tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76612650898092298012023-11-16T01:35:17.317-06:00maybe a little faith would do me goodKimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-75895474448961089562015-06-25T09:05:00.004-05:002015-06-25T09:07:09.959-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHRB_qoGPEnRC5qVSaVQQe1TwQc5vVdK16M_l8g3u_KFwomThyphenhyphen_KvKjhJjFLZ2XXoN7KfDm10VLM2LsBpxF-qfjc56W50C3z6h6dmjMnN761Bhtn9adNThca2rvMABN62upJpGyJoF8jFS/s1600/demeter%2526persephone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHRB_qoGPEnRC5qVSaVQQe1TwQc5vVdK16M_l8g3u_KFwomThyphenhyphen_KvKjhJjFLZ2XXoN7KfDm10VLM2LsBpxF-qfjc56W50C3z6h6dmjMnN761Bhtn9adNThca2rvMABN62upJpGyJoF8jFS/s320/demeter%2526persephone.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Persephone
Returns<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Junco
sirens pierce<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">thick
sodden air.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Tapered
shoots spring from damp soil,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">forest
green and scarlet streaked.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Dewy
libation for wandering ants puddles <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">on
blowsy coral blossoms, peony sweet.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Heavy,
wet heads bow to the schnauzers <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">lazily
loping along the path.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The
flesh of the lonely parsley skeleton,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">tucked
in its terra cotta coffin,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">fills
the ebony jade-striped <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">caterpillars,
fat and moist.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Blood
red petal and ice orb carpet spreads<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">underfoot.
Jagged limb akimbo, crushed<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">thatch
and lumber below. Demeter’s pleasure,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">all
told, as fearsome as her grief.</span></b>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-64425684354746248022015-05-07T10:50:00.000-05:002015-05-07T10:50:31.622-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWbd9dvObtLEafIrWQGPon_DEB5AehwQxB9LjwHYG1Kv6Iw5oKm30F9xRhLGt7ZkEaEwdYHKLTDSZ0xj1z7KO_NHh14cHFXUSCu47s2tDAKq3V4guMecmz14legCWjwJh1WUGpSI7IvLd/s1600/red_sunset_2-t2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWbd9dvObtLEafIrWQGPon_DEB5AehwQxB9LjwHYG1Kv6Iw5oKm30F9xRhLGt7ZkEaEwdYHKLTDSZ0xj1z7KO_NHh14cHFXUSCu47s2tDAKq3V4guMecmz14legCWjwJh1WUGpSI7IvLd/s400/red_sunset_2-t2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Choking on Freedom<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I woke to find you bent over my bed.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Snapped shut my eyes and made you disappear.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I’m choking on my freedom like you said.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The sunset dressed the sky in pink and red,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Dissolved to let me feed upon my fear.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I woke to find fresh wounds that gaped and bled</span></b></div>
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<b style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I contemplate the things we left unsaid,</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">It's hard to be alone with you so near.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I'm choking on the freedom and the dread.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Mistook the path we traveled on and tread<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">For a journey from which I could never veer,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I woke to watch you climb out of my head.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I walked among the thistle there instead,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Left the path behind because it wasn’t clear.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">No choking on the freedom when I led.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">You failed to understand just what you had.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">My devotion spread thin as a veneer,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I peeled it clean and dropped it as I fled,</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Exuberant in freedom now instead.</span></b></div>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-71573501061420613282015-05-06T15:44:00.001-05:002015-05-06T15:45:16.729-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWUWv85wuq5UNoicURpzizMk5iJpkOki3wNDIspgtmNzyp7uPqO3DA1V94ZHbJSgHm36BZnf4i4iVLkD6_yYR8Is1XZy_aDKjHookW07iK4ZnVwFb4_wjE7o0CWoMXVaehbd7xAY-aVj9/s1600/buckeye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWUWv85wuq5UNoicURpzizMk5iJpkOki3wNDIspgtmNzyp7uPqO3DA1V94ZHbJSgHm36BZnf4i4iVLkD6_yYR8Is1XZy_aDKjHookW07iK4ZnVwFb4_wjE7o0CWoMXVaehbd7xAY-aVj9/s1600/buckeye.jpg" height="333" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Buckeye<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">She caresses the shiny brown <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">harbinger hidden inside<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">the folds of her carnival dress.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Fingers spinning madly,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">laboring to coax<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Respectable fortune into her pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">She wills it to soak deep<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">through the gauzy cotton</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">onto her waiting summer-dark skin.</span></b></div>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-84819852403817192922015-01-21T17:48:00.000-06:002015-01-21T18:01:04.101-06:00Elegy for Ikarus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKyGedCrKES6EvFw_GCy8rOI4x_bMFvC6xQz18q7r9m5BAKsxlW1Xw7Ym2ZqSChm25UgouoIvQK5XhhwYnl_3ekE9S0921rqOkrmndy8jkxXk0O7s9_qLykdPrq0CWdu1amYy_MmgKum5W/s1600/frank_frazetta_icarus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKyGedCrKES6EvFw_GCy8rOI4x_bMFvC6xQz18q7r9m5BAKsxlW1Xw7Ym2ZqSChm25UgouoIvQK5XhhwYnl_3ekE9S0921rqOkrmndy8jkxXk0O7s9_qLykdPrq0CWdu1amYy_MmgKum5W/s1600/frank_frazetta_icarus.jpg" height="400" width="290" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The logs recede
into the gleaming coals,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A mound of ash
appears before my eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I stare into the
dying firelight,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Melancholy memories
fade to gray.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s here my heart
lives, in the blaze of day,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beating beneath my
ribs, soldiering on,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the intense
white inferno you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kindle when you
wound the ones I love best.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I step into
twilight, feel Boreas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blow lightly
against my sweltering brow,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So sharp and crisp,
cool relief, a balm for<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The scorching gash
beneath my grieving chest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I waited for him
among the chaste trees<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alongside the lush
riverbed, silver<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And grey with
purple blossoms arching wide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I waited though he
never came to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Daedalus, borne on
wings of your own scheme,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Merely to conceal
your labyrinthine heart,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your hubris obscuring
my Ikarus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From me til I
watched him plunge to the sea.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">* artwork by Frank Frazetta</span></div>
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Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-90729511458581368742014-02-18T12:09:00.000-06:002014-02-18T22:37:10.955-06:00Sweet Memory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiK-cdP-zbFTh-SC2XVfuDx2-96I6FXphNfl4QeeHsmtAu4jCQrYR6mGnY353sx_SQA9D7crSC_KDAU6_lobzE8O0dfZTWIepA-ez6oBtrVVI6XSvdV_H4EdxjB3HG8O7Aao8LzS37DbD8/s1600/VieuxMasaCrillonleBrave2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiK-cdP-zbFTh-SC2XVfuDx2-96I6FXphNfl4QeeHsmtAu4jCQrYR6mGnY353sx_SQA9D7crSC_KDAU6_lobzE8O0dfZTWIepA-ez6oBtrVVI6XSvdV_H4EdxjB3HG8O7Aao8LzS37DbD8/s1600/VieuxMasaCrillonleBrave2.jpg" height="220" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I tried to tell you again last
night, Lila. You were sitting in the blue chair by the fireplace. It wasn’t cold, but
it was damp, and you insisted on the fire. I am used to it now, your tendency
to be cold unless you’re soaked in the garden sun. With your head bent over
your book and a loose strand of hair curled against your shoulder, I could see you
as you used to be and it made me ache. I said your name, you smiled at me, and I
remembered the first time I noticed you. You were across the room and I was
riveted, like a scene in some ridiculous movie. You wore a gauzy pink dress and
smiled at me with a fresh, dark-eyed loveliness. We didn’t exchange a word, but
I dreamed about you every night that week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I lay in bed awake for a
long time this morning. I hardly sleep anymore. But you, you’ve always slept
like a rock. I used to wake up hungry in the middle of the night when you first
started staying with me. We sometimes forgot to eat dinner. When I returned to
bed you were always awake, murmuring questions in your soft, quiet way. Today I
slipped out of bed, trying hard not to wake you. Just as I stood, the sun
peeked through the curtains. You opened your eyes and looked at me, your face
still and calm. I thought I should tell you then, but instead I kissed you and
went out to the kitchen to make you some tea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’re having a beautiful
spring. Your daffodils bloom in our front yard, filling the slope with riotous
color. The woodpeckers and cardinals flock to the feeder you hung in the
blackjack oak and the little juncos gather on the ground below. Every year, I
watch you delight in nature’s rebirth as a child does. I think I’d miss it all
if not for you. I hope the hummingbirds return soon. I want you to tell me how
