims (that I bought on the recommendation of another amazing blogger who is also a butcher.   Stay tuned, because I have An Idea that has to do with a salon and food and cake and books and me as a moderator who makes a bit of money).

Chinesy: The New Way to Read Chinese by Shaolan (Have I ever told you that I studied Chinese for two years in college? At the time, I had the insane idea that I would learn the language and read the poetry of Tu Fu and Li Po. HA! HA! HA! I learned about four hundred characters and have since  forgotten them. In fact, the only thing I remember is the expression Ni hao ma? I don't think I've ever told you, either, that I got myself a job teaching English in Taiwan for the year after I graduated but was convinced by The Boy I Loved to blow that off and stay in Chapel Hill while he finished his master's degree. HA! HA! HA! Some of you know how that all turned out!).

Yes, we all have pasts, don't we?

Anywho.

Reader, what is on your bedside table, including drinking beverages?

Questions

Hello?
Hello?
Anyone there?
Perhaps you're out enjoying the spectacular weather or have buried yourself under the covers and are reading?
Or maybe you're cramming in the last few episodes of House of Cards and then having to take a long, hot shower?
Is blogging over?
Has Typepad recovered so that I can leave comments on those of you who use it as your blogging platform?
Must we always be grateful and cheerful?
Must we always complain?
Do we need a little poetry?

The Pleasures of Merely Circulating

The garden flew round with the angel
The angel flew round with the clouds,
And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew
        round
And the clouds flew round with the clouds.

Is there any secret in skulls,
The cattle skulls in the woods?
Do the drummers in black hoods
Rumble anything out of their drums?

Mrs. Anderson's Swedish baby
Might well have been German or Spanish,
Yet that things go round and again go round
Has rather a classical sound.

Wallace Stevens

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)

Roses and Thorns

So, I'm finally feeling a bit better. I'm either a giant baby or this virus took hold of my central nervous system and turned me into a sniveling, coughing, whimpering, depressed and irritable old woman. I feel now like I'm one of those cut-back roses, all thorns with no sign of flower. I did rest, though; in fact, I watched all thirteen episodes of the new Netflix series' House of Cards. It was awesome although it made me feel like I should get up and take a shower. Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright play just about the most icy, venal couple on the planet. Speaking of planets, it's pretty cold here in Los Angeles at about fifty-five degrees, but it feels like another planet when I see what some of ya'll are dealing with on the east coast. Even though I'm sick, I'm glad I'm not you if you live in Boston or Connecticut or even New York. Call me cruel when I say that snow is pretty, but it's not that pretty. I guess you can get back to me during fire season or when The Big One hits.