What refuge
on a thin wire
that so many seek it?
What life
in a huddle?
When frigid waves
lap quietly
at our lives,
and a winter sun
makes the barren bright,
what warmth
in the insidious cold
is really creeping numbness?
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
The committee convenes
in officiousness large,
each of them sure
someone else is in charge.
A chip used to be
what isn’t there,
something lost,
leaving bare
a little bit
of what’s left,
remainder
with less heft
perhaps, but
less is more:
what isn’t there
is its own lore.
The precarious known,
the thatched belief,
swayed by life,
like twig and leaf —
when bared to talon,
gale and cold,
will it crumble
or will it hold?
Beneath fur and feather
it’s hard to judge pallor:
which will prevail,
discretion or valor?
In my pursuit of whether Shakespeare should be credited, I encountered a statement about things that annoy Shakespeare scholars.
I must say that Shakespeare scholars are easily annoyed.
A reflection, dear reader.
Today I turn 78. One becomes reflective when one turns 78 in a year of chaos and disease, when fear and rage, loneliness and grief dominate the human stage. But I was born into World War II. How can I not ask if anything has changed?
Food was rationed, bloodshed headlined daily newspapers, freight trains crisscrossed our lives carrying tank parts and spewing cinders, radio was high-tech, my mom and grandma walked to the corner store, a can of bacon grease ennobled every kitchen and bobby pins every dresser. Coal shoveled into furnaces. White shoe polish a household staple.
You have met my cell phone, humble flip-top that it is. You know it stopped working last month and then mysteriously started working again. Then, a couple days ago, it developed new problems. You may congratulate me vociferously: this time I did what any kindergartener would have done and googled the wretch. I learned that the trick was to put the phone into Airplane Mode and then toggle it out again.
Dear reader, who in the name of heaven would have the least inkling to do such a thing by way of problem-solving? I was irrationally proud of myself and at the same time miffed that I live in a world in which my life experience and hard-earned education seem useless.
As you know, this week has been hideous here but obviously something this mortally serious doesn’t just happen out of nowhere. And so I become 78 in a country with its principles in tatters. In a world where I need to know about Airplane Mode to have a working phone.
I have decided to look at it this way: 78 candles is a lot of light.
Comes now night’s black broom,
sweeping citric glow
over earth’s long arc
into some tomorrow.
Two planets meet the while
in astronomical collusion,
appearing in a oneness
of ballyhooed illusion.
It isn’t the conjunction but
the difference that’s grand
between what we can see
and what we understand.
Thanks and congratulations on capturing the Conjunction to S.W. Berg.
My apologies, dear reader:
the Conjunction faded in the transfer
to my blog. I hope you can see it!
Although this post is coincidence,
I cannot help noting this is Little Christmas.
The tradition of the star may not be universal
but human searching surely is.
Of white it can be said
that breath is lost,
a waxen hour
on air embossed.
With thanks to my dear friend Donna for this gorgeous amaryllis.
A wink, perhaps,
lightly nefarious:
above the noble
“Stradivarius”
the truth is stamped,
hidden slyly —
“Copy” — by luthier
deft and wily.
I think it was no coincidence that 2020 was the year I attended to my father’s violin, which I had allowed to fall into disreputable condition. I’d needed some sense of grounding, of continuity, in a year of such cataclysmic instability. I had it repaired and renewed for my grandson this Christmas, and there was indeed grounding. This was the instrument my father played in his grade school orchestra, circa 1925.
The one he played in our family Christmas concerts (a merry barnyard kind of sound) and introduced to his grandson circa 1977.
The one I rescued from my own shameful neglect and presented — in its well-worn KantKrack case, beribboned and (it seemed to me) proud — to his great-grandson this Christmas.
A violin doesn’t have to be a Stradivarius to be priceless. And 2020 has made us acutely more mindful of the priceless things that ground us.
Thank you, dear reader, for all your encouragement and insights this year. May the new year bring us all the repair, renewal, and tuning we need, may we be grounded in the priceless things of life, may we be mindful of those who grieve and who care for our sick, and may there one day again be real hugs!
Stories connect us;
the tales that we tell
try to fill the unfillable
of a deep human well,
but sometimes words falter,
they’re easily spent,
and we must turn to music
to say what is meant.
Whatever your stories, dear reader, whatever your traditions,
may they bring you peace and comfort.
Whether you soar with Beethoven’s Ninth
or (like me) warble along with ancient Robert Shaw records,
may there be the wonder of music for you.
Maureen
