Welcome to Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of the Haddock Clan, the creation of Belgian cartoonist Hergé.
Some Manor-keeping notes:
Navigation is on the right, with an explanation of the blog's fictional basis. HINT: Please read the column labelled "ABOUT THIS BLOG." Enjoy the most recent posts or browse posts by posting date in the Archives. Search the blog for scintillating, obscure topics.
Enjoy your stay! There are some fuzzy slippers over there somewhere, too.
I promised poetry but did not deliver. You don't understand the trepidation of letting this tender, soft-hearted part of myself be open to ridicule, taunting, and satire! How the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff thrills at responding to my meekest requests with muttered, "Yeah? Why don't you go write a poem about it?"
Even Fred can get nasty. I showed him one of my best works and he said, "This is why you couldn't help weed the miniature Wimbledon courts? This is what kept you from leading group therapy for the Crackhead Carnies holed up in the barn? THIS is why you couldn't be bothered to cook for my Wednesday night dinner with the Militant Existentialist Lesbian Feminists? And it doesn't even make sense!"
The Castafiore has been my only support. "Ze poésie, cara mia, it is an art and for ze art, we give our all, we give tout! We give ze everything! Are you going to wear ze rouge pencil skirt and ze frilly white blouse of laces cut down to ze navel of you to ze très extraordinaire mass ce soir? But then, it is ze soir when ze muse appears, no, so I, la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, can wear ze clothings before ze good Abbot Truffatore, n'est-ce pas? We will pray for ze poésie, for ze breast titty of ze muse to land in your head..."
Abbot Truffatore and Bianca have been meeting for private prayer and, judging from his sweaty red face and mismatched buttons when he leaves, heavy monk boots in hand, some athletic catechism review. Tonight, he is leading a special mass for the Saint Day of Gemma Galgani, on whom he's had a crush for the last thirty years, and Bianca has become a green-eyed and now red pencil skirted demon with a deep v-neck lacy frill top. She may not break out in stigmata every Thursday, but everything else about my girl is so totally venerable and serene.
St. Gemma Galgani
I shall take a page from good Gemma Galgani's book and suffer the jealousies and pettiness thrown at me over my blessed poetry and suffer these "heartaches in reparation, remembering that Our Lord Himself had been misunderstood and ridiculed."
Ahem. Cough. My first selection is a cute little ditty, meant to liven up the day and inspire all with my usual inimitable hope and optimism. Do not be alarmed if you are so moved as to be unable to speak after the first dozen readings or so. This is a perfectly natural response to poetry of this caliber. Like good Saint Gemma Galgani, you may experience ecstacies and raptures, but be calm. It passes.
Final Cut
there is sand between my eye and lid from crying over nothing, one more dead kid, pain here, pain there, poor me, while she becomes green algae.
my legs that just ought to go, says the do-it-yourself amputation pro, prod, poke, ponder: it provokes familiar argument, the age old problem, that old saw.
both legs are off, okay and fine, and then one arm, a kinder line, but there's no one for the coup de grâce, no one to take the last arm off.
I received this comment after my last scintillating post of a copy of one of those LOLcat thingies that cat fanatics laugh at every day:
T said...
Been a week now, that's not like you. I hope you are ok.
TAM
Well, okay, damn it, TAM, if you're gonna get all pushy and rude about it, and can't get by for a week on a hard-fought, drainingly intellectual (and creative!) cat cartoon, well, then, geez! I guess I'd better write something.
You want the truth or the truth?
I mean, I could say it's all been due to March Madness and the fact that my Gothic Wonderland DukieDom was demolished in the Elite Eight, and I'm in mourning. La Bonne et Belle Bianca ripped off all her clothes -- which took a while -- who knew the secret of her amazing assortment of undergarments, that we will blithely name "shapewear"? We caught her, reluctantly, before she made it over the drawbridge, but Fred is still putting drops in his eyes.
