Poetry, Reading

Watery memory

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Three days ago, I decided it had been decades since memorizing any poetry, and it was time to rectify that. What to memorize? I’d been studying The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot and its part four, Death by Water, seemed easy enough. But I’m finding difficulty with three parts of it:

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                               A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                                   Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

For the LIFE of me, when considering Phlebas the precise words of the watery phrases escape me. They don’t stick. “the deep sea swell” “A current under sea”. I got “Entering the whirlpool” reliably but this is SO short and simple, it’s bothering me.

Wait. After typing this out, I got it now. Let me close my eyes and try reciting it again.

Good. Just did it two times in a row. Needed hand gestures, but got it.

See, internet? You CAN be remedial!

Politics, Pop Culture

Punch your heart, then ask for money?

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Kony 2012 joins an interesting year of social network activism. Awareness that the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure was driven by right-wing anti-women women leading to plummeting donations to Komen, and a rise in donations to Planned Parenthood. Making Rush Limbaugh apologize and costing him sponsors. Fascinating examples of how social networks can create a tide of public opinion to great effect.

In the last day or so, the world is suddenly concerned with a this terrible Kony warlord. And the entity that spread the word wants you — if you care for children and object to rape and murder and terror — to donate money to them and share with your friends the news and calls for donations. 43 million views on YouTube. 14.2 million on Vimeo. Astonishing.

Being engaged is important. Making a difference and helping those who struggle is important. But the effect of the video and the excitement of being part of a quick-response online movement has seemingly made many people’s critical thinking skills temporarily disengage. What is this group Invisible Children behind the video? Are they good or bad? Do they spend money wisely? I don’t have all those answers, but there’s a lot of cause for skepticism before forking over money. And they do ask for money, over and over again.

A critical mind about the Kony 2012 online fad in no way constitutes an endorsement of raising children to kill and rape their own family members, run drugs, and making life as shitty as possible for others.

P.S. – This article on Jezebel about this topic is really good.

Parenting

So, now you’re nine.

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We hoped for a girl, and were glad when the scanner showed you were a girl.

Your head was so big (sorry for that trait) they needed a suction cup on a stick to get you out of your mother’s belly.

But it was soon clear that your head holds much brains. Enough to feed a village of zombies and still maybe, their bellies stuffed, they’d let you walk home. Though maybe math and spelling would be harder for you afterward.

We asked you to stop saying “I know” so often, and you pretty much stopped. Thank you. Will you find something else to saucily say down the line? Indubitably!

When I see your smile crammed with many teeth (sorry for that trait, we’ll get it sorted over a few years) it makes my heart happy.

And when I see you take on more grown-up gestures, like saying “Yeah.” with a wave of your hand while running off to do what you want, or you hold a pointy finger up to the sky to make the other person listen to you, it’s a look into your future. And that future looks good.

It looks like your present, full of smart, creative, caring, sassy friends. And a family who is watching you grow up, and giving you more space, and letting you help more, and listening to what you have to say because it is often very interesting.

We love you, our smart, creative, caring, sassy daughter. And are happy to see you get taller, funnier, sillier, and very very nine years old.

 

Activity, Art

Burnside Bridge balloon man

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Walking yesterday the sight of a balloon art installation tethered to a stairway off the Burnside Bridge caught my eye. Caught about 4-5 peoples’ eyes. Snapped some photos. Within an hour the balloon man was gone. Was the artist/perpetrator among the people snapping photos, taking photos of people taking photos? Didn’t much care. If so, give them their moment. This was interesting.

Poetry, Writing

Be witching.

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Darting through the sky dragging trails of coal black smoke.

Sometimes with letters, most often circles.

At times the trail is blinding magnesium crackling and sizzling with an odor that makes the teeth hurt.

Then I land, dismount the broom. Look to the skies and see other letters, other circles.

Higher in elevation from where I patrolled, less fresh.

I used to fly lower altitude, more often I tilt upwards to try the cooler air and better view.

Walking on, I see other circles, faded but over my station. For my notice?

Some a pungent bilious green, hopefully dispersed before they catch the breeze on earth. Birds and bugs dropping unconscious before then. Take shelter under a tree.

How many heartbeats do we have? Is it vain to take to the skies? Vain to scan upwards for messages and deeds? Tough to take direction (or evasion) when there are errands to do.

Beasts of the field spend all their heartbeats doing their duty, consuming, sleeping, excreting.

Beasts of the field do not look to the skies, or take to the skies, from compulsion.

Art, Music

Everybody’s got a sad song, but…

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So, are there people on the planet for whom a Hootie and the Blowfish song triggers a reminiscent sadness? The song comes on and the person’s instinct is to retreat and walk (or sit) and think big thoughts and piece the important things together? Gotta be “Yes”, right?

Politics, Pop Culture

Santorum, fecal demi-Catholic, lubey, wants to spray you

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Rick Santorum cites the Catholic Church as his source of moral guidance. Like most Catholics, he cherry picks which direct-from-god dictates to follow, no matter how much of a furrowed brow and pointed finger the Pope-of-the-day makes on the topic. He hates women having control over their bodies, contraception EVEN IN MARRIAGE, and homosexuals.

Does he follow the Catholic Church’s stance against capital punishment, the Iraq War, and unversal health care? Doubtful. I’d check that, but it would require a mouse drag all the way to the top of this browser window to use the search engine and I’m not putting that much effort into it.

Back when Santorum still held elective office, he was an asshole then, too, and columnist Dan Savage ran a contest to create a definition of “santorum” to mess with search engine results. Known as Santorum’s “Google problem”, here’s the winning reader submission:

Pronunciation: san-TOR-um, Function: noun, Etymology: Savage Love – 05/29/03

1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.
2. Former Senator Rick Santorum

Here’s a political ad by Rick Santorum in which his right-now pollitical rival, Mitt Romney, gets sprayed by a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter:

Villain! This ad uses the overture to Carmen. Fool! Fiend! Carmen belongs to meeee!

The final image is a dead ringer for the image long at Santorum.com to keep stank all over his name.

Santorum is a weirdo!

Eating, Poetry, Writing

Valentine’s Day new-timey sweetness

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In ancient Rome during middle February they feasted quite deeply during pagan Lupercalia. To slit the throats of a dog and a goat then eat them would cure what ailed ya.

Then ladies’d stand naked in line, and while blitzed on wine the fellas all’d hit them.

Later on ladies’ names were drawn by men in a game to determine who later would schtup ’em.

Couples might bond, other times not gel, in either case they’d end up sticky.

While rollicking and violent, horrid and wrong, somehow that all ended as this edible Mickey.

The Valentine’s cookie was sweet, decorated neat, and blended to smooth consistency.

Eating it made me sluggish and slow, hardly rarin’ to go, and in the wild my rivals would pass me.

Would I end up behind down the Lupercalian line slapping laggard asses that didn’t quite suit me?

I’d probably stay back, plan a selective attack based on hair, guessed-at smarts, self-esteem.

Or would I have thought “Sod it all. Ave, Venus!” and hope my card would lead to love at first sight?

All this mulling now and then while with a ravenous grin I chomped down on this corporate copyright.

Art, Poetry

Three stanzas from ‘Under Ben Bulben’ by Yeats

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“Under Ben Bulben” doesn’t quite work. Yeats tried to make it a culminating poem, even writing his eventual epitaph in the closing lines. I cracked it open tonight and rediscovered these three stanzas:

II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-digger’s toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

III
You that Mitchel’s prayer have heard,
“Send war in our time, O Lord!”
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.
 
VI
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!