In Memorium: Jeanne Reynolds, 1926-2009

All Is Well

Dearest Gran'ma Jeanne Maxine:
I hold a vigil inside my head,
though you aren't yet not quite dead.
Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed.

Death is nothing at all--Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by my old familiar name,

Speak to me in the easy way which you always used

Put no difference in your tone,

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household world that it always was,

Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,

Just around the corner.

All is well.

Two Cats + A Poem

Two Cats by Katha Pollit

It's better to be a cat than to be a human.
Not because of their much-noted grace and beauty—
their beauty wins them no added pleasure, grace is
only a cat's way

of getting without fuss from one place to another—
but because they see things as they are. Cats never mistake a
saucer of milk for a declaration of passion
or the crook of your knees for

a permanent address. Observing two cats on a sunporch,
you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes
awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention—
then slash! the stiletto

or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly
notice each other but find it somehow a comfort
sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.
Both these ideas

are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers
cast up by different storms on the same desert island
who manage to guard, despite the utter absence
of privacy, chocolate,

useful domestic articles, reading material,
their separate solitudes. They would not dream of
telling each other their dreams, or the plots of old movies,

or inventing a bookfulof coconut recipes. Where we would long ago have
frantically shredded our underwear into signalf
lags and be dancing obscenely about on the shore in
a desperate frenzy,

they merely shift on their haunches, calm as two stoics
weighing the probable odds of the soul's immortality,
as if to say, if a ship should happen along we'll
be rescued. If not, not.