the female builds her nest, no bigger than the bowl of a spoon, with moss and
lichen and bits of spider web. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The spring always reminds me
of that first year we spent together in this old house. It was high summer when
we moved and it took us some time to get settled. The people who lived here
before ripped out all the bushes and flowerbeds and never got around to
replacing them. It was a hot summer, too hot to work in the yard, I said. You
told me that was nonsense and proceeded to dig a curvy trench along the front
of the house. You told me I didn’t need to help. I never met a more stubborn
person in all of my life. The next morning and many mornings after, I followed
you outside in the cool of the early dawn. We stripped turf, laid sand, and built
a wall of stacked rock inside your curvy trench. It took three car trunks full
of bagged dirt to fill up the bed. By the time we finished, the weather turned
and we were afraid to plant much. You found mixed bulbs in big brown paper bags on sale at the garden
center. Once you lined the bed, you started
digging holes out on the slope. I was never so glad to see that first frost
before. I love those daffodils.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I lived alone a long time
before I met you. Even after your first husband died, you always lived with
someone else. Your parents, a roommate, your children, then me. I used to
wonder how you did it. After a while, I realized you could be alone in a room
full of people. You seem to prefer a kind of companionable solitude. I noticed
it today. While we lingered over our breakfast, you gazed out the window. I
wondered what you were thinking. Maybe planning a trip or deciding what to
plant where the old shed used to stand. It seemed like an offense to intrude on
your thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">My daughter visited this
afternoon. I watched the two of you prepare dinner while I pretended to read. You
talked so much it took twice as long as usual for you to make a salad. She told
you about her new job, her old boyfriend, and the bed she bought for her guest
room. You left mid-sentence to get her a quilt and some lace-trimmed pillowcases
you made. For her, you said, but I know you made them for our bed. When I met
your eyes and lifted my eyebrow, you blushed, and I let you get away with it. I
wonder how long it will take you to make another set. While we eat dinner, I
think about telling both of you but I don’t want to spoil her visit. It was
such a good conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">After dinner, you pulled up
your hair, poured a glass of wine, then went outside to fuss over your roses. I
walked into our office to work. I spent most of my time watching you clip and
prune the Blue Boy outside the window. Such a funny name for a rose that’s
really more lavender colored. I can’t reliably remember my daughter’s birthday,
but I always remember the name of that rosebush. It’s your favorite. You moved away
from the window to another bush and I couldn’t watch you anymore. I decided to
work. The desk we use is really a dining room table, old and large with lots of
leaves and a sheet of glass over the top. My chair sits on one side and yours
on the other. I think it’s my favorite room in the house. From where I am, I
can see your books in the shelves by the window, arranged by author in
alphabetical order. Mine are piled in the cabinet behind me in no order
whatsoever. We tried to share our bookshelves once. It didn’t last long. After
the most ridiculous fight of our lives, you very sensibly moved all my books
into cabinets so you could close the doors. I swore I’d buy more bookshelves
but I never got around to doing it. Secretly, it makes me smile every time I
have to open a door to find one of my books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I work and so do you but our
lives are here in this house. I wander through the rooms and slowly realize you
are everywhere. There are traces of me, sure, especially in the den. The movie
collection you rarely touch over there by the television, the shelves of old
vinyl records beside the stereo. My ratty bachelor sofa hidden under slipcovers you
sewed because you couldn’t stand to part with the only good piece of furniture
I owned. In the kitchen, there’s the table you painted and your mother’s china
cabinet. Our guest room holds your grandfather’s bed covered with a chenille
bedspread your mother bought you as a child. In the bedroom we share, the
nightstand is the only way I can tell which side of the bed is mine. Your
glasses lay neatly on top of the novel you’re reading and my table overflows
with books and papers, my wallet and change, and the various items I collect in
my pockets. The little living room that looks over the front yard is filled
with the things you had when I met you. There’s a chaise longue—the most
ridiculous piece of furniture I’ve ever seen—delicate, armless chairs and dark
tables with curved feet and pie crust edges all sitting on an oriental rug.
It’s a pretty, feminine room and it always smells like you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You finally came back in.
It’s too dark to work outside now and you’re drawing a bath. I heard you pour
another glass of wine and turn on some old Fiona Apple. The day’s nearly gone
and a new week starts tomorrow. Still, I haven’t found the words to tell you we
need to begin to say our goodbyes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I got lost on my way home
from work again last week. I need to remember to use the GPS. One day last month,
I drove across town to see my mother. I didn’t remember she had died until I turned
off my car. I sat in some stranger’s driveway and cried. I’ve been losing
things for months and I forget words, ordinary words like the names of objects,
all the time. There’s a fog in my brain some days and other times I’m fine. But
I know it’s coming. I knew before the doctor told me. I don’t want to forget,
Lila. I’ll keep writing, keep reading, try hard to keep you in my mind a little
longer. I know I should tell you. Every once in a while, I catch you looking at me with a strange expression on your face. I wonder if you're worried. You deserve to know. But it makes me so sad,
and if I tell you, it will be real. Maybe I’ll find the words tomorrow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The beautiful art on this post courtesy of Julian Merrow-Smith. See more of his work at <a href="http://shiftinglight.com/" target="_blank">Postcard from Provence</a>.</i></span></div>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-26634309500036684952014-02-13T09:09:00.003-06:002014-02-13T09:09:34.996-06:00Visiting Jim Morrison on Throwback Thursday<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of my favorite memories of traveling to Paris with my lovely (now grown) daughter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://taktani.blogspot.com/2007/10/cimetiere-visitant-du-pere-lachaise.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pére Lachaise</span></a>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-20225835118584495342014-02-10T16:43:00.000-06:002014-02-10T16:43:05.714-06:00The Memory Palace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSbgUDabFPgwWhUIW5C2HQxYWvz25cLTvUbNA19C5VNA1GSBnIgVXvsZbsweiXmnWOVA8cwlVkcssEXFh5oOMEXwOXNu_s-dAbqLYV7KzDwRlg65is_wXClGAzrcDUJNMvLnq1TwYpbIFV/s1600/Memory+Palace+NEW+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSbgUDabFPgwWhUIW5C2HQxYWvz25cLTvUbNA19C5VNA1GSBnIgVXvsZbsweiXmnWOVA8cwlVkcssEXFh5oOMEXwOXNu_s-dAbqLYV7KzDwRlg65is_wXClGAzrcDUJNMvLnq1TwYpbIFV/s1600/Memory+Palace+NEW+Cover.jpg" height="320" width="211" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Early on in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The Memory Palace</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">, Mira Bartók describes her own life as a
palimpsest, a tablet or parchment used again and again after earlier writing
has been erased.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Following a life-altering
brain injury, Bartók leaves messages for herself on what she calls her memory
table, working hard to appear healthy and articulate, a process she describes
as second nature.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">“We children of
schizophrenics are the great secret-keepers, the ones who don’t want you to
think anything is wrong.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It is clear
from the beginning of this touching, evocative memoir that the life related by
Bartók is anything but right.</span></div>
<h6>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Bartók recounts a stark, excruciating
childhood, filled with countless incidents of uncertainty, embarrassment, and
downright abuse. Her beautiful,
brilliant, musical mother is gravely mentally ill; her father, a writer,
deserted his wife and two daughters, leaving behind only a collection of lovely
books. The two little girls regularly
run to their grandparents’ house nearby for meals, but the situation there is
scarcely better. Their grandmother feeds
them, but also burdens them with talk of their mother, Norma’s, illness at
quite tender ages. Their grandfather’s
abusive tendencies are arguably worse than their mother’s neglect. Bartók recalls having the story of Medusa
read to her at the age of five or six. She
casts her mother in the role of Medusa, seeing herself as Pegasus. “For years I dreamed I was a winged horse,
watching, from the sky, my mother’s serpentine head float away from her body.” Medusa’s children sprang from the blood of
her severed head. Norma lost her mind in
pieces after her children arrived.<o:p></o:p></span></h6>
<h6>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">After graduating high school, Bartók leaves
Cleveland, Ohio, for two years of college in Michigan followed by art school in
Chicago. Her art and her jobs, working
in education and in a museum, give Bartók a sense of purpose and
stability. Her mother’s behavior
continues to deteriorate, punctuated by increasingly strange and distressing
phone calls day and night. There’s what
seems to be an accidental overdose and an incident involving her mother
brandishing a knife at an airport. Worst
of all, Bartók receives a surprising interruption at work. Her mother shows up unannounced at the museum,
harried, haggard, and demanding her daughter go home to Cleveland. At this point, the sisters decide they must
take desperate measures to survive.<o:p></o:p></span></h6>
<h6>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The young women change their names and go
into hiding. Her sister, Natalia, cuts
off all contact with their mother, but Bartók keeps post office boxes through
friends and writes to her mother, giving her vague details about her travels to
Italy, Norway and Israel, never providing enough detail to reveal her
location. She sends her mother
presents: postcards from museums,
calendars, art supplies, warm clothes, paintings, a red sweater. By this time, their mother is sleeping in
hotels, shelters, airports, bus stations, and eventually, park benches. Schizophrenic. Homeless.
