December 29.25: Coping, but barely

“The world is too much with us,”

by tentacles of phone,

we reach a saturation

and have to build our own.

A world of peace and order,

artfully designed,

comfortable and pretty,

a wish from hopeful mind.

A Camelot, a Neverland,

a world of let’s-pretend,

a fiction and a fable,

around imagined bend.

No realities allowed,

no such contamination

in hallowed comfy place,

address: imagination.

And when the whim and wink

(do you like the alliteration?)

are Lionel encircled,

childhood’s iteration,

what could be more healing,

more fun and fix than that?

Especially when genius loci

is Her Benevolence, the cat.

 

With thanks to William Wordsworth for the first line,

to our long-time contributor S.W. Berg for the pike,

to Emily Berg Baine for the photo,

and, of course, to Trouble,

the Essential Cat

(her motto: Every Village Needs One).

December 10.25: Coping, but barely

As you know, dear reader, I went under the elevator this week. “Elevator” is the pretty word oral surgeons use for certain instruments designed to separate your tooth from you. I’ve had better weeks.

It seems to me that every one of us has something painful to deal with, whether pain of the body or spirit, and sometimes both. And let’s not forget brain pain. My brain is incapable of absorbing the times. We hurt; therefore, we blog (or bake). So many blog entries make me laugh or make me stop and ponder, and I am aware of the good they do. Ditto photos.

That’s why I am posting this photo of the model railroad village in its infancy. Our intrepid photographer, S.W. Berg, aka Bill, is creating this. Our memories of the set-up at our local department store and at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, not to mention in our basements (Bill tells me those are “pikes”) are enfleshed here.

Though some of you are also readers of Dan Antion’s blog, others of you might not be, and so here is the link to his blog today. His photos of Old Sturbridge Village at Christmas are to me much like Bill’s photo in that they bring a certain analgesic nostalgia.

Both Sturbridge and Bill’s village have real trees. But isn’t there always a deep reality to nostalgia?