"Two Cats" by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem. From Writer's Almanac.
~~~~~~~~~~~
{Image Sources from Top: Do You Think I'm Pretty; Places/Objects; Girl and Cats; Orange Scottish Folds; Sleeping Cuddly Kittens; Orange Tabby Kittens; Tortoise Cats; Tail in Tail; Heart Cats; Tongue and Pillow; Kangaroo Paw; Cats in the Bath; Sun-ua Beautiful Kittens Playing via Sun-ua Beautiful Images; Kittens on a Stroll; Happy Couple; I Made You a Book But I Eated It; Indiferencia; You Sexy Asshole}

There is Beauty Everywhere. Equal Rights Now.

Found on the blog of my dear Maya, this video of Philip Spooner, a WWII vet speaking out for EQUAL RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE made me weep with hope. Oh, if we all had the heart of this man. Equal Fucking Rights Now. This bigotry shit is so redonk.

Happy Friday. This is My New Love.

And my breakfast. {We Heart It Via Split Roads}

The Heart Knows

The Heart Knows What the Head Don't. Or Won't. Mary Karr, Lit

I feel a fire in my skull these last few days.
These words punched me, ruptured something.
Here are a few images to even out the blow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{Image Sources: Alice: We Heart It via Split Roads; Lemon Heart: We Heart It via The Music Died; Heart Sky: We Heart It; Braid: We Heart It via Poofy Bird; Child and Statue: We Heart It via March Movie Stills; La Douleur Exquise: We Heart It via Miss Wallflower; Love Will Save Us via We Heart it Via Precious Things ; Arcade Wild Fire Things via We Heart It via Ffffound}

Nobel Prize to a Working Class Hero

1.) In honor of John Lennon's Birthday, listen to Marianne Faithful do a great version of "Working Class Hero." (It really is something to be).



2.) Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for Diplomacy. Rock on, Obama. You are my hero. From NYT: "OSLO — The Nobel Committee announced Friday that the annual peace prize was awarded to Barack Obama just nine months into his presidency, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The award cited in particular Mr. Obama’s effort to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal. “He has created a new international climate,” the committee said. Here's what Obama said...diplomatic, real, honest, humbled, and a statement of being undeserving. Honored that he is our president.



3.) And in the vein of peace, Imagine...



4.) Peace to you and yours this soft October day, and best wishes for an inspired and relaxing weekend.

I Carry My Heart in My Pocket

"Papaya juice and back to work/I carry my heart in my pocket/It is poems by Pierre Reverdy.~ Frank O'Hara

I first pulled Frank O'Hara into my heart when I read the below poem at the behest of my poetry workshop professor, David Kirby. O'Hara was killed, young, on a beach, by a dunebuggy, of all things. "Papaya juice/and back to work./I carry my heart in my pocket/It is poems by Pierre Reverdy," sunk my soul with longing, because for years the only Pierre Reverdy work I knew, "For Today," found in a gorgeous illustrated book of poetry for children, the name of which is now forgotten--hung on a paper bag on the wall, inscribed in black Sharpie, in the first house I lived in on my own--with Kat and Karen, who are still my dearest friends. So. In honor of the UK's National Poetry Day (which was yesterday), papaya juice, and Friday, the end of the week, I give you two poems close, so close, to mein heart.

A Step Away From Them by Frank O'Hara
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches and Coca-Cola,
with yellow helmets on.

They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over grates.

The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
Onto Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.

A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of a Thursday.

Neon in daylight is agreat pleasure,
as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.

There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.

A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. I carry my heart in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.



For the Moment by Pierre Reverdy
Life is simple and gay
The bright sun rings with a quiet sound
The sound of the bells has quieted down
This morning the light hits it all

The footlights of my head are lit again
And the room I live in is finally bright
Just one beam is enough
Just one burst of laughter
My joy that shakes the house
Restrains those wanting to die
By the notes of its song
I sing off-key

Ah it's funny
My mouth open to every breeze
Spews mad notes everywhere
That emerge I don't know how

To fly toward other ears
Listen I'm not crazy
I laugh at the bottom of the stairs
Before the wide-open door
In the sunlight scattered
On the wall among green vines
And my arms are held out toward you
It's today I love you.

{Image Sources: 1. Books via We Heart It via Beautiful Fragile Tumblr; 2. Girl at Window via We Heart It ; 3. Frank O'Hara Portrait via This Recording; 4. Heart Pocket Girl via We Heart It via We Had the Stars Tumblr; 5.Coca Cola via We Heart it via Meet Me in Mountak Flickr ; 6. Windy Skirt via Photos by Alyssa Flickr 7. 1960s NY Scene by Christina Montone Flickr 8. Times Square via We Heart It; 9. 1960s NY Scene by Christina Montone Flickr ; 10. Giulietta Masina; 11. New York Portrait; 12. When Doves Cry via We Heart It via Jezebel 13. Papaya Juice via We Heart It; 14. Pierre Reverdy Poetry Collection Cover by Picasso via Madame Lamb; 15. Lemon Girl via We Heart It via Illuminate My World Tumblr; 16. Unkown Legend via We Heart It; 17. Laughter via We Heart It via Poignant Tumblr 18. Girl in Despair via We Heart It via Kaos and Heaven; 19. Singing Bird via We Heart It 20. Color Halo via We Heart It via Yay Every Day; 21. Running Boy via We Heart It via That Was the Day Flickr; 22. Girl in Bed via We Heart It}

It's True, It's True.

That is all. And. The humpty dance is your chance to do tha...hump. Happy Wednesday.

Monday Sentiment: Thank You for this Most Amazing Day

I thank You God for most this amazing day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes. - e.e. cummings

{Image Sources: Gone Fishing by Jacqueline Roberts via We Heart It; dreamcatcher: We Heart it Via Gray Sky Morning Tumblr; Beautiful Morning: We Heart It via Beca Boo Flickr; Bjork}

There Once Was a Girl

There Once Was a Girl/With a Little Yellow Curl/Right in the Middle of Her Forehead. /When She Was Good, She Was Very, Very Good... But When She Was Bad, She Was HORRID! ~ Mother Goose