Alone. Of essentially abandoning
her mother, Bartók says, “If I am to be really truthful, there is something in
my nature as well, something that, like Natalia, and even our mother, made me
choose my freedom and creative life above all else.”<o:p></o:p></span></h6>
<h6>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Seventeen years pass this way. Soon after Bartók’s car accident and
resulting brain injury, her mother becomes seriously ill. Social workers contact Bartók at one of the
post office boxes she’s kept through a friend.
Upon hearing the news, the sisters decide to go to their mother, eighty
years old now and dying of stomach cancer.
While caring for her in the hospital and arranging her transfer to a
nursing home, the sisters discover their mother’s life: two big garbage bags full of belongings,
family keepsakes kept in a U-Haul storage unit, a women’s shelter full of
caring friends, a bank account, a safety deposit box. As her mother slips away, Bartók finds her
mother’s journals. In reading them, she
rediscovers her mother and realizes that her damaged brain works in similar
ways to her mother’s schizophrenic one.<o:p></o:p></span></h6>
<h6>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Melancholy, regret and loss permeate this
beautifully crafted memoir. Throughout
the story, whether she is in Europe, Israel or America, Bartók clearly shows
her continuing love and concern for her mother.
At the same time, she maintains the emotional as well as the physical distance
necessary for her own well being, harboring guilt every step of the way. Bartók gracefully and deftly illuminates the
complexity of familial love and its unusual capacity for healing and
forgiveness.</span></h6>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-50571917766076420912014-02-03T11:35:00.001-06:002014-03-06T21:26:39.473-06:00Leonids<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Ride a trail of vermilion flake</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Blaze your path across sooty skies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Leave smoldering ash in your wake</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Streak torrid blue and flame bright</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Trace
the path you will take<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Before
providence calls</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Soothes your hot ache</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And reclaims your translucent dust</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-38992546365492982872014-01-20T12:18:00.000-06:002014-01-20T12:18:12.260-06:00On Richard Sherman, Tommy Tomlinson, and Sportsmanship<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love football. I grew up watching the sport with my father, going to local games, and once I entered high school, I traveled with the sports teams as a cheerleader or a member of the marching band. Much of the social scene in my hometown revolved around the <a href="http://www.nowataps.k12.ok.us/index.cfm" target="_blank">Ironmen</a>. After all, I grew up in small-town Oklahoma and we are serious about our sports, especially football. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I watched both of yesterday's games. I am delighted with the outcome of the early game, primarily because someone defeated the Patriots. I am equally disappointed with the outcome of the late game. I am a <a href="http://mmqb.si.com/2013/07/23/colin-kaepernick-49ers/" target="_blank">Kaepernick</a>* fan, not necessarily a Niners fan. But my disappointment stems from more than just the loss to Seattle. What a brutal, nasty game. The refs officiated the game poorly which contributed to the heightened emotion and violence on the field. Both teams are physical, fierce competitors. It's a rough game. Oh, my, the <a href="http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2013/story/_/id/10319952/2013-nfl-playoffs-navorro-bowman-mike-iupati-san-francisco-49ers-injured-seattle-seahawks" target="_blank">injuries</a>.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyone who watched most likely caught the <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/01/richard-sherman-erin-andrews-interview/" target="_blank">Richard Sherman interview</a> immediately after the game. I'm not sure anyone seemed more shocked than reporter Erin Andrews. She handled Sherman like the professional she is, and the camera cut away quickly. Instantaneously, chatter appeared all over the internet about Sherman's so-called rant. Many condemned his behavior, including myself. Name-calling ensued. Peopled bemoaned the state of the game. One online <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pourmecoffee/posts/10152187907303735" target="_blank">writer</a> compared Sherman to Muhammad Ali.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I awoke this morning to a friend's link to Tommy Tomlinson's <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/tommytomlinson/2014/01/19/22-brief-thoughts-about-that-richard-sherman-interview/" target="_blank"><i>22 Brief Thoughts About That Richard Sherman Interview</i>.</a> Huh. A defense of Sherman's antics. His final point? "It seems to me the only proper response to something like that [game] is to holler like a crazy person."</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What I gleaned from the article is that Sherman was excited, he's a smart guy, and football players are not fit to communicate publicly until they simmer down. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I find much of what Mr. Tomlinson wrote disingenuous. Some of his points seem trite and cliched to me: fans want a violent, exciting game filled with some big personalities but are quick to criticize when the behavior gets out of hand; put a microphone in a guy's face directly after he's made a game-winning play and he's liable to be a bit punchy. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The bit that actually bothered me the most, though, lies in what I consider to be Tomlinson's hypocrisy. He defends Sherman by pointing out his intellect, his high school class standing, and his prestigious college. The next point, I must quote.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"His degree from Stanford was in communications...which might explain why, while he <i>seemed</i> to be hollering like a crazy person, he didn't curse and looked into the camera the whole time."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tomlinson goes on to compare the interview to an audition for the WWE.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the rub--Tomlinson contradicts his own conclusion when he insinuates that Sherman acted with full understanding of his actions during that on-camera rant. Either Sherman behaved like a "crazy person" or he controlled his language and his gaze while saying exactly what he meant to say. Sorry, Mr. Tomlinson, you can't have it both ways.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do I think Richard Sherman's behavior offensive? Yeah, I do. On field after the big play and on camera afterward. Sherman behaves like a bully. That handshake proffered to Michael Crabtree was nothing more than an Eddie Haskell-style taunt. Calling Crabtree "mediocre" on national television reveals an utter lack of respect for other players, not to mention a total lack of class. I really don't care what history they might have. Sherman's self assessment of his abilities is probably not far off. He's an excellent player and fierce competitor, but I simply cannot stomach that kind of arrogance. I am fairly sure Sherman doesn't give a whit what I think.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I'm not a Broncos fan, but I hope they crush the Seahawks on February 2.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">* I mean, really. Look at him. <b>And </b>he can play the game, too. Of course I'm a fan.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-87910410637486433922014-01-15T16:34:00.006-06:002014-03-06T21:27:00.056-06:00Redeemed<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His
betrayal divulged</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Naked,
exposed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enraged
by his misbehaving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Words
of clemency die on my tongue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Deceived,
I no longer seek<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shelter
in saccharine whispers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your
soft breath and sighs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advancing,
receding,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Endowed
with the gift of believing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Embed
faith into my icy heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cherished,
I no longer wander<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forsaken
in treacherous visions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My
slumbering soul<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Awakened,
released,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Washed
by a flood of revealing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Devotion
dwells in your eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Changed,
