The Sheering Sun

There are those with whom I have nothing in common but the blood that runs in the veins. Cliche. The word blind doesn't mean what you think, if you're able and are you? Seeing nothing but light. Our shadow selves. Reading poetry this morning.


In the Beginning God
Said Light

Mary Szybist

and there was light.
Now God says, Give them a little theatrical lighting

and they're happy,
and we are. So many of us

dressing each morning, testing
endless combinations, becoming in our mirrors

more ourselves, imagining,
in an entrance, the ecstatic

weight of human eyes.
Now that the sun is sheering

toward us, what is left
but to let it close in

for our close-up? Let us really feel
how good it feels

to be still in it, making
every kind of self that can be

looked at. God, did you make us
to be your bright accomplices?

God, here are our shining spines.
Let there be no more dreams of being

more than a beginning.
Let it be

that to be is to be
backlit, and then to be only that light.

via poem-a-day

Quotes from Favorite Novels

Waiting on Sophie's cannabis
May 17, 2015

What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

1927 

Driving to a Lacrosse Tournament, So Here's a Prose Poem

Spell

Some fish for words from shore while others, lacking in such contemplative tact, like to go wading in up to their chins through a torrent of bone-freezing diamond, knife raised, to freeze-frame incarnadine and then bid it as with hermetic wand flow on again, ferociously, transparently, name writ in river.

Franz Wright
via Poetry, May 2012

Me and Sophamagee

'Bye, Canada!

What respite looks like

Respite looks, for the first couple of days, like a reluctant walk to a rocky beach, a mussed bed behind you. It sounds like a nag, a whisper, a wheedle to put down the book, stop playing words with friends, go outside. It feels like a gray and heavy blanket, thrown over you with your troubles and despair, your marriage and your children, your bitter edge not sharp enough to poke through the weariness. You are naked, true, but heavy, your softness, irritable, folded over onto itself. That is the first two days of respite, maybe even the third, the spite. You know the rest. On the third, the fourth day, respite looks like a mussed bed around you, books, a computer, a binge of television drama, a gray day outside. It sounds like a lover, a whisper, a tendril of words to read that book first, and then this, then write, then climb back into bed and read that, close your eyes, listen to the birds for a moment, the drone of a saw, close your eyes, do that. It feels like hot water in a bathtub, perfumed with soap, not quite covering your bitter edge until you slide down further and let it. You are naked, true, but light, floating, your softness languor, amused. That is respite on the fourth day, the breath, the respir.

How to cure the Sunday blues (with an update about a giveaway)

Self-portrait on a red wall

1. Read about someone who was politically incorrect, like Dorothy Parker, who said, Tell him I was too f*&king busy, or vice versa. 
2. Wish you could say that to someone but sort of happy that you can't.
3. Do laundry, mounds and mounds of it, but don't fold The Brothers' socks. Let them fold them.
4. Read another 30 pages of War and Peace and realize that it's getting good and you have more than 1000 pages to go.
5. Get a reminder that this Tuesday is Sophie's 15th IEP at 8:00 in the morning. Seize the day, however blue it is, since there's not an IEP.
6. Play Words with Friends throughout the morning with one of your best friends in the world who is also turning 51 years old tomorrow, but since he's in Germany, it's already his birthday. Happy Birthday, dear D.
7. Plan to see a bunch of movies in the coming week since you haven't heard, yet, about The Job You Hope to Get.
8. Organize all your paperwork so that tomorrow, Monday, you can go see a movie.
9. Make Chocolate Digestive Biscuits from a recipe on one of your favorite cooking and reading blogs. ( and Yummybooks is having a terrific giveaway!)
10. Remember that it's Mother's Day next Sunday and you haven't gotten something for your mother, so you have to get up and get out of the gloomy Sunday house and get on with it.

Reader, how do you cure the Sunday blues?

Close-up blow-out

So, when you read this I will be on a plane, heading to the other coast. I'm making a presentation on Monday morning for My Job. I got a haircut yesterday from a guy who's no bigger than my right thigh. He might have been about seven years old, too. He showed me a photo of his family -- a beautiful Filipino one -- and he pointed out his mama and told me that he'd made her beautiful. She was beautiful and about as big as my left thigh. She was probably about as old as me, too. When I get my hair cut, I steal glances in the mirror every now and then and feel nearly horrified. There's something about the wet hair slicked back, the creases by my nose and the chin, oh, the chin! I can't look away fast enough, and I might even hum as I  do. I can't even shift my head to make the chin disappear because I might mess him up, and I imagine what would happen if I just stuck my tongue out at myself. The no bigger than my right thigh hairdresser asked me whether I wanted my hair blown out, and I said, OK, sure. I felt different when I saw what he'd done -- I'm not a blow-out kind of woman -- and when the boys and The Husband saw me, they thought it looked good. I swear Sophie looked at me differently, but I can't be sure. A few people that I saw at Oliver's basketball game and Henry's lacrosse game exclaimed that I looked glamorous, that they loved my hair, what had I done, where was I going? Earlier, when I had asked the hairdresser what type blow-dryer I should buy as I don't own one and generally go au naturel, he told me that it wasn't the blow-dryer but the technique that mattered, which basically means this is the last time my hair will look like this because I can't be bothered to do what it takes, at least until I go see him next time. I thought ya'll should see it before I go back au naturel and let go, let God, let myself go.

Poetry Oracle

Grace catches you out like a hook,

you're pulled out of yourself, a moment,

and that's the ache: peculiar blow,

reminded you aren't who you think you are.

Mark Doty, from "The Pink Poppy" in School of the Arts

Transit of Venus - Self Portrait

Venus slides between us and the Sun today, an exceedingly rare spectacle --

New York Times

Self-portrait