Contentment

I don't read Dickens for the plot or story line, but for the reveries of life as it once was, and perhaps again may be, lived and enjoyed, even in the heart of troubles and want.

"Their pleasures on these excursions were simple enough. A crust of bread and scrap of meat, with water from the brook or spring, sufficed for their repast. Barnaby's enjoyments were, to walk, and run, and leap, till he was tired; then to lie down in the long grass, or by the growing corn, or in the shade of some tall tree, looking upward at the light clouds as they floated over the blue surface of the sky, and listening to the lark as she poured out her brilliant song. 

There were wild-flowers to pluck:  the bright red poppy, the gentle harebell, the
cowslip, and the rose. There were birds to watch; fish; ants; worms; hares or rabbits, as they darted across the distant pathway in the wood and so were gone: millions of living things to have an interest in, and lie in wait for, and clap hands and shout in memory of, when they had disappeared. 

In default of these, or when they wearied, there was the merry sunlight to hunt out, as it crept in aslant through leaves and boughs of trees, and hid far down-deep, deep, in hollow places like a silver pool, where nodding branches seemed to bathe and sport; sweet scents of summer air breathing over fields of beans or clover; the perfume of wet leaves or moss; the life of waving trees, and shadows always changing. 

When these or any of them tired, or in excess of pleasing tempted him to shut his eyes, there was slumber in the midst of all these soft delights, with the gentle wind murmuring like music in his ears, and everything around melting into one delicious dream."

  ~ Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, Chapter 45 excerpt

Sigh.

 It never,  ever, ever ends.

"Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath."
~ Theodore Roethke

The best
is not to have been born.
~ Anthony Hecht

 I am the chosen no hand saves.
~ Louise Bogan  

And so I stood apart,
Hidden in my own heart.
~ Theodore Roethke

How you handle them

I don't know why women in the 1930s knew how to deal with handsy men and so many women today don't.  A 30-second lesson in handling lechers:

So much for a century or so of feminism -- whatever that is.

 

Life II

 

“She was hurt to find life made up of so many little things. At first she believed most faithfully that they had a deeper meaning and a coherent larger purpose; but after a while she saw to her dismay that the deeper and larger things were merely shadows cast by the small.
So she buried the whole great treasure of winged dreams and iridescent shades under an oak-tree in the farthest corner of her heart, and planted a bush of wild roses over it. A small grave of dreams.
Secretly and silently she buried them, a little ashamed, as a burglar might be who had long pursued some gleaming ruby necklace, and, having by infinite stealth and risk obtained it, found that it was red glass.”
― Barbara Newhall Follett, Lost Island

Life

 

 

 

“My dreams are going through their death flurries. I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the whole radiant flock of them together—with their rainbow wings, iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.” 
~ Barbara Newhall Follett

Knowing what's important

 

Brunch in the breakfast nook

 What better for a Sunday brunch than homemade buttermilk biscuits and homemade strawberry preserves?  I can make both, the best you ever tasted!

Coffee, fresh-brewed and strong.

An omelet?  Whatever kind you like, but, trust me, you will fill up on biscuits and preserves. 

After brunch, my dad would always relax in a sunny corner and read the Sunday paper, tossing me the funny pages so I could read Get Fuzzy and Calvin and Hobbes.

I think I've met this guy

  Whatever you say, kimo sabe.

 

 

FU 2

 I really get tired of all those so-called right-wing men...or should I say right-wing so-called men...who dump on women in the armed forces.  

Maggots.

Happiness

Happiness is the uncle you never
knew about
who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, 
hitchhikes into town, 
and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep mid-afternoon,
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

-- Jane Kenyon

 

Snow White Joins Up

 

The desert erases regard, wind plays on.
A mirror looks back to the future which has no face.
I’m a player for the war outside.
My name has killed me, fatherland desert land, no escape.
Do not forsake me!
I’ve become the most beautiful green dress.
Maybe you would not recognize me
when the Johnnies come marching home.

– after Snow White Joins Up by Klaus Friedeberger
  From Jill Jones, Fold/Unfold

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After we saw

Postcard from vacation past

After we saw what there was to see
we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father
waited by the car and smoked. He didn’t need
a lot of things to remind him where he’d been.
Why do you want so much stuff?
he might have asked us. “Oh, Ed,” I can hear
my mother saying, as if that took care of it.
After she died I don’t think he felt any reason
to go back through all those postcards, not to mention
the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower
and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays
and lucite paperweights, everything we carried home
and found a place for, then put away
in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets.
He’d always let my mother keep track of the past,
and when she was gone—why should that change?
Why did I want him to need what he’d never needed?
I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler
in some parking lot in Florida or Maine.
It’s a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch,
lights another cigarette, looks up at the sky.
~ Lawrence Raab from The History of Forgetting