I no longer chase a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life
only lived in my dreams.</span>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-36143797616706159372014-01-14T14:56:00.001-06:002014-01-14T14:59:33.856-06:00An Ordinary Life<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I cannot know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the purpose of life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but I think it must be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a lingering search<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for elusive faith<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I cannot know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">whether God exists<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my only evidence lies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the peace I find<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">under the gaze of your eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I cannot know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if there is any beyond<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but until we die<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we have an endless supply<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of ordinary nights</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-2360806344268428722011-09-19T17:11:00.004-05:002011-09-19T17:23:36.743-05:00Private Property<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQGn44J_j8YLqF9fCEbXsz8xXkacVqh8Vz0L5rqRMozxu8_T95DLnYIasxM-hOMFKzfigoe6KC_hoVlQdX0hn7Zhzdio1R18gTLjWUrAjphqhryj857xoiheVY8T6Il4lh19cVUwTB_z8D/s1600/PrivateProperty.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 192px; height: 298px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQGn44J_j8YLqF9fCEbXsz8xXkacVqh8Vz0L5rqRMozxu8_T95DLnYIasxM-hOMFKzfigoe6KC_hoVlQdX0hn7Zhzdio1R18gTLjWUrAjphqhryj857xoiheVY8T6Il4lh19cVUwTB_z8D/s400/PrivateProperty.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5654199939795000914" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">When I was nine years old, my mother cleaned her closet, culling her wardrobe in the process. Mama is a tiny woman and weighed barely a hundred pounds at the time. Me, well, I’m not so tiny. My father is 6 feet, 2 inches tall, a big-boned farmer with a thick, strong body. I’m somewhere in between. I’m sure they were probably still too big, especially through the chest, but I selected several of my mother’s old shirts to add to my own closet. My favorite was a navy blue cotton number with three-quarter sleeves, a Peter Pan collar, and a row of shiny blue buttons up the front.</span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">I wore it to school soon after. I remember almost nothing at all about that day. It was neither warm nor cool, although I do remember it was sunny. It must have been after lunch because my nearly fatal embarrassment took place as we filed out the front door, across the large expanse of cement in front of the school building and down the sidewalk to the playground in back. I heard a laugh, then another, and what I can only describe as a guffaw. I realized almost immediately the laughing was directed at me. I felt air across my chest, and to my infinite horror, when I looked down I saw skin. Bare skin. My blouse was losing buttons.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">We’ve all felt exposed, whether literally or figuratively, and such exposure in childhood is devastating in the moment. It’s humiliating and often lasting. Paule Constant’s novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Private-Property-European-Women-Writers/dp/0803234805/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316470661&sr=8-1">Private Property</a>, </i>describes moments such as these over and over in the life of little Tiffany Murano. From the second of her arrival at the Catholic girls’ school in southwestern France, nine-year-old Tiffany feels miserable and out of place. She misses her parents, French expatriates still living in Africa. The nuns are distant and dismissive; the other girls seem foreign and are cruel, teasing Tiffany, ignoring her, shutting her out of their conversations, their play, and their world. Having spent her life until now in Africa renders Tiffany an outsider.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">Although Tiffany internalizes the rhythms and routines of the school, she never really sheds her alien status. She moves through her days detached and observant, longing for companionship but misunderstanding the social order so completely that every effort she makes disintegrates into a mortifying blunder. In one painful episode, she goes through the motions of befriending Cathy even though she is told outright she’ll be dropped like a stone the second a popular girl looks Cathy’s way. When the inevitable happens, Tiffany is more upset about her undone, unkempt hair than the departure of her false friend. Tiffany simply watches as the years pass her by. Soon she is thirteen.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">Tiffany’s only solace lies with her grandparents, the reserved grandfather and her charming, devoted, but ailing grandmother. She spends her weekends with them, first at a city boarding house, then later on traveling to the Private Property of the title. The big house sits among orchards of apple, plum and hazelnut trees, looking over the picturesque village below, flanked by its own farm complete with livestock, and backed by an imposing range of mountains. Every joyful experience, every peaceful moment, and the only sense of belonging left to her are embodied in the beloved grandmother, the grandfather, and the Property.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family:arial;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">Constant’s prose, even in translation, flows gracefully. She is at her lyrical best during the last third of the novel, moving between the school and the Property, between Tiffany’s resignation and her happiness, using only the quality and essence of her language to communicate the acute, turbulent changes. When Tiffany’s grandmother dies after a long, unspecified illness, the girl’s world is shattered. Constant renders her mourning and utter confusion in language so raw, so palpable, it makes the heart ache. Tiffany disintegrates back at school, lying awake at night, her head spinning her lesson’s facts into a kind of emotional armor. We are witness to the imminent fracture, helplessly watch her hurtling toward disgrace.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family:arial;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">After finishing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Private Property</i>, my mind wandered over my own school years, marking embarrassments, remembering slights, rifling bittersweet memories. I relived a bit of that evening after the buttons fell from my shirt. I picked the buttons up, put them in my pocket, took them home. But with the dark shirt and buttons in hand, I went to the trash can instead of asking my mother to sew them back onto the shirt. I didn’t want to be reminded. Constant draws Tiffany in clear, stark relief, creating a character who throws shadows so large they cover you up and remind you for days.</span></p>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-30559730841742892252011-09-06T08:59:00.003-05:002011-09-06T09:03:30.253-05:00A Hell of Their Own Design<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="font-family: arial;" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXSN_pr2qlcxhyphenhyphenswAoXT5HPHKLwLpqWBnTE_mX6SpMSPIHJWSUybyioon-Dg9znaHOJWEFOB9TRpc_ebS8KqdTnBaTImfRe3ZDuGPio90NtpiZ5AGJUhjBGWoC1Nk1OoaZ3zoAmWMU9fxw/s1600/CrimesSouthernIndiana.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" 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mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapedefaults ext="edit" spidmax="1026"> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapelayout ext="edit"> <o:idmap ext="edit" data="1"> </o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">The people populating the small towns and backwoods of southern Indiana meet with grisly ends throughout Frank Bill’s short stories. Simple shootings just won’t do for these twisted, nasty characters. A blade slices through both of a man’s eyes, a man lassos and hangs his father-in-law at his wife’s behest, silent dogs bite their way from a bulging calf to a vulnerable throat, and then, there are the flames:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>a barn of dead dogs set afire, homemade bombs exploding and burning the attacker instead of the target, a lit cigarette flicked into a circle of gasoline. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories</i> overflows with senseless violence alongside righteous, brutal vengeance.</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">Men, women and children wind in and out of these stories linked and rooted by place. Families take shape from one story to the next, an often gruesome shape, melding into the fabric of the action or serving as a backdrop, a connection, or an explanation of the deep mysteries of human motivation. The tone is pessimistic and sardonic. “The only time life is easy is childhood, but by the time a person realizes this, it’s too damn late.”