Swinging Toward Change

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

So. The ice on the river began to rot eight days ago, breaking up two days ago under the persistant influence of the sun. Buds are beginning to swell and the air no longer has a fetid chill to it.The windows could be thrown open to flush the last bits of fusty air from the corners of our apartment and the Scary Neighbors were out in full force and full volume.

They take all of their troublesome elements from one young man who yells at passing cars and at us every time we enter or leave our own house. He has the skankeddiest hair I have *ever* seen, and no sense of dress whatsoever; he seems to think that any jersey-hoodie-white-sneaker combo is good enough. Sure. To be buried in. Maybe.

(I have begun to notice a striking similarity between this guy and his yelling at passing cars and the way dogs chase moving cars and bark. I wish the guy next door would get just a little closer to the dog's behaviour. Some dogs get too close to the car and get clipped, you know, and that's not always a bad thing.

Anyway . . . he and his buddies blared music from the cheap speakers of the hoopty-mobile in the driveway next door and sauntered down the block to our corner harassing all and sundry that happened to pass, with one exception: Today was the first day since the cold set in that the special-crazy old black lady walked by the house pushing her shopping cart full of dead baby dolls and talking to herself. Hoopty Crew & Co. gave her all the sidewalk she wanted and said nary a word. There must be something powerful buried under all those dead baby dolls . . . . I wonder if she does parties. . .

And then - just at 6pm - all of the bells in all of the old spires that bind in our strange bit of world began to ring out the end of the day. That's when I remembered that nothing is so bad that a little time and the right word or touch won't put most of the shine back into things.That's when I begin to feel sorry I spent so much of the day in a slump . . . .
1:12 AM -
SPM

A Sickly-Sweet Poem.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
(by e.e. cummings)

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands



What was he going on about!?
A woman?
A man?
A loved child?
I am not certain,
but I have thought,
I have wondered,
I have decided in reading that he writes of hope because it is what is needed at the moment.

Not that life is so harsh, but understanding and wisdom can be so scarce and so many things happen that shoudn't. . . and so many are not happening that should . . . I have decided that the poem is about hope and, odd or not, this is what hope looks like to me.