Speaking of Fred, he has the world's weirdest ear infection going. In both ears, though he only perceives it in one. Talking to him is the tops of hoots: he offers you one side of his head, then the other, then proceeds to slowly rotate back and forth, listening for the correct pitch of your blip on his radar. He has no pain, has had no fever or dizziness, and likely would not have noticed a thing were it not for the echos and distortion to his hearing. But get this! He went to the doctor, TWICE. Of course, TWICE, he saw, not the doctor, but the PA, who was rude enough to check his prostate, as well. The ear bone is connected to the prostate bone -- new-fangled medicine. So I've been thankful to the ear issue as it lead to a physical and the sudden appearance of a salad with his every meal -- we both skip breakfast, as I can't do salad for breakfast. Fruit salad, yes -- staying ahead of TAM, the smarty-panted.
Which leads, quite naturally, to a discussion of why we skip breakfast. Neither of us are able to sleep. For a few nights, it was the height of ridicule, both of us in bed, awake for worry about the other. That accomplished nothing but resentment in the blaring, glaring light of day. I've gone over to the dark side, to Fred's "schedule." I sleep when I can, and, basically, that means either whole days at a stretch, or not at all.
Many nights of biting through my lower lip, a worried feline Dobby gently putting his paw on my former shoulder, trying in his elven way to bewitch me into sleep, so that he can then curl up on my head, tail forming an Amish beard under my chin.
I have been writing, but mostly, sorry, poetry. And sorry poetry it is, too!
I even hosted a poetry contest which I then ruined by being myself. My contestants, having been "judged" by unnecessarily long and pretentious comments, are almost universally and uniformly pissed off. Add to that the warm-hearted comments I keep getting after I win any sort of "prize" or recognition, and I feel a bit like a motherless child. They keep saying, "There is no audience for you here."
Well, the motherless child reference is just overwhelmingly rich, as my Dearest of Readers already know,. and though Freud and Jung both suck, they'd easily earn their weight in cocaine and great mandalas after just 30 seconds of my whine. "She's mourning ze mama," they'd say. Well, she ain't dead yet, my Monty Python side mutters. I feel no remorse for calling in the troops of Adult Protective Services and only hope that they are true to their word -- which would be a first among the human species I've encountered in the last few weeks or so. I lay in my bed, moaning, finding no position free of pain, and am psychically connected to her decrepit frame and mind, so many hundreds of miles away, and sometimes I do not reach for my pain medications out of a demented certainty that her pain is untreated, her confusion enhanced by the hurt.
They are not cruel people, her children, and caring for her can be no easy task. But it's one that needs doing, and must be done well.
I also hope they've not robbed her blind. I also hope that... well, you know what one hopes.
My blood work shows something that looks like hemolytic anemia, so I'm not bleeding out, though I am still bleeding. Sumpthing, sumpthing to do with bone marrow that would like a vacation, please. Probably from the onslaught of five years of heavy-duty antibiotics. No bitterness here, no ma'am, no sir! The worst part is that exertion, sometimes in the form of three to ten steps, can bring on a dip into cold-lipped darkness. So I use a trick that I knew would one day come in handy.
Many, many years ago, in the days of living with the Self-Proclaimed Greatest of American Authors (was I ever that stupid? Yes, I was! And, oddly, regret it less and less. Honor the ways in which you have survived, no matter how self-demeaning and weird!) -- Anywho, back to my fairy tale:
Many, many years ago, in the days of living with the Self-Proclaimed Greatest of American Authors, he and I spent an entertaining couple of summer months as Drum and Bugle Corps groupies for the Santa Clara Vanguard, a six-time Drum Corps International Champion. Self-Proclaimed Greatest had once been the freaking drum major for UCLA, one of those odd quirks that make up attractions, as I would often ask for some strange bedroom reinactments.