</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">Bill paints his law enforcement with the same dark pigment used for his criminals. Even the good guys exhibit flaws, bad behavior, and judgment tainted by personal interest or annihilated by tragedy. Ordinary people fall victim to their vices. Innocence is shattered for no conceivable reason. Children commit violence, are raped and killed. Lives ruined in an instant. Everyone is fair game. It is the rare man who emerges on the other side and no one gets away clean.</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">The transgressions accumulate like crappie on a fish stringer, so fast that you lose count. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Trespassing Between Heaven and Hell</i>, the breach lays not so heavily in the act as in the cover-up, but once events are set into motion, sin piles upon convenient sin, complicated by the relationship of brothers and the wrecked psyche of a man incapable of leaving war wounds behind him. Already broken people shatter beyond repair.</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">The aftermath of war figures into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Old Mechanic</i> as well. Perhaps the most compelling story in the collection, the narrative is told from the point of view of an adolescent boy meeting his grandfather for the first time. The boy grew up hearing savage accounts of the man’s behavior. Despite his mother’s misgivings and his own searing fear, the boy goes off alone with the man. The simple words than run through the boy’s head while he accompanies his grandfather to a gun show, to dinner and finally to the old man’s home, elucidate a mixture of repulsion and curiosity, clearly illuminating the irresistible pull of blood and history. In the end, pervasive guilt wracks the grandfather’s existence with hope of only the merest hint of redemption.</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">The Penance of Scoot McCutcheon</span></i><span style="Arial","sans-serif""> is a love story. It's the accounting of an ordinary home and a happy marriage, told by a doting husband. A young wife described in tender, intimate detail. But it is a love story of the dead and the dying, told in retrospect and tinged with regret. It is the least violent tale here, the crime secondary to an emotionally devastating centerpiece. Haunted by his own actions, a man in perpetual disguise runs from himself for years before surrendering to reckon for his sin, making peace with his own conscience but unable to shake his staggering guilt.</span></p> <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: arial;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt;" > </span> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif""> </span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">This story collection is an astonishing debut. Bill peppers his writing with generous description, some perfectly rendered, some slightly distracting. Hair and eyes “stained like a walnut”, “flesh giftwrapping bone”, or “Frail would describe her as muscular,” evoke just the right image. Even the few less successful passages bring a definite vision into the mind. Inducing and conveying raw emotion seems almost effortless for Bill, particularly in the case of men in love with their women. The stories race along, visceral, strong, and stunning, transporting the reader into a dirty, dangerous world of drugs, alcohol, incessant violence, and the terminal pastimes of decaying rural life. These people of southern Indiana inhabit an unrelenting hell made up partially of circumstance but primarily crafted from their own design.</span></p>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-57136252142322533032011-07-31T17:06:00.017-05:002011-07-31T19:29:16.492-05:00Ted and Ginger and Dianne<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="font-family: arial;" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXdY5WT6hgOP5GNVCjV6bVQqiWsniACW2oZ3OHI82vDmGGXz3h6WoxuwGvbUQZgL-_WlH0m7XjjhE31X_Qb9qiLBmED8nZr6vwwOTbssrht5MXM8kQTJKLLdRH3-bqmL5YGgY1lXvI3oB6/s1600/Ginger.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 158px; height: 200px;" 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mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapedefaults ext="edit" spidmax="1026"> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapelayout ext="edit"> <o:idmap ext="edit" data="1"> </o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="">My grandfather served on the USS Salute in 1945. That year, on June 8<sup>th</sup>, she sank, broken in two pieces after striking a mine in pre-invasion activities off Brunei Bay. Each year since 1985, the sailors of the Salute meet during the week of that anniversary. They bring their families, exchange tall tales, and tell the </span><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">stories of their childhood and their service to a historical volunteer. The last couple of years the interviews were filmed. We sit in the meeting room and watch the stories unfold, each the same and each quite different. As the years pass, the men age and are slowly lost to sickness or to time.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="">For the last couple of years, they held the reunions here in Oklahoma. I’ve been close and lucky enough </span><span style="">to attend. This year we all traveled to Bartlesville, an oil-boom town in the northeastern part of the state. My grandfather and my mother grew up there, my father and I just across the county line to the east. It’s familiar country, a place sprung from Delaware and Cherokee Indians, hard-scr</span><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">abble pioneers, back-breaking work and the bounty of a part of the state deemed “Green Country”.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="">I’ve never been close to my grandfather. Ted is a small, handsome man who’s led a hard life, mostly by his ow</span><span style="">n choice. When he tells stories of the war, he speaks of women he chased through California</span><span style=""> where he was stationed, the buddies who accompanied him, and his repeated instances of being absent without leave, which he casually refers to as “jumping ship”. His first wife, my grandmother, was Californian by way of Illinois. Ginger, as she was called, caught rheumatic fever as an adolescent. Her heart badly damaged, her parents moved the entire family out west for the sunshin</span><span style="">e and the clean air. That’s where they met. He tried to marry her when she </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVdExXo_fFEp4gSfkRgZbKBElfns0xZDvNC65KHlc-DW83bsYY-oYjd_Y7VwswBSwITnwQ9PtDM4KUgK9S15zozH49oXsmNBCcfEm8TmW3KzDAkPT7StxZng_3itTwv5-X5BwClkfrf87j/s1600/Ted.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 130px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVdExXo_fFEp4gSfkRgZbKBElfns0xZDvNC65KHlc-DW83bsYY-oYjd_Y7VwswBSwITnwQ9PtDM4KUgK9S15zozH49oXsmNBCcfEm8TmW3KzDAkPT7StxZng_3itTwv5-X5BwClkfrf87j/s200/Ted.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635677248257989474" border="0" /></a><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">was just seventeen, but her father blocked the union. Ted went to war. Ginger waited.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="">When the Salute sank, my grandfather sustained a head injury, spent about two weeks unconscious, and woke up state side. With his medical discharge in process and a keen sense of his own mortality, he picked Ginger up, took her to Arizona and married her there. Ginger stood four feet, eleven inches with blonde hair, pale skin, and light eyes, a lovely, tiny young woman. My mother w</span><span style="">as born in California in April of 1946. By May of 1949, Ginger’s rheumatic heart failed. S</span><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">he died at the age of twenty-two leaving behind her husband and a three-year-old daughter.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="">My grandfather quickly remarried a woman who preferred to pretend his first wife did not exist. I know very little about Ginger, only hearing how my grandparents met for the first time last year, after </span><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">the second wife died. Ginger is a cipher, a beautiful face in a black-and-white photograph, an almost entirely unknown quantity.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="">My daughter, at twenty, stands about five feet, two inches tall, with blonde hair, luminous pale skin, and </span><span style="">hazel-green eyes. She is a lovely, tiny young woman. In the hotel this past June, as the reunion group lingered over breakfast, my daughter came to visit. I was upstairs in my room, still preparing for the day, so she went down to the lobby with the old sailors and their families. My mother as</span><span style="">ked my daughter questions about college and my daughter, an animated student of theater and French, began telling stories. My grandfather watched her with obvious delight. When I came into the room a bit later, she rose to hug me and the conversation lulled. My mother overheard my grandfather say to the sailor next to him, with a smile on his face, “She remi</span><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">nds me of my first wife.