Running to the Hills with Poetry

The sun rose from the top
of the flower this morning
down

The fat white cat
licked water from crystal
I won't mew

Beg me
Pads, sheaths, claws
Salt on a wound











Read these:

In the Coma by Robert Pinsky
Evening is Tranquil and Dawn is a Thousand Miles Away by Charles Wright

More of the Night Before Last, Yesterday Afternoon and This Morning

I'm back in Los Angeles, the Oscar helicopters are circling, and I've already scrubbed my Barbie bathroom clean. 

Let's reminisce.

Here I am in the Chihuly boathouse BATHROOM. It was filled with vintage children's books and weird animal figurines. It was, after the pool, my most favorite room:

Here's a magnificent 85-foot table, made from one slice of a tree that was felled when too many prisoners in a penitentiary used it for escape. It begged for someone to dance right down it, but I refrained.

Here's a close-up of the sculptures that ran down the table in rainbow colors:

Here's a close-up of the bar. See that familiar photo of moi? It was sitting right below the bottle of Scuttlebutt beer that features a mermaid and the letter S. Like my friend Carrie says, There are no accidents. Those photo cards were distributed throughout the boathouse -- the beautiful people at Caregifted loved our video and used the still photos in such a beautiful way.

There were stacks and stacks of warm-colored Navajo blankets in a room ringed by low leather armchairs and a wall of sepia-toned photos of Native Americans. There was poetry by Heather McHugh and Robert Pinsky. There was jazz by Molly Ringwald. There was an excerpt of an upcoming documentary about us -- long-time caregivers of the disabled, made by the extraordinary Adam Larsen. Remember that name. My friend Cara and I drank, perhaps, a bitt too much beer and wine. We laughed a lot. I told her secrets, and she held them. When the event was over, we took a taxi to a restaurant called Grub, and I ate sauteed calamari with a light, flavorful sauce of tomatoes and wine and garlic. I drank a whiskey sour, and I slept well.

Yesterday afternoon, we hosted a luncheon for the caregivers, and I met and talked with the most wonderful people -- all recipients of respite weeks. They each have incredible stories, many of which will be featured in the documentary.  It was rainy in Seattle that afternoon, but I lay on my bed and read and thought about everything, relished it all. Last night, I sat in the living room, sipped some berry wine and talked for hours to Adam about caregiving, about dance and documentary and cities and life. Remember what I said. Remember Adam Larsen's name!

This morning, I woke early, and Heather gave me a ride to the airport. We stopped at a funky hippy bakery and got coffee, talked every second of the 45 minute trip. I love this woman and can't believe my good fortune to have met her.

How's that for superlatives thrown willy-nilly?


Reader, what did you do this weekend?

Last night

I'm typing away on my phone here and can't possibly keep up, but I wanted to let y'all know that I'm having a great time in Seattle.  While 14,000 people brave the AWP (and I'm beginning to think that it's de rigueur to complain about it), I was wandering the city, visiting quiet salmon runs, the Crittenden locks:

While the deluge hit Los Angeles, I walked under blue skies, ate lots of good comfort food and drank craft beer. And the Caregifted benefit?

Sensational! It was at the Chihuly boathouse, literally under a massive bridge. I have some awesome photos but will surely go blind if I continue posting, so I'll leave you with the one of the swimming pool -- the floor of which was covered in these glass sculptures!

Holy moley, right? The photo at the top of this post is one taken by my friend Cara, and I think it looks like I've been painted on the wall or something. Surreal stuff -- and I got to shake hands with the great Robert Pinsky,  too.

 I might have to make that my new header such was my awe!

I'll check back in tomorrow with more notes and pictures. My eyes and pecking finger are twisted --

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)