My grandma Gerry always used to recite this rhyme to me...when I was a little girl, a big girl, and grown woman. Sometimes I'd ask for it, literally and figuratively, other times, I didn't. She was a consummate humorist, and would speak to me in her sort-of-deep, sort-of-light, sort-of-gravely, full-of-life voice, with a twinkle in her Irish blue eyes, a half-grin on her face, a shake of her head and a wave of her finger, and a raising and lengthening of HORRID! and a shortening of forehead so it rhymed. It's suited me well all these years, this sentiment. I am thinking of her this soft October day, remembering her patience, her solidity, her big, big love. This is a picture of me in her rose garden...almost rose garden...for we were digging, digging, digging, to plant the seeds of the roses that would grow and grow and grow. She had a quarter acre of roses in her yard, right in the center of the half acre where we played badmitton and had parties and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. That half-acre is a jungle now. But the sun still shines there, and her spirit fills the place, and if you squint, or close your eyes, you can see the rows and rows and rows of roses pink and yellow and white and red, red, red. Happy October!

Thank You and Wow and Yes!

Nothing is as important as a likeable narrator.
Nothing holds a story together better. Ethan Canin

Thank you to all of you lovely and sweet and supportive new visitors and followers from Kelly's blog. And of course, Kelly, thank you for being you. Welcome! I am so happy to have you here, and I really do love you. As you may notice, I'm not always as serious as all that, and I love cats, and funny, and design, and home stuff, too. This last week has been my first experience of all that wonderful connection and support from all over the world right here on the internet! It feels good. Really good. Inspiring. Helpful. Now that the intention is on the virtual page to set those stories free, I must do it. It's follow-up time. Again, even I am without the words to articulate how thankful I am to you for taking the time to read and to bouy up my heart with your kind words and attention, and for having such amazing, inspiring worlds of creativity and love on your blogs, shops, sites, even in your faces! I look forward to delving into them and communicating with all of you. Yay! Tonight, I so look forward to seeing the Decemberists live in concert at The St. Augustine Ampitheatre. Never seen the Decemberists and haven't seen a show at the lovely, wood-surrounded ampitheater since I was in one more than 20 years ago. I'm bringing my mom and we're sort of dressing alike. It will be magical. We have center orchestra seats!!!!!!!! Love and Light, Light, Light...Ama Livia

{Image Sources: Freckled Girl with Butterfly Tattoo: We Heart It via Freckled Flickr; Smoking Girl by Lina Scheynius via We Heart It via Lina Scheynius Flickr; The Decemberists by Autumn DeWilde; Mom and Daughter Illustration by Little Brown Pen: We Heart It via Little Brown Pen}

Flesh to Fur, Feathers to Flight

For My Flesh Had Turned to Fur and My Thoughts They Surely Were
Turned to Instinct and Obedience to God... --Blitzen Trapper, "Furr"

These wild swans Yeats writes about in the poem below, to me, are the family of geese...now much more than a gaggle at almost 20, who fly and float upon the man-made pond behind my workplace, in an office park of three-story corporations, near the highway, the hospital, restaurants, and newly minted roads, where we, humans that we are, try and circle in around the wilderness, in awe and envious of the wildness, the instinct, the effortless ease of nature, of creatures who answer to no one but ancient orders held in their bones--indestructible even as hunter's bullets fly, as acres of grass and trees and water turn to cement and manicured versions of forest, as their enemies turn from hungry alligators to the roar of shining cars speeding to Starbucks.

For they have never known, or maybe have always known, the tyranny of the ego, of measured days, of rakes, and iPods, and e-mails...now they know only that air suspends them, wind and water carry them, worms live in the grass, strength comes in numbers, and the pond is cool and giving as they float from one end of the man-made lake to the other--while featherless, pale creatures come and go, buzzing with a longing and fear that engenders just the slightest bit of sympathy in their tiny hearts, if sympathy they could feel, if they even had to write down and put into words that love, ah love, is more important than knowledge, and how could they forget-- how could they forget--something they never had to remember?

The Wild Swans At Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodlands paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
"The Wild Swans at Coole" by W.B. Yeats, from Collected Poems. Public domain.

{Image Sources-Girl with Fawns: We Heart It; Mom and Daughter Feeding Geese: We Heart It; Figure with Swans : We Heart It via Ali Scarpulla Flickr; Geese at Target: We Heart It via Swiss Miss; Cloaked Girl With Swans: We Heart It via Inspires Tumblr; Girl Holding Swans: We Heart It via Tybx Tumblr; Wild Goose Chase: We Heart It via Fiona Watson Art Flickr }

Each Day is a God

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split. I wake in a god. I wake in arms holding my quilt, holding me as best they can inside my quilt. Someone is kissing me – already. I wake, I cry “Oh,” I rise from the pillow. Why should I open my eyes? I open my eyes. The god lifts from the water. His head fills the bay. He is Puget Sound, the Pacific; his breast rises from pastures, his fingers are firs; islands slide wet down his shoulders. Islands slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage. Today’s god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading colors; he arches, cupping sky in his belly. He vaults, vaulting and spread, holding all and spreading on me like skin.
--Annie Dillard (Holy the Firm)

I think Annie's got my engines running again. I feel a tumult, a sickening, a shove. I have to do what I was made for. I must. I must tell my stories. Annie Dillard's wonderful account of her childhood, An American Childhood, was the biography I chose to do a book report on when I was all of 15 precocious years. It is a part of my body, my blood, my soul. One of the books that made me want to write.