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" face="arial"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7fT83W1dKLpaMjH9Eot_S8jLzK5YouoxgJ2D086vxuYZqO867voHxmoB5NlWr7mChOIwq-IJwEZGTOqSIHdby2itZo28t_5yUvZrHLEsuHzY7hvceb98uSDSyj7ZsHmOind-8ADNX1jk/s1600/DianneEighteen.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7fT83W1dKLpaMjH9Eot_S8jLzK5YouoxgJ2D086vxuYZqO867voHxmoB5NlWr7mChOIwq-IJwEZGTOqSIHdby2itZo28t_5yUvZrHLEsuHzY7hvceb98uSDSyj7ZsHmOind-8ADNX1jk/s200/DianneEighteen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635675518510246418" border="0" /></a><span style="Arial","sans-serif"">My daughter, unbeknownst to her, gave my mother a precious gift that day:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>an idea of what her mother may have been like. It’s a sweet and precious debt, one that will never be repaid.</span></p>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-62373151780577807862011-04-04T19:57:00.003-05:002011-04-04T20:30:49.555-05:00Dianne at Sixteenlost on our first night in Paris<br />she stayed calm, ordered crepes<br />smeared with coconut and nutella<br />then later on strolling Montmartre<br />bought fingerless gloves,<br />and a blue hat with a tassel<br />skipped the Eiffel Tower<br />and a float down the Seine<br />but couldn't miss Père Lachaise<br />or the museum of Salvador Dali<br />passed up the catacombs<br />to shop at Galeries Lafayette<br />and look down on the Palais GarnierKimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-3969882064609933872011-04-03T18:43:00.003-05:002011-04-03T18:50:22.612-05:00goneliquid existence<br />slips cooly into oblivion<br />leaving no trace<br />of the mossy<br />platinum velvet<br />ashy palette<br />painted<br />by my body<br />my presence<br />my loveKimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-38061836667737639092011-04-02T22:50:00.002-05:002011-04-02T22:55:29.017-05:00wish you were herethirty-one degrees below zero<br />ten days on it's seventy-two<br />hail and winds, straight or tornado<br />tree-breaking ice<br />eighteen inches of snow<br />over a hundred twenty days in a row<br />welcome to OklahomaKimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-41339585819123470442011-04-01T21:42:00.003-05:002011-04-01T22:07:57.874-05:00beginningsmy hiding place<br />stood silent<br />I climbed up<br />sat in the fork of two limbs<br />reached for blue sky<br />in our old oak tree<br /><br />a purple cover<br />adorned with sisters<br />vivid sunlight through branches<br />wind honeysuckle sweet<br />a sparrow alights up high<br />she sings to me<br /><br />Jo high in her garret<br />me on a leafy perch<br />an apple each and some ink<br />a jumble of words<br />tears on the page<br />wondering just how things will beKimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-14485859791948414182011-03-10T13:33:00.007-06:002011-03-10T14:13:48.709-06:00for whatever it's worth<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUc41Py0K8SkpdHh2YbSNbr42P0MThJPukanNOuzvrpVJKjkXcaRMzu0IwREgwrCnVdyDR9gA1kYsNCw1JN4YPdEVuHXF8rF92voyGvsK_PqLhO6XAsBZ2leJA86tDUCnlaROtxuSg7eB0/s1600/Reeses.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 136px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUc41Py0K8SkpdHh2YbSNbr42P0MThJPukanNOuzvrpVJKjkXcaRMzu0IwREgwrCnVdyDR9gA1kYsNCw1JN4YPdEVuHXF8rF92voyGvsK_PqLhO6XAsBZ2leJA86tDUCnlaROtxuSg7eB0/s200/Reeses.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582542782609506466" border="0" /></a><br />I published a little <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2011_03_017312.php">piece</a> of writing. A little piece of writing about someone else's big piece of writing. About their brilliant, important piece of writing that boasts hard covers and a dust jacket. A lovely, real book filled with beautiful, sublime art which I never even bothered to mention. I wrote 715 words reacting to someone else's luminous, difficult, gorgeous, almost tragic life story.<br /><br />It is unbelievable really. Astounding. I have clicked that link at least a dozen times. My name in cyberspace. Not the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1252358107">name</a> I sent them, but still...it's my name.<br /><br />I sent the review to the managing editor on January 18th. By the time I received a message telling me he loved it, the review had already been posted for a day and a half. Had I bothered to look, I would have seen it sitting there, right on my hated Google Reader page. But no, I did not look at all on March 7, 2011.<br /><br />Until I received the news, I had been writing. Stories. A little journaling. A bit of poetry I used to destroy a perfectly good piece of paper (thank you, <a href="http://betsylerner.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/my-gift-is-my-song/">Betsy Lerner</a>).<br /><br />Yesterday I managed to write a journal entry. About the review, of course. Then I worked for an hour on a story about a boy, his sister, the big oak tree in the back yard and what happened there one sunny, bright day. There wasn't a word I deemed worthy of keeping. So I deleted it all and promptly left the house with my children for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.<br /><br />I'll write again. I know I will. But I can't help looking at that damned review and wondering if I will ever publish another thing. Nearly every word I choose seems wrong or repetitive, every adjective superfluous, every verb weak. I am, for the most part, okay with my nouns. Maybe. Well, not all of them.<br /><br />Is this a crisis of confidence? Crippling fear that from now forward someone will actually read the words I write? Worry that the editor hasn't gotten back to me because he changed his mind about wanting to review more of my work?<br /><br />Whatever it is, maybe it's on its way out the door. After all, I am getting ready to hit "publish" on this blog post. Maybe. I think.Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-27694018056648407282010-07-13T17:29:00.003-05:002010-07-13T17:33:35.702-05:00Hmmm...<!-- Begin I Write Like Badge --><br /><div style="overflow: auto; border: 2px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); font: 20px/1.2 Arial,sans-serif; width: 380px; padding: 5px; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(247, 247, 247); color: rgb(85, 85, 85);"><img src="http://s.iwl.me/w.png" style="float: right;" width="120" /><div style="padding: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); text-shadow: 0pt 1px rgb(255, 255, 255);"> I write like<br /><span style="color: rgb(105, 139, 34);font-size:30px;" >Chuck Palahniuk</span></div><p style="font-size: 11px; text-align: center; color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><em>I Write Like</em> by Mémoires, <a href="http://www.codingrobots.com/memoires/" style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);">Mac journal software</a>. <a href="http://iwl.me/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(255, 255, 224);"><b>Analyze your writing!</b></a></p></div><br />After trying this with a post I wrote a while back, I decided to try two or three more posts. The results of the different writing samples were: Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen King, and James Fenimore Cooper. Apparently, I have a split personality as a writer.<br /><br /><!-- End I Write Like Badge -->Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-52423739381483354522010-07-07T21:50:00.005-05:002010-07-07T22:11:47.860-05:00a bit more poetry<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbDnyohPUMKZhCh2Y81aBDC1MIqIhy5Vv0gNZO53UDX5GEWaslU62FwzQFAxjjy15TaHQeGG-Q9dflKbUlS-nPAHpuuy1YQuU5BmrCjpOuC3okWE3-ieEU1Z6pFYg5EnV7i8m_edLORrN1/s1600/quill.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 192px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbDnyohPUMKZhCh2Y81aBDC1MIqIhy5Vv0gNZO53UDX5GEWaslU62FwzQFAxjjy15TaHQeGG-Q9dflKbUlS-nPAHpuuy1YQuU5BmrCjpOuC3okWE3-ieEU1Z6pFYg5EnV7i8m_edLORrN1/s200/quill.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491366380009594402" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_wLChbOp8oec8oiRK2hV0Dtg9F1rkz0hrNAn4drIou332spGaYwZI-hjQ8SXTZmV4hld7hfxUUgyu55ysn9tX1bC3EEDZZ2qftz22jKPcQQ7NL0kG9P-EmpOdKPjhGC7veF_RV7fm2gV6/s1600/quill.jpg"><br /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Much of the poetry I've been writing is raw, emotional, and not really fit for public consumption. The class focuses on the telling of personal stories through poetry. There are two I think I can share here. Both were written during the course of the class and have been whittled and reworked and thought half to death. This one turned out lovely, I think, and brings back sweet, precious memories.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >wisdom<br /><br />he told me once he couldn't claim to know<br />the meaning of life but he thought it involves<br />finding someone who makes happiness real<br /><br />he told me once he had little idea<br />if there truly is a God, but he thought<br />the best evidence is in my dark eyes<br /><br />he told me once I should live for today<br />concentrate on being in this moment<br />because nothing lasts, time erases memory<br /></span> <span style="font-family:arial;"><br />*******************************************************************<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">The memory this poem is based upon is an old one. Even so, the finished poem seems immediate to me, as well as just a bit ugly, just a bit violent.