His younger brother played horn, blew trumpet, for The Vanguard, and a more dedicated horn blower there has never been. "Squealing" was the height of heights for these brothers. Squealing consisted of Baby Brother standing at the end of his bed, which, thank the gods, had a low footboard, his back to it. Throw pillows were scattered about his feet, "just in case." To squeal is not just to blow for all you are worth, for the entirety -- and then more -- of your lung capacity. No, you show control as well, and as you wail, your back naturally arches, the horn turns heavenward, and you traverse the tones, you trip the light...
Well, yeah, you actually do trip the light. You do it, or they did, to the point of passing out. Done correctly, this musical exercise leaves you plopped on the end of the bed, drooling, and much as Heston dared, still gripping the horn which might have to be pried from a dead, cold hand.
Then, rapidly coming to, you high five your sibling and yell out things like "the coolest" or "awesome blow, dude."
So as I maneuver around the bedroom, not seeing the point of the transfer to wheelchair and its so forths and so ons, when all I want is something out of the closest of the twelve walk-in closets of our well-appointed digs here in The Manor, I sidle around the contours of the bed, looking for all the world like Eliot's crab, ragged and scuttling. It's as close to a trumpet squeal as I'm gonna get, and twice has actually worked as planned. Things began to go cold and dark, and all I needed to do was go backward. Once, actually, it probably even looked like a casual, planned sit. Except for the ensuing collapse of the upper body onto the mattress. Other times, I've parked the wretched chair in the mid-space of my route, and usually made it to the seat in time. A few times, I've hit the wall, instead, which has a subtle sobering effect, and causes a bit of internal panic, but, as yet, no need for repainting.
Unfortunately, nonsense such as this has lead to more medical appointments, something I had wanted to swear off, as this year is dedicated to staying away from the beastly medic types, unless there is a fire to be put out. I suppose go-to-guy sees this as a stray spark in a virgin forest afflicted by dangerous drought, an over eager aridity. I could burn the world down.
So tomorrow, and then again on Thursday, we waste our days with figuring all this out and spraying down the old trees, wetting the underbrush, digging fire lines, breaks to the spread of my ember's arson.
In short, I'm tired. One trip last week, to sweet Justine, the world's best vampire, wore me out. Writing bad poetry, insulting contestants who willingly entered into a sacred agreement with me to honor their work, trying to keep the Domestic Staff from going wild with equanox joy, and keeping the naked Bianca contained on this side of the moat, all of it has taken a ridiculous toll. The Mother-Unit's troubles, Fred's poor muddled ears, and the fact that I've demanded coffee in bed the past four days -- all this makes me blue.
Three fingernails are trying to come off and I'm too much of a baby to yank 'em. My song of experience? There was a fourth, and I yanked it. A terrible, sad new use for the profundity of "Never again!"
Oh, I forgot one of my better excuses! My eyes. I'm not blind, I just can't see. I've even gone faithful to the regimen of glaucoma drops but isn't it the nature of need-driven faith to just gnaw your ass off?
We'll call this a Post of Obligation and hope that you all can find enough in the archives to stay amused. There's no cure yet for CRPS, or I'd have told you, and the gated community of biofilm osteomyelitis infection has only added a chain link lock to the wrought iron enclosures. Jose Ochoa is still a turd, as is Scott Reuben, and Lindsey Baum is still gone.
I don't know that I've ever tried to write with such a headache before. This may prove interesting. It's not awful, just awfully concentrated behind my left eye, so I'm squinting, and being already afflicted with interesting vision -- well, writing just got more interesting! [Note to self: Spare your readers. Do NOT revise post by substituting accurate adjectives for "interesting." Sometimes "vague," like "fun," is good.]
My mother and I share a birthday, and I am glad to say that we did it again, day before yesterday. Especially glad am I because she was, and may still be, in her small town ICU. I spoke with her, not because I dutifully or joyfully hit ICU speed-dial so that we could gush about getting older together, right on cue, no. Rather, my bone-weary half-sister Lale, a true force of nature, pulled one of those tricks.
