Carol of the Day

Consolation in lieu of Resentment

Several times a year, when vacation times roll around, I post the following poem by Billy Collins in lieu of serving up a giant platter of resentment. As friends and family pack their bags for Cabo, Texas, New York City, skiing in Whistler, the sands of Fiji and Veranasi, India, I recite these words and head off to a day of lacrosse scrimmages in Mar Vista. And thanks to the ineffable beauty of poetry with humor thrown in, I am consoled.

Consolation


How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.


There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.


How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?


In stead of slouching in a cafe, ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.


And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.


It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

-- Billy Collins

A Break from Carol of the Day

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



I have never loved someone the way I love you 
I have never seen a smile like yours 
And if you grow to be a king or clown or pauper 
I will say you are my favorite one in town 

I have never held a hand so soft and sacred 
When I hear your laugh I know heaven’s key 
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard 
I will send you all my love upon the breeze 

And if the breeze won’t blow your way, I will be the sun 
And if the sun won’t shine your way, I will be the rain 
And if the rain won’t wash away all your aches and pains 
I will find some other way to tell you you’re okay


-- My Brightest Diamond


via OnBeing

Holiday Concerts, Mariah Carey, Flourishes, Morality and Handicapped Placards

So, last night I attended Henry's winter wonderland music concert. The performances were outstanding, and the musical talent at our little charter middle school is so great as to make one's mouth hang open in admiration. Henry, though, is not a boy of musical talent or even persuasion. He only "performed" as part of the chorus, and that was mandatory. What I didn't know is that a quartet of provocative and seriously talented chanteuses in the seventh grade had enticed him into a small role in their performance of "All I Want for Christmas is You."
Remember that song?



Help me Rhonda for posting a Mariah Carey video -- not my favorite (let's just say you won't see this video posted as a Carol of the Day, either), but it goes with the story, so humor me. And Mariah.

Anyhoo. Guess who the YOU was in the song?

Henry, my very handsome, effortlessly self-possessed and sweet boy, gave the singing chanteuse a little swagger (as part of the act) when she reached out her operatic arms toward him in the final line and walked off the stage. Everyone chuckled in the audience and then clapped wildly at the talent of the girls' voices -- which were amazing. I have to say that it's both thrilling and bewildering to have this beautiful son who, apparently, is a bit of a chick magnet and is also at ease with being one -- so at ease that he can perform in a musical performance without opening his mouth to sing. As one of my friends noted, Henry was the exploited and objectified male beefcake in the performance. It's thrilling and bewildering because in the seventh grade I was outrageously awkward -- let's say even ugly. I was painfully skinny (those were the days), wore big metal braces on my teeth and goggle glasses with rose-tinted lenses. My hair was short and curling-ironed into hideous "wings" that made me look more like Chachi  from Happy Days than Farrah Fawcett. I was a brainy, non-athletic, Carpenters and John Denver-loving geek. And as those of you who know, this is something that one never forgets or gets over. So, when I look at Henry I feel at once thrilled and bewildered. Where did he come from? Who made this kid? Certainly not me or my efforts!

Anywho. On to the next concert, which was Oliver's, this morning.

We had a rough morning here -- the usual and the not so usual. I was alone with all three kiddos and not at my best. I still can't really talk, so I can't yell, and everyone was running late and no one seemed appreciative of the fact that I'd made approximately twenty loaves of pumpkin chocolate chip bread and wrapped each one individually for teachers and aides and I'd also put hundreds of chocolate kisses into little cellophane bags for teachers and aides and therapists (O.K., I wasn't expecting Sophie to be appreciative); I'd toasted some bagels for breakfast and was marshaling lunches and so forth and then somewhere in the chaos, I fell apart (maybe it was when Oliver appeared twenty minutes after I'd woken him in an outfit that made him look like a homeless person). Reader, I broke down and croaked out my displeasure and then I cried.

I'll skip forward to dropping Sophie off at school and then racing to Oliver's school to make the concert on time and his performance. I circled and circled his school, looking for a parking spot. I drove through the school parking lot and gazed longingly at the handicapped space, empty. I told myself that no, I wouldn't exploit the placard and use it. I did this for fifteen minutes. I did not use the handicapped placard and eventually found a spot for my car and ran into the school yard.

I missed Oliver's performance.

Lest you believe me to be a highly moral person, I will tell you that in the melee of the elementary school winter wonderland concert, Oliver had no idea that I wasn't there. I asked his teacher what he'd done, and she told me that he recited something and had a nice flourish at the end. When I finally saw Oliver in the crowd, I leaned over and told him how proud I was of him, how well he had done, and how much I had enjoyed his flourish at the end.


Reader, I didn't use my handicapped placard but I lied to my son.

When I told my friend S this story this morning, herself the mother of a child with disabilities, she told me that if she had the placard and she was me she would be sunbathing on the roof of the car in that handicapped space with chocolate and wine in her hand. 


I'm going to think about that for next time.

Carol of the Day

Listen to this. It will surprise you.