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Seeking Control<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >She never could stand secrets</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >tried to strip them from my mind</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >with tricks, bribes, pointed questions,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >searching for answers I wouldn't spill</span> <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >She crept into my room</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >dumped my purse on the bed</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >violated my privacy</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >as easily as she smiled<br /><br /><br /></span>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-43048779857523290312010-06-10T07:56:00.006-05:002010-06-10T09:03:53.837-05:00writing poetry<span style="font-family: arial;">I began a poetry class this week. Like everyone else, I wrote the requisite haiku and rhyming verse in school, but I've never made a serious attempt at writing my own poetry. I've been reading lovely books by people like Lucille Clifton, Robert Bly, Ted Kooser, Dorianne Laux, and Marie Howe. Our first assignment was to write a piece about the way that poetry came into our lives. The first poem I remember really affecting me in an emotional way is a short piece, long since committed to memory.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Amulet</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Your picture smiles as first it smiled,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The ring you gave is still the same,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Your letter tells, O changing child,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No tidings since it came.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Give me an amulet</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">That keeps intelligence with you</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Red when you love, and rosier red, </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And when you love not,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Pale and blue.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Alas, that neither bonds nor vows</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Can certify possession;</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Torments me still the fear that love</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Died in its last expression.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">-- Ralph Waldo Emerson</span><br /><br />I thought about the day I first read this poem and how I came to own the book of Emerson's poetry. It is odd what comes back to you holding an old book in your hands.<br /><br /></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYegCx-KzXHqUgbVCZ69qDXKJmOhqobvj6XvLE-acCcyKs2wnjfd6SSlMc7JQOhFAWoTv__YaI1kM3KyPGEVh8y5VuskMVrgBcuogppfK5AKnVJnyuY2ZFUbMa_SoGKD6Hse3vuuG5XIt/s1600/Emerson.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYegCx-KzXHqUgbVCZ69qDXKJmOhqobvj6XvLE-acCcyKs2wnjfd6SSlMc7JQOhFAWoTv__YaI1kM3KyPGEVh8y5VuskMVrgBcuogppfK5AKnVJnyuY2ZFUbMa_SoGKD6Hse3vuuG5XIt/s400/Emerson.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481133757209945666" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">"The Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson", Copyright 1900</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Mother filled my late childhood</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">With auctions and farm sales.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">She drove miles and spent long hours</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Eating cheap barbeque sandwiches</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">While bidding a few dollars on boxes</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Packed with someone else's life.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">One hot June day under a Redbud,</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">She picked among the tables and the piles.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I dragged along bored behind her</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Until I saw a box of books near the house.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">They smelled of leather and age,</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">My idea of heaven.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">In the corner, covered in brick red linen,</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I saw a volume not much larger than my hand.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I was seventeen, immersed in unrequited love.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I opened the linen cover, looked on yellowed pages,</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">and as I read "The Amulet",</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Poetry spoke to me.</span>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-26530934378231970842010-03-30T09:08:00.008-05:002010-03-30T14:07:03.568-05:00Home Sweet Nowata<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0HMtSdNeVDOlTgb_zHVuyFDSq7w8eRJiwUOxcyAZ81aSTmbMW1lMtEDXAKHpSdJQxDVrtSOuMLrZe0qeAfCOJLW5aewBJJbQuVxkm751QuafpEuAYqlIPl36VEgrlMx0VUhiJP9IcElDo/s1600/NowataCounty.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 286px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 378px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454505459663312338" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0HMtSdNeVDOlTgb_zHVuyFDSq7w8eRJiwUOxcyAZ81aSTmbMW1lMtEDXAKHpSdJQxDVrtSOuMLrZe0qeAfCOJLW5aewBJJbQuVxkm751QuafpEuAYqlIPl36VEgrlMx0VUhiJP9IcElDo/s400/NowataCounty.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zqMU6ZnRMSQs7Z6UIvJHxpW-LRTNrevui4b04T_-mYnD5ngHjx5x8ig6jDmwwlwhdlHB19CtTidhjLLKXPEg9ua2sMUzjnT5exBJecaRE55o7xdHuw__ZEXliKbHCA8GBWcrU193PdhK/s1600/NowataCounty.jpg"></a><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">I spent the better part of an hour talking to an old hometown friend on the phone this morning. While our conversation touched on home only peripherally, it started me thinking about my recent near-obsession with all things Nowata. I’ve had lunch recently with a couple of schoolmates, ornery boys who’ve turned into wonderful men. I’ve been thinking of Nowata often in the past few months. Perhaps it’s the upcoming all-school reunion and all of those pictures I’ve been uploading from old yearbooks and from inside an old metal box I’ve had since middle school. Maybe it's following what's going on with the children of old friends who live around Nowata, seeing pictures of them going to spring dances, FFA events, showing animals in the spring livestock show, or playing baseball in the frigid Oklahoma spring. Perhaps it’s the contact with so many old friends from home since I joined Facebook last summer to keep up with my lovely daughter as she attends college. I could blame it on <a href="http://web.me.com/mayberrymagpie/Site/Blog/Blog.html">Joan-Marie</a> and her lovely descriptions of life in small-town Oklahoma. But honestly, I think I am simply homesick.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /><p></span></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Ga6Gnl8TOmiAdDi5kgT1omtzTg4vmjgOSGZsDgRuDv2t6wZuQNaK-T50Ezte3iHNQW8uX1GIPsXFMfkX4EeoFPuqHvJBs6l4yImmKv0ttMgeA1I1Tiy1NfgRsJX9joRGddmMSPcTr94q/s1600/NowataCountyPond.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 266px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454430208688490610" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Ga6Gnl8TOmiAdDi5kgT1omtzTg4vmjgOSGZsDgRuDv2t6wZuQNaK-T50Ezte3iHNQW8uX1GIPsXFMfkX4EeoFPuqHvJBs6l4yImmKv0ttMgeA1I1Tiy1NfgRsJX9joRGddmMSPcTr94q/s400/NowataCountyPond.jpg" /></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />Just look at the countryside. Why wouldn't I be homesick for lovely Green Country? There is nothing prettier to my eyes than a pond in a cow pasture when the grass and the trees are lovely and green. Part of what draws me is knowing that underneath that beautiful grass and on the edges of that pond, the dirt is a lovely, rich, dark color. Not red. Dirt, my friends, should not be red.<br /><br /></span><br /><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLFhkCOqaaPJSNEkEZIj0wywsKT9HccquPzF7W0xZ1mO2bF7FRr3-QnyJSdglWjNW2fpqVJmnXgHEFfNgFgUH0DKpTuMmPs110tSbvlfSiP9looXSJaQAyl7Qc0lpuvOhXbW1KT3r1iUQP/s1600/NowataCountyCourthouse.