You know what I'm talking about. I mean, how many years did you fall for the old "pull my finger" gag? Admittedly, I am probably the world's most gullible person, still -- I should have had my guard up. But Lale feels strongly that she knows what is right and then, well, there is that "force of nature" thing going on.
So I'm semi-awake and chatting with her, getting the update on the Mother-Unit's health when Lale says, in one breath, words-in-a-taut-string: "Ask her yourself, here she is..." and BAM! There she is, mother of moi, me, her 29th birthday present, languishing on the other end of what has to be one of those genius phones.
My phone? Bottom of the bottom of the barrel. I have to push certain plastic parts in different directions to be able to half-hear the person or (most often) the automated bill collector on the other end.
But we had a nice chat, we did. She's cogent -- Lale told me that she remembered her husband was dead (it's been a few years) after only one reminder -- and that's an accomplishment for any hospitalized person these days, much less an elderly woman in an intensive care unit. I should remember to tell her, and Lale, that I promptly lose my mind whenever the elevator doors even open onto a critical care unit. I have what is known as "ICU psychosis," engendered, I'm told, by the constant noise and light, drugs, etc. But I know the underlying truth: It's just like giving a Permanent Hall Pass to my natural craziness. I see and hear things, experience the darnedest adventures -- last time, I spent an entire day attempting to help three Archangels successfully blow my head off with legally obtained and properly permitted shotguns. They were lousy shots. Apparently, I kept taking one arm to use for pointing to my big bedhead head, which I kept raising off the pillow -- trying to make the target easier to hit. The good thing is that my nurses and doctors, despite repeated interrogations ["What the hell are you trying to do?"], never did understand that I was attempting to assist in my own assassination by God's Blessèd Assassins. Good thing, too, that I never pointed them out -- all three Archangels were slumped in ratty old outdoor aluminum-framed chairs -- the old-fashioned woven plastic kind, plaid. One of them being terribly overweight, his butt was hanging a bare half-inch from the ICU floor. Off to the side was an equally old tiny television set, perched on a TV dinner tray table, rabbit ears accented with twists of foil. The three holy ones would watch a few minutes of infomercials, then load up and fire off shots at my head, then curse when their projectiles just busted out another window, or ripped through a beeping IVAC pump.
Other ICU psychosis experiences? Most involved schemes of escaping the unit. I once even called my Brother-Unit Grader Boob, thanking him profusely for having landed a helicopter on the hospital roof, then belaying down with a team of White Hat Black Ops to rescue me from my false imprisonment beneath a respirator. It still astonishes me that anyone gave me a phone to make the call. Apparently -- they had just extubated me -- my babbling about my brother was construed as a need to call and express my love for him, and my gratitude for having survived near death. Instead, I regaled him with praise, saying "I didn't even know you knew how to fly a helicopter!"
So my mother did great -- she was, in fact, sitting there eating a slice of birthday cake that the food service folk had specially prepared for her. If they can stabilize her blood pressure, I think she's headed home soon.
But you gotta be on your toes around that Lale girl... She thinks my phone phobia is a made-up thing, something I invented to avoid talking to that wing of my Fucked-Up Family. But no, it's real as can be. I dislike phones, always have. But that dislike has blossomed into what I think is a real technical phobia -- I mean, I probably need psychiatric treatment to get over it. It's not so bad when there is business to conduct. I could, at this point, yell at Walmart pharmacists all the livelong day. But chat with a person about... life... and "stuff"? God help me, I start hoping to see my slouching, crabby Archangels taking aim.
