Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Sunflowers

Shoulder to shoulder,

preened and ready,

necks craned for

their first glimpse.

Suffocating clouds.

Delayed arrival.

Love's threadbare clothing

goes unnoticed.

Could they ever think

he might not come

to court again

tomorrow?

Bathtub Families

This week, I attended a poetry reading by Poet Laureate Billy Collins.  

He easily would have been one of my favorite professors in college.  I had been introduced to his work by a friend a couple years ago, but I was only familiar with a few of his poems - most notably The History Teacher.  What a delightful evening!  I know this is obvious, but it's one thing to read a poem on a page, and very much another thing to hear the author's inflection as he intended... they are more immediate, more accessible.  And some of his poems are hysterical.  There was one, in particular, that I now have a pretty big crush on. 

Bathtub Families

is not just a phrase I made up

though it would have given me pleasure

to have written those words in a notebook

then looked up at the sky wondering what they meant.

No, I saw Bathtub Families in a pharmacy

on the label of a clear plastic package

containing one cow and four calves,

a little family of animals meant to float in your tub.

I hesitated to buy it because I knew

I would then want the entire series of Bathtub Families,

which would leave no room in the tub

for the turtles, the pigs, the seals, the giraffes, and me.

It's enough just to have the words,

which alone make me even more grateful

that I was born in America

and English is my mother tongue.

I was lucky, too, that I waited

for the pharmacist to fill my prescription,

otherwise I might not have wandered

down the aisle with the Bathtub Families.

I think what I am really saying is that language 

is better than reality, so it doesn't have

to be bath time for you to enjoy

all the Bathtub Families as they float in the air around your head.

from Ballistics (2008)

I have a reputation for recording and collecting clever turns of phrase (or at least instructing someone else to write it down!).  So while a friend thought we were being called out on our behavior, I took the justification path - "no, look, Billy Collins's persona does it too!"  The difference is that I would have bought the Bathtub Family to keep around my house.  Much like I did the Bag of Plagues at Publix one passover season.  Maybe it would have been sufficient to keep the Bag of Plagues in the air around my head.

And I can't walk down the halls of our school anymore without giggling at spurious acclamations of praise.

Oh, My God!

Not only in church

and nightly by their bedsides

do young girls pray these days.

Wherever they go,

prayer is woven into their talk

like a bright thread of awe.

Even at the pedestrian mall

outburst of praise

spring unbidden from their glossy lips.

from Ballistics (2008)

Other highlights (links when I can find 'em):

Serenade

How Poets Read Prose (published as Searching)

Dharma

Tension

Forgetfulness

ISO Adjectives

I need an adjective.

Specifically, I need an adjective for my style.

More specifically, I need an adjective for our home decor style.

If I see something that is our style, I know it. But to describe that style in the absence of symbols? Kind of difficult. It's sort of Mission, but without the Spanish. It's sort of Arts-and-Crafts, without the country. It's sort of modern European, but without the Ikea. It's sort of eclectic, but with a bit of focus. We don't shy from bold color, as our red sofas, eggplant-purple door, and rich tones of paint on the walls attest. We definitely tend toward squared edges and straight lines, but not exclusively. We like classic stuff, but with a modern twist. We like modern stuff with a classic twist. It's not typical wicker-and-palms Florida. It's not over-the-top gilded rococo. It's not spartan minimalism. It's warm, comfortable, and inviting. At least, I think so. I need to get an independent opinion.

How to sum all this up in a label or four? (shrug) So come over and tell me what my style is. We need to throw a housewarming party anyhow - we'll just task our guests with the adjective search.

Chasing Daylight

Attention, People Who Decide These Things:

Can we please do away with this daylight-savings farce? If there's ever anything that's truly outlived its usefulness, it's Daylight Savings Time.

Oh, sure, there are some crybabies who will claim, "but we get an extra hour of daylight in the summer!" or "but our children will have to go to the bus stop in the dark!" Suck it up, I say!

First off, Daylight Savings does not magically add hours of sunlight to the day. There's no astronomical solar voodoo going on - that hour of summer sun at 900p is given up by (read: robbed from) the morning. And I have to say, it just irks me when people say we get "an extra hour of sun". No we don't - count 'em up, it's still the same.

Second, if that extra hour of evening daylight is so great in the summer, why can't we have it all year round? It's getting dark at 430p now, it seems.

Third, as we approach the winter solstice, kids will again be walking to the bus stop in the dark. Funny thing, that angle of the earth's axis.

Fourth, the chore of resetting clocks is ridiculous. It's a completely unnecessary complication. Particularly this year, when DST lasted an extra week. Thanks, programmers everywhere, for making electronics like my car smart enough to change time on its own. Too bad your program was written before the DST date adjustment. And there's always the clock in your house or on your wrist that you forget, and you come across it four weeks later, have a fleeting moment of panic that you're late, only to have Father Time shout "psych!" People all across the country wake up an hour late or early, depending on the season, which does not foster good will towards DST, trust me.

I grew up in Indiana, one of the last states to adopt DST (RIP 2006, whyWhyWHY?). We never changed our clocks, ever, so it was a quaintly foreign concept to me. Our TV programs would shift by an hour, and times were listed as "700p, 800p in Michigan" - or maybe 800, 700 in MI. I don't remember, and don't feel like doing the math right now. My point is that I never had to reset a clock until I moved to CA, at age 24. Fall back, spring ahead, indeed. What the heck does that mean to a DST neophyte? Do we win an hour of sleep or lose it? I'll tell you what I've lost - time thinking about how superfluous it all is. When you really think about it, time - as it's been standardized in recent centuries, thank you railroads - is a largely artificial human construct. And here we persist in making time even more arbitrary by shifting things an hour for half the year because we can't leave well enough alone.

Let's get rid of DST and just keep our clocks the way they are next fall.




Footnote: Speaking of Indiana/Michigan, the area is called Michiana - no lie. But that sounds completely natural to my ears. On the opposite end of the state is Kentuckiana, which never fails to elicit a snicker from me. Do other states do this? Is the Florida-Georgia border called "Florgia"? (let's hope not) Was there a proposal for Indiucky (which may only be marginally sillier than Kentuckiana)? Wyodaho? There's the ArkLaTex and DelMarVa, which sound a lot sexier than they look. I saw a street sign in Tampa recently - Floribraska Street. Really? People, I can guarantee you that Florida and Nebraska do not share a common border. Pick one or the other - you cannot have both in this case. I won't have it.

Addendum to Footnote: Dang - I hate when I write something and then I find out later that it's already been done. Seriously, I've had that bit about Florgia written for months.

Word Up

I love words. Always have. Call me a nerd, but I subscribe to dictionary.com's word-of-the-day e-mails and now OED's word-of-the-day, primarily for the etymologies.

Anyhow, here are lists of words that I've collected for a variety of reasons. Some of my favorite words I like for their meanings, others I like for their sound.

My Favorite Words

defenestration
December
clandestine
fortuitous
pomegranate
nefarious
preclude
reticent
transcendent
ephemeral
turpentine
schadenfreude
surreptitious
apocryphal
inclement
complacency
prurient
interstitial

My Favorite Phrases

"phoning it in"
"sabre-rattling"
"neither confirm nor deny"
"attendant risks"

Inherently Funny Words

banana (I can't stop typing it once I start)
aardvark
pants
pickle
abalone
gubernatorial