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 255px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454430198009878290" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLFhkCOqaaPJSNEkEZIj0wywsKT9HccquPzF7W0xZ1mO2bF7FRr3-QnyJSdglWjNW2fpqVJmnXgHEFfNgFgUH0DKpTuMmPs110tSbvlfSiP9looXSJaQAyl7Qc0lpuvOhXbW1KT3r1iUQP/s400/NowataCountyCourthouse.jpg" /></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />Lovely old buildings in Nowata are more than just lovely old buildings to me. So many memories float into my consciousness from looking at this picture of the courthouse. My great-grandmother lived down that street to the north when I was in elementary school, right next to Sheila Stinnett, my life-long friend and distant relative. There was an organ in Grandma Bonnie's formal living room that she played by ear and a cellar that I spent many an hour in during the spring, staring at a bare bulb, jars of home-canned fruits, vegetables, pickles and preserves, and listening to an old transistor radio for the all-clear. I obtained my first marriage license in the courthouse after Anita Folk drew my blood out at the hospital, the only woman I've ever known who could do so without bruising or hurting me. Mrs. Folk also happened to be the make-up artist from the dance recitals of my youth and the mother of my old classmate, Dee Ann. Free association leads me to thoughts of Miss Vicki, dance classes in the basements of the <a href="http://www.savethesavoy.com/Savoy_History.html">Savoy</a>, and Noweta Lodge, a summer writing course with Joyce Hifler in one of the high school annex buildings, and my 1974 red-and-white Chevy pick-up, the one with a 454, chrome running boards, dual wheels, and a chrome cow catcher on the front. I wish I had a photo of that <a href="http://www.allamericanclassics.com/pics/R05498-73tchev30dually.jpg">truck</a>. All that from a picture of the county courthouse.<br /><br /></span></p><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNyrYSmiTlC5V0_PyqEQ5ZpfbWCgny6XcQdyoIqdNA3H2F7VXhAO1MusqTqS8RaYVXHIMY66kBkfkceDYVs1m6Ahm1V_zZHDDCGgFDcayCEbpwG8kYvWVsNgt7lWl7ZA7ckBCoRKHLlnv/s1600/SaltCreek.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 269px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454430190330772642" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNyrYSmiTlC5V0_PyqEQ5ZpfbWCgny6XcQdyoIqdNA3H2F7VXhAO1MusqTqS8RaYVXHIMY66kBkfkceDYVs1m6Ahm1V_zZHDDCGgFDcayCEbpwG8kYvWVsNgt7lWl7ZA7ckBCoRKHLlnv/s400/SaltCreek.jpg" /></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />There's nothing prettier than Nowata County in spring. Other seasons have their pleasures, but for me, spring has always been Nowata's best season. Warm days, cool nights, vegetation turning green, the gallardia, butterfly peas, and coneflowers blooming in pastures and alongside the roads, and the daffodils, forsythia, and lilacs blooming in the well-manicured town lawns. Nothing prettier.<br /><br /></span><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">I've been thinking about taking a drive north, an hour past Tulsa up Highway 169. There are people I'd love to see, but the main draw this time of year, for me, is the natural beauty of the place where I spent my childhood. There is just something about that little town that's always gotten under my skin. I said to a friend recently that you can't really ever go home again. And I suppose in some ways that's true. But if I ever loved a place and thought of it my whole life through as home, it's a little town called Nowata. It is, simply, home.</span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:78%;"><em>*Pictures are all Google images. Really. I just searched Google Images for "Nowata County". Try it. There are pictures of the bowling ball art, the motel signs, Ironman sports, and Main Street. It's kind of awesome.</em></span></div><br /><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:78%;"></span></em></div></div></div></div>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-43342272184018182032009-12-30T12:02:00.000-06:002009-12-31T12:17:12.248-06:00Good Luck for the New Year, Southern Style<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvt6HkkcGDXAhGnqifsaNgSXLAGo5WjqcjNPoAE0GiaNNMnuPfbbkIzhwO8fSD9_oXJoz0B5YTqCfL2yZewt-fE-Cq7EhACPlI6ONmSUHYRy6nsYGErxTSiT0nwzbGwzBmCo0kmn25ZpuG/s1600-h/blackeyed_peas.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; DISPLAY: block; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149848512878782690" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvt6HkkcGDXAhGnqifsaNgSXLAGo5WjqcjNPoAE0GiaNNMnuPfbbkIzhwO8fSD9_oXJoz0B5YTqCfL2yZewt-fE-Cq7EhACPlI6ONmSUHYRy6nsYGErxTSiT0nwzbGwzBmCo0kmn25ZpuG/s320/blackeyed_peas.png" /></a><br /><div>As we approach the end of the year and the end of the holiday season, I always reach for one certain pantry staple.<br /><br />If you grew up in the South or your family has Southern roots, you probably know that black eyed peas are considered lucky in this region of the country. People serve them on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in many different ways. My mother used to make black eyed peas with ham and serve them with cornbread. My Southern grandmother served <a href="http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/HoppinJohn.htm">Hoppin' John </a>with hush puppies.</div><br /><div></div><div>According to my family, black eyed peas should be the first thing you eat as the year changes and we leave behind the old to take up the new, which is the reason I always serve them New Year's Eve. I have made my mother's recipe and my grandmother's recipe. My children would never eat them, not even a bite. Come to think of it, I didn't eat them readily as a child, either. I experimented to find a way to prepare black eyed peas that my children might enjoy. For the last five or six years, this recipe has been a staple of our New Year's Eve celebration:</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><em>Black Eyed Pea Salsa</em></div><br /><div><em></em></div><div><em>olive oil</em></div><div><em>1 cup chopped onion</em></div><div><em>1/2 cup chopped ham</em></div><div><em>2 cloves garlic, minced</em></div><div><em>1/4 teaspoon ground cumin</em></div><div><em>1/4 teaspoon pepper</em></div><div><em>1 15 ounce can black-eyed peas, drained</em></div><div><em>1 14 1/2 ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained</em></div><div><em>1/3 cup minced fresh cilantro</em></div><div><em>1 tablespoon seeded, finely chopped jalapeno pepper</em></div><br /><div><em></em></div><div><em>Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, ham, and garlic. Saute until onions are tender, about five minutes. Stir in cumin and next three ingredients; bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro and jalapeno. Spoon salsa into a bowl; cover and chill one to eight hours.</em></div><br /><div><em></em></div><div><em>Serve at room temperature with pork or chicken or as a dip with crusty French bread or tortilla chips. Yields about 3 1/2 cups.</em></div><br /><div></div><div>Those of you who have recently indulged yourselves (you know who you are) will be happy to know this is a healthy, filling treat. Plus it's tasty and lucky to boot.</div><br /><div></div><div>Happy New Year to you and yours!</div>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7661265089809229801.post-58949402703190117252009-11-04T10:00:00.001-06:002009-11-04T10:00:21.489-06:00already longing for spring<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiml66rt2ZH4BJXtIp8a2ZJQQLIlETFdl3WCB9sJvNfytJjJ2tGs-wZMXMHrVV0sQ8smCQ7i07SuUuW0RiWqAHFAUklUHPKR6KV950-anS0nC9rJdW73bX3YM1F0APEJAjnfJif7Ra7KJ3M/s1600-h/newcamera+012.JPG"><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392656954969375922" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiml66rt2ZH4BJXtIp8a2ZJQQLIlETFdl3WCB9sJvNfytJjJ2tGs-wZMXMHrVV0sQ8smCQ7i07SuUuW0RiWqAHFAUklUHPKR6KV950-anS0nC9rJdW73bX3YM1F0APEJAjnfJif7Ra7KJ3M/s400/newcamera+012.JPG" /></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span><br /><div></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">The last roses of the season bloom in the autumn air. The dogs run in the back yard, barking their little fool heads off at a squirrel, a bird, the neighbors' dogs, or perhaps a passing pedestrian. The mornings are cool, the afternoons warm, and the nights clear and cold.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></div><br /><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Autumn always incites a bit of longing in me. While I enjoy the cooler weather, the shortened days do not agree with me, the bleak winter looms, and my beautiful vegetation begins to succumb to the cool of the night. Already, I've lost my clematis, the lantana, the candymint, and the prairie daisies. The cool crept up quietly, gradually and nearly unnoticed, and I think my gardenia bloomed its last this summer.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></div><br /><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">From November to February, I live for the spring. Christmas hasn't held much excitement for me since the days of my youth. As an adult, the holidays are too often spoiled by the rushing, the tension, and the hassle. As I woke this morning, I heard birdsong in the back yard through the window above the bed. In the dawning morning, the sound of the bird singing sweetly filled my head with visions of greening grass and blooming flowers. Only upon full awakening did I remember the date.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></div><br /><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But the promise of the coming spring, so near and yet still distant, will sustain me through the dark months, keep me hoping and longing for the new life that will surely greet me there. I'll pass the winter reading, planning, and yearning for the moment the crocus peeks through the cold January ground, a harbinger of the delicious spring joy only weeks away.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></div><br /><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I'd never make it in Minnesota.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></div>Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05655321325607087357noreply@blogger.com7