No offense to TW, whom I've only spoken with a couple of times, and each time hung up with a smile from ear-to-ear, but the best phone person, for me, is the oft-mentioned Grader Boob. I think because we both profess to be teachers and promptly enter the Twilight Zone of Student Stories. It takes about 30 seconds for the both of us to be reduced to tears from laughter. Both TW and Grader Boob, however, can also piss moi off to no end with what must be a genetic tendency to refuse to directly answer Important Questions. You know, of the "How Are You, **Really**?" sort. These tend to be asked after I've been informed that they've taken dives down stairwells or slipped on ice and broken their beloved shoulders, or lost a long loved love. Then, I guess I become, once again, that annoying chubby little sister who just wouldn't get it, anyway.
Harrumph.
So, yeah, I had a birthday! It was great. Coffee in bed, and not just once, but twice. Music of all sorts. And a card from the ambulance-chaser lawyer who got me a check for $1,000 15 years ago after I was injured in a car accident. He always encloses a very useful calendar, too, that we promptly affix to the fridge.
For my birthday repast, I insisted on Indian take-out. My beloved favorite restaurant had moved to a location so far away I had not the heart to make Fred and Ruby drive the distance, so intense research turned up a very funky nearby place that provided us with beaucoup, beaucoup delicious fare.
Normally, I ask for cherry pie in lieu of birthday cake. The restaurant menu, however, lured me toward one of their two desserts, a sort of pudding that was pure heaven, while Fred went into ecstacy with pistachio ice cream.
Then we lay in bed and moaned.
I had hoped to also watch a movie, but alas, Xfinity On Demand tricked me, and the free flicks I had picked out turned out not to be so free. Yes, I do refuse to pay... even on my birthday. I think that, too, is genetic.
But I had fun watching "Chopped" with Fred. He's a hoot. And a very good cook. Bless his bones forever, though, he got upset over an idea I've long been considering. I thought it would be great fun for all the people who do the cooking for Fred's Wednesday Night Suppers (you know, with the Militant Lesbian Existentialist Feminists) to have a "Chopped" competition. We could choose someone to put together "mystery baskets" of odd ingredients and see what resulted. But sweet Fred actually got teary-eyed over the potential hurt involved in "competition." My heart swells, right now, just remembering: "I don't like competitions. People get hurt."
Okay, honestly?
I felt like saying, "Oh, come on, we're talking more like a theme party than a serious competition... and the Mystery Baskets can be engineered as more 'easy as pie' than real gourmet challenges!"
But then I saw that he actually had tears in his eyes. No shit.
Fred's waters run deep.
I had forgotten that he won't even play board games, or cards. That he eschews most sporting events due to their tendency to insist on scoring, and winners, and losers.
I love Fred. What he stands for. Still... c'mon. Anyone wanna do a Chopped Challenge with me?
So... that was my birthday. It was fun, my mother didn't die, the food was fantastic, and the company, perfect. La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, however, ate THREE entrée-sized servings of saag paneer and was running back-and-forth most of the night, so I ended up awake the whole night-after-the-birthday.
Which takes this narrative quite easily into yesterday, when I was exhausted and highly feverish, rather peevish, and in a shitload of pain. Some people with chronic pain believe that if you have a good day, the following few days will be spent "paying the piper."
I am one of them!
I am still paying that talented piper today, but at least my mood is good, Fred seems to have recovered from the suggestion of the cooking contest, and Bianca is no longer racing for the loo, screaming insults against the Indian sub-continent. [Oh, she and Sven are on the outs. Kind of a good thing, really, because we'd have had to order four times as much food. I think they'll get back together. I don't believe in "soul mates" nonsense, but those two are cut from the same cloth. Now, Cabana Boy has been nosing around, and that may spice things up a bit -- but, God, I hope not. It may well be that the Adult Faction of Marlinspike Hall is ready for an extended period of Bland Times.]
The Walmart Wars continue, but now are in the hands of three investigatory bodies -- one regional Board of Pharmacy, the Tête de Hergé Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General's Office of Investigations... and my insurance company.
But there's always a fuck-up, correct? I emailed my Go-To-Guy and his Super Nurse on the advice of the insurance company, asking that they call the company directly to get the prior authorization thang taken care of, and submitting directly to them a new prescription.
Oh, dear Lord. Wham, bam, I got three responses within an hour from my intrepid medical team. Their reaction was pure outrage that Walmart had claimed their office had failed to respond to two requests for prior-authorization schtuff, and they were going to, by Jove, set those people straight.
I felt my brain explode a little. I did not respond, for two reasons. One, it was then late Friday afternoon, and nothing goes right in the "business" world on late Friday afternoons. Two, explaining in detail the steps I had already taken to exact justice for us all would only have made the water so very, very muddy. There is also a three. Three, my dear doc is a devout person, and I hate to put something annoying on his mind at the approach of Sabbath.
But please, please, hope along with me that they did NOT call this particular Walmart Pharmacy, now under investigation, and try to submit ANOTHER Rx.
In other news: I was thrilled at Panetta's announcement of the reversal of policy regarding women in combat. Somehow, I kind of doubt that you know why I was thrilled. But in proof certain that Fred and I are, like Sven and The Castafiore, cut from the same cloth, we shared the rationale of gladness. If Hawks, usually of the TeaBagger sort, truly are outraged at the thought of Cindy Lou in a body bag, maybe they will temper their Hawkishness. Maybe, probably at a subconscious level, they will avoid armed conflict and war, the better to avoid Cindy Lou sloshing around in black plastic and a pine coffin.
Yes, we all know women have been involved in "front line" combat for a long while now, particularly since the "front line" so rarely exists any longer. Cindy Lou driving a Maintenance Vehicle in support of a fighting outfit is at much on the "front line" as the men she is following. And, as Rep. Tammy Duckworth hilariously pointed out, she did not lose her legs in "a bar fight."
There is another side to me (at least one other!), though, that also concurs with Duckworth and other career military women -- their career advancement has been diverted and denied because of a failure to recognize their actual battle experience, or through denying them that "opportunity." Honestly, we are talking less about hand-to-hand, muzzle-to-muzzle nonsense than we are more strategic jobs. And man, do I wish the machomacho men spewing idiocies would calm down and read the provision more closely -- the physical requirements for any combat positions are not going to be changed. Anorexic and weak-kneed Cindy Lous are not going to attempt lugging Big Bad Linebacker Lou to safety after he's been hit by enemy fire.
I'd have to go check my facts and I don't feel like it at the moment (ahh, the integrity of my blogging), but I believe the Israelis chose to remove women from front line positions after a study revealed that male soldiers' attention became all addlepated when faced with decisions such as choosing which fallen soldier to attend to first, as a medic, when one was a woman, and the other a man. Yeah, well. There are many fogs to war.
What else? Oh, I will miss Tom Harkin. He did good work.
Oh, and I like the bangs.
I disagree with the ruling about Presidential appointments during congressional recesses. Did I hear it would be appealed to the good brothers and sisters of the Supreme Court?
I thought Hillary was masterful in her hearings. I still am using my "Hillary for President" water bottle but doubt it will still be in use by 2016. I also found think we will never know the truth of what happened that day in Benghazi, not if Hillary can help it.
The thought of the many Syrian refugees makes me want to cry, a not very useful response. And my brain is befuddled by Egypt.
I tepidly applaud Iraq's parliament in trying to prevent Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki from another term.
Okay, the truth is... I am trying to fake myself out. Do a sleight of hand against my own hands. What is really weighing on my mind... drones. Drones and Obama's hit list. I have a hit list of my own. It started as a joke. Then one day, I thought about it. Given the chance, the right circumstance, yes, I would pull the trigger to take out one of those who made my list. And I'd accept the consequences, which I imagine would occur faster than I could blink. I like, too, the idea of taking someone out without the loss of so many military pawns, foot-soldiers, kids, fighting under some ridiculous cover story. And "collateral damage" makes me weep and want to hide for shame.
Some folks need killing in the worst way.