Rejoice.



via my musicologist cousin, Chris

Fondue and Frogs

We ate fondue from Trader Joe's last night (thank you, Jesus, for Trader Joe's!) with crusty bread and a green salad. I wish I could say the conversation was interesting, but it consisted of both boys telling some inane joke using the word sausage so many times in you can imagine gross ways, that I finally croaked out STOP! And I mean croaked, because my voice is completely gone. The webinar I moderated the other day took the last audible sound out of me, so now I croak. I'd say it sounds husky and sexy, but it doesn't. And I can't yell at my kids. I guess I'll have to start spanking them. :)

Here's a poem that my dear friend Tanya sent me the other day. It's a perfect one for the season:

In Dark December 

            ~ Ralph Murre

Whatever you believe,
whatever you do not,
there are sacred rites
you must perform
in dark December.
Do this for me:
Pull together
the kitchen table,
the folding table,
and that odd half-oval
usually covered
with bills and broken pencils
and red ink.
Pull together family and friends,
cool cats and stray dogs alike.
Turn off everything
except colored lights,
the roaster,
the toaster, the stove.
Cook.  Bake.  Eat.
Yes, even the fruitcake.
Eat, crowded around
those assembled tables
with mismatched chairs.
Reach so far
in your sharing
that you hold the sun
in one hand,
the stars in the other,
and no one between is hungry.
Now walk together,
talk together,
be together
on these darkest nights.
Give and forgive.
Light candles and ring bells.
Sing the old songs.
Tell the old stories
one more time,
leaving nothing out,
leaving no one out
in the long night,
leaving nothing wrong
that you can make right. 

I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life

So said George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare and Company, the famous Parisian English-language bookstore. Whitman died this week, at the age of  98. You can read his obituary here. I visited Shakespeare and Co. nearly thirty years ago and still remember it like a dream.

Thanks to T. Clear, I watched this fascinating video about Whitman and his bookstore -- if you're interested in literature and Paris and strange casts of characters, watch it -- the end is particularly wild.

Carol of the Day (for my dad, of course)

I'm posting it again and saying it again: Mario Lanza makes me glad to be Italian.

(It might tell you to go to YouTube to listen -- click on it anyway and listen!)

The Perfect Poem as a Response to One of My Posts

I posted about a typical day in the life the other day -- the kind of day that calls up my prodigious sense of balance but that also calls for my prodigiously sharp tongue. I wrote in teensy tinesy letters that certain sayings -- those well-meant but maddeningly cliched phrases -- do not help me to balance further. I think I also added that those who use them are either insane or brain-addled. And as things go, it was that teensy-tinesy sentence that provoked the most comments. 


One of the responses included a poem forwarded by one of my very favorite blog friends, and while I'm a nerdy lover of George Herbert's poetry, I had never read this one. Mr. Herbert was a great metaphysical poet of the 17th century -- when I first read his poem The Collar in a college poetry class, I nearly swooned (had to use that word). You can read it at the end of this post from a couple of years ago. 


The poem sent to me today is from Herbert's larger work The Temple. Sacred Poems, and private ejaculations, published in 1633. Reader, you couldn't ask for a more fantastic title for a book of poetry, could you?


How terrific is this alongside my vastly less eloquent and far more petulant ejaculations?


Bitter-sweet

AH my deare angrie Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.
   
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sowre-sweet dayes
I will lament, and love.

Words to Live By

Skyline, Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles on March 13th, 2011

If you have fear of pain and suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.

the Dalai Lama

Carol of the Day

Is there anything better than those mouths open, faces lifted up to the snowing sky?

Carol of the Day

I don't care how many times I've heard it. I still love this man's voice and this song.

It doesn't look like it, but that's me

on the end. I'm good, right? A friend remarked that it's been a bit quiet around here on a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. Other than the carols I've posted daily and a few photos here and there, I haven't had much to say. But, as you can imagine, life goes on and it's a tad insane right now. From Friday to Monday, I made three cakes and four dozen cupcakes (each one decorated). I decorated the house and a Christmas tree; I spent time with my mother who was visiting from Atlanta; I finished up my slides for tomorrow's webinar on Epilepsy and Adolescence (have you registered? it's not too late!); I helped both sons with school projects and went to the grocery store about five times; I took Henry to his final baseball game on Sunday and sat through the pizza party afterward; I drove everyone to school because the carpool guy was sick; I went to acupuncture, thank God, and visited The Husband and The Mistress for lunch with my mother; I picked up one child and waited for the other to get off the bus and then picked up the third from his after-school post-season flag football party; I massaged olive oil into one son's head after reading online that the white patches and scabs were probably dermatitis seborrhea or something like that, and then I combed through the flakes and scabs and instructed him to go take a shower and wash it all out; I made Trader Joe's chicken chow mein for dinner (thank you Trader Joe's); lowered Sophie to the kitchen floor while she had a huge seizure and then picked her up and sat with her on the couch until she felt better. I baked some more cupcakes -- vanilla with vanilla frosting, white sparkly sprinkles and Hanukkah stars -- and cleaned up the kitchen, including mopping the floor. Oh, and I've still got a gruesome cold and sound as husky as a starlet -- tomorrow should be interesting. I think I did a fairly good job on nearly everything except eating properly, but if you peer at the photo above, you can see that I'm as fit as a fiddle, counting my blessings and acknowledging my hardships as the good Lord above would want me to. After all, you're never given what you can't handle, right? For those who don't know me and are perhaps visiting here for the first time, those last two cliches are my absolute least favorite and I'd go so far as to say that they're bullshit, and generally only uttered by people of immense privilege or addled brains.

Beds I Love

Other than a bed in a hut that sits on a sandy beach in Bora Bora, I'd like to settle down into this bohemian one.

via Moon to Moon


Shhhhhhh. Don't wake me up.