She wrote about the shadows entering her bedroom at night, those mysterious lights that arc from one wall, to the ceiling, to another, moving like smoke. She wrote about how young and tender and beautiful and funny her parents were. How their beauty was earned, astonishing, and powerful--whereas a child's beauty is more elfin, a free gift. She wrote about how when everything else is gone from her mind--the faces of her children, the names of her lovers, her own name--what would remain would be the topography, rivers, rolling hills, and green lushness of the grass that was her hometown of Pittsburgh.
I didn't know anyone else had seen those mysterious shadows at night, which today are barely noticed, aware as I am, too aware, of the logistics of space, and light, and time, and that those terrifying monsters and ghosts visiting you alone are merely cars passing in the night.


I didn't know that other people played with and marveled at the wonders of aging skin, loose flesh, veins, and diamonds on the skinny fingers of the people who were my world--my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my parents, and all of their many friends. I didn't know that my childlike beauty was elfin, a gift--while the glorious adults shone with a light of beauty they had earned with the hard work of living, of life, of breaking apart, and putting yourself back together again. I didn't know other people remembered their tender mothers napping, and were agog, hours later as their warm, sleepy mothers walked from their bedroom doors transformed into the sweetest-smelling, shining, most beautiful things we had ever witnessed.

I didn't know. And she told me. She's telling me again. There is enough.
There is enough room for me, for the singing in my bones, the untold stories and poems that make my heart race in existential terror, that made me once upon a time try to kill them and myself as I manically downed vodka, popped pills, smoked a thousand cigarettes, screamed at suitors, terrified my friends, and made an art out of romantic rejection. You could line around the block all the good and loving men I sent away, artfully, like suicide, like anything else.

This painting, "Strong," is by my one of my dearest friends, Kelly Rae Roberts, whose journey to telling her own story and finding amazing success in the risk of TRYING, has been a major shove at my heart, telling me, NOW. Not later. Now. She's one of the many women dear in my heart who I GREW UP WITH. The real growing up. The real heartbreaks. The losses. The joys. The weddings. Births. Divorces. She is a part of my chosen family. And me of hers, and I am so grateful that we all chose so carefully, so wisely, at our tender ages of 14, then 18 and 19 and 20 and older.

And now no less than 15 years later with some, 20 years and more with others, we still hold fast to one another, hold that KNOWING and LOVING that comes only from watching each other fall, watching each other be fools, watching each other be cruel, and stupid, watching each other's hearts break apart--even more than the risings, the transformations, the joys, the soul-sustaining laughter--this shadow-self knowledge, this witnessing of it all, makes us hold ever more fiercely, love ever more deeply, and remember, one to the other, what we once were, where we once were, and who we are, now.

"Only connect," E.M. Forster, said. And so we have, over and over again. Only love, only connection even in the midst of dry spells and bitter hearts. I have a circle of these people in my life. And if I did anything right in my life, I chose these people as my family. And they me. Though one name was mentioned, I am incredibly lucky to have at least 30 of these people in my life. Right now.

Even as they stepped back as I tried to throw myself, headlong, so wasteful and selfish, over the edge of a real and beautiful and joyful world. They are my bedrock. And they came back. Were there when I woke up, and are here, scattered over the mountains split, as I try to pull myself, one day at a time, out of the darkness that once was my only home.

They are telling me something, these stories my body holds. They are telling me to pick up a pen, get a wooden lap desk, smoke a thousand cigarettes, and sit in early morning light all the way to dark, and set them free. Because, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, there really is not enough time. No time for you and for me, for the taking of toast and tea. Not time enough for decisions, visions, and revisions which a minute will reverse. Every minute someone dies. I will die. My life grows longer. The pages blank. I have dallied long enough.

I will not throw my head in the oven. Won't go out on a cocktail of barbituates and booze. Won't hang myself from a noose. Won't stuff my dress pockets with stones and drown in the river of an English countryside. Won't wear a smile plastered upon the face of a dying, dying heart. Not me. I'm gonna set those neglected stories loose on the world, and for a little while, we'll all be the better for it. I promise.

{Image Sources: 1.) Oprisco via Rose Coloured Rain 2.) Erik Jacobs for the New York Times; 3.) We Heart It ; 4.) Rosie Hardy Flickr ; 5.) Heart It via Bits of Beauty; 6.) We Heart It; 7.) We Heart It; 8.) Small Magazine; 9.) My Grandma Gerry; 10.) Oprisco via Rose Coloured Rain; 11.) We Heart It; 12.) Strong by Kelly Rae Roberts; 13.) We Heart It; 14.) Kat, Me, Tanya, Karen; 15.) We Heart It; 16.) We Heart It; 17.) Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours; 18.)Happiness Fort: My Life as a Sugar Lander via You are My Fave}

The Desired Reward

{Sweet Little Lamb via Cute Overload}

My koan, my mantra, my peace...from these simple words of Melodie Beattie:

Thankfulness toward life
guarantees the reward we desire.

A Primo Giveaway from Lola B.

This lovely woman, who runs this lovely shop Lola B. , and writes a wonderful blog by the same name, is throwing a great giveaway in place of the party in the backyard she was hoping for. In her words..."The details.The scoop. The giveaway.$150 gift card to Anthro....to buy your own pair of swanky shoe's. {one lucky winner}$100 package from my little shop...Lola b's {one lucky winner}$50 restaurant gift card {one lucky winner} and a surprise little something for someone {oh..it'll be good..} All you have to do....is leave a comment.If you want to blog about this giveaway....i will double your name.If you want to add yourself as a follower...i will double your name again.You do not need to have a blog to enter....just comment with your email address!"
Go git it! Visit the giveaway place!