All right, yes. I also have the vague suspicion of a suggestion of a soupçon that killing of any sort is wrong. That killing without the courtesy of a look-in-the-eye is cowardly. (Oh, scratch that last sentence. I don't believe that. I made it up. I lied.)
These are the types of issues that send me back to White's Book of Merlyn.
There are so many things about which we all think, about which we do not speak.
An amazing segue, on par, even with "anyway..."!
Cat stories, that's what we need! Here is an update and a FAIL cat video, starring The One, The Only BUDDY -- all in an effort to save this headache of a blog post!
Okay, whom shall we update first. Marmy FluffyButt? Yes. Why not? She is beginning to warm up to me again, although at the rate she's warming, I'll be stiff and cold by the time this feline decides I'm worth giving another chance. Ever since I was put in charge of treating her chronically infected and leaky eyeball, she has cast me into the outer reaches of Hell. And I don't think Marmy's Hell is the more accessible "circle" or ring. She spurns Dante. "Nine circles of suffering? For having put stinging goop into mein eyeball? The outer atomic layer of the ninth circle does not approach sufficiency of suffering, although the theme is correct, since daring to touch mein eyeball does line up well with Judecca, the hooman Alighieri's spot for flaming Iscariots..." When I heard her say *that*, well, shivers went up my spine. Her geometrical preference is less for spheres and more for one e-t-e-r-n-a-l line.
But she remains sweet, in spite of the damning obsession 'n all. Especially after the sun goes down, at which time she has had a good 12-hour nap, and greets her humans as if they were long lost pals. She will let me rub her beautiful head, scratch her silky chin, and lightly pull on her magnificent poofy tail. She thinks Fred, Bianca, Sven, the Cabana Boy, and all of the Manor Domestic Staff are the greatest. Whether she will ever cuddle next to moi again is doubtful. {sniff}
Dobby! He continues to bring a smile to the face of all he meets and greets. If he failes to meet and greet you, it is because, being a very small animal, he is frightened and is hiding in my closet, where stress is making him shed profusely on all of my clean clothes.
We've always been able to hear The Dobster approach, even from as far away as the Over-Sized Pink Opalescent Gala Ballroom. His toenails made a pleasant tap-tap-tap and he could never figure out his continual failure in sneakiness. Suddenly, one day last week, I watched him pass by me and realized that I heard... nothing. Thinking that the Good Lord had decided I needed deafness added to the Affliction List, I consulted with Fred (whom I could hear, O Hosanna!) and he could no longer hear the tap-tap-tap of Dobby, either.
Putting the little guy under surveillance, it turned out that he is assiduously pulling off the ends of his not so talon-like talons.
All the better to tippy-toe behind his frequent attacker, the huge Buddy Boy, and enjoy the thrills of jumping on his head for a change. Last night, I even saw him tear by the overgrown kitten, who, hearing not a sound, never even knew he'd been bested.
Dobby continues his late night howling, and we've narrowed the causes down to two: a continual mourning for our beloved Sammy and/or an annoying demand that we break out the laser dot toy.
Both are a bit distressing. It's time for him to simply think fondly on Sweet Sammy, and when we do break out the laser dot toy, he no longer wishes to chase it, but settles down in an old-fart-in-a-raggedy-barcalounger pose so as to better enjoy the light show. He leaves the chasing to Buddy, who is thrilled to do it and chases with abandon, albeit also with some confusion, and to Marmy, who has but one plan of attack -- to eat that damned red dot. She gulps enough air in the chase to cause hours of entertaining burping.
As for updating Buddy's growing fan base on the Maine Coon's progress? Lordy, lordy. EVERYTHING is a game. Therefore, we are often thankful to have undertaken the "soft paw" training when he was truly a baby. Otherwise, we'd have even deeper and many more scratches from all the "play."
It turns out he suffers a bit from separation anxiety. Because of his constant desire to "play," and this desire's inappropriateness around all the Haddock antique treasure in the Manor, he is restricted to our Private Quarters. Most of the time, it is Fred who takes off in Ruby, and since I'm typically ensconced in bed, he's okay -- though he does visibly perk up upon Fred's return. But should the both of us leave for a bit, we return to find the neediest cat west of the Lone Alp. It is very sweet but makes me sad that he is upset, ever. He's such a happy guy, you see.
His latest Life Adventure is, unfortunately, his first ailment. Thankfully, it is but a runny and irritated eye. I am guessing that the newly self-declawed Dobby may have whacked him in the face, though you can never rule out lightening-fast Marmy FluffyButt. In any event, Fred is gently putting medication in his eye -- and Buddy seems cognizant of this as help and not attack. As we say so often around here, and to almost anyone, cat or human: "What a good boy!"
So, let me close this potpourri of a post with a FAIL video of Buddy the Outrageously Large Kitten, and his refusal to stuff himself in a box. As the YouTube title explains, "Buddy is no Maru."
There is so much to catch you up on on life around The Manor.
This socialist no longer owns any GOOG, having managed to dump it a few minutes after trading resumed shortly after 3:20 PM on that fateful day when the firm's publisher "somehow" released earnings data during the day trading period, versus the usual after-market magic time of 4:30. I made it out at $700, which stemmed the losses a bit, but did nothing to refresh my sour breath. I found the whole process unfair -- beginning with GOOG's backstabbing report itself, then the cessation of trading (with nary a hint to yer average bear as to when the halt would be lifted), and even including mine own investment company requiring that I give 'em a call at that calm, carefree time to garner their "permission" to trade after hours, despite having done it a good half-dozen times before. Believe it or not, I terminated that phone call at 3:17 and only by the happest of haphazards learned that I had a whole three minutes to figure stop losses and whether Bushmills or a box of Cabernet was more appropriate to the fleeting moment.
I plugged in $700 and went with Bushmills.
Since then, I decided to put my money where my mouth is -- oh, the terrible jokes aching to be told! -- and no, I won't yet divulge what lucky sector now bulges with my invested wealth. All I know for sure is that Fred better appreciate the nasty sweat that went into leaving him some sort of inheritance.
What else?
Oh, we lost an entire booking of retreatants who turned left instead of right and ended up in Canada instead of Tête de Hergé. It's not the first time we have lost 3-day weekend guests in search of elusive repose. The Haddock parent company even held a troubleshooting skype session that included the top brothers and Abbot Truffatore, the crack-addicted organic pig farmer across the road, plus the hippies down the road (whose cows are giving sweet frothy warm milk once again, thanks to intervention by Local Antiquated and Beloved Authoritarian, Tante Louise, and also thanks to the spirit behind Robert Frost's Mending Wall, a spirit brought to tangible fruition by The Manor Domestic Staff and The Cistercian's 2012 Probies, thereby cutting off the multi-chemical piggy runoff that had been overstimulating the mellow moo cows). Um... where was I? Ah! Yes! The frustration of losing money and visitors due to a basic ignorance of world geography.
Fred and I joined with the majority to suggest that a link to Google Maps be included in the multimedia materials sent in advance to our over-the-sea or across-the-continent pilgrims. (If that first link to Google Maps doesn't help you -- you poor map-challenged you, you -- then try THIS ONE, but remember that the results must be rotated NNE by 17 degrees °F to adjust for satellite mendacity.)
Ergo, we hope to no longer be confused with our brethren and sistren Canadians, Français, or Old Earth Saxons. And we fervently pray for an improvement in the public and parochial school systems of The World, else our revenue is gonna continue to drop off, precipitously, with each graduating, mortarboard-tossing class.
We never let our painstaking preparations for guests go to waste, however. The Abbott continues to flee to Marlinspike Hall on occasional weekends, especially those dedicated to the tuning of the monastery bells, organs, and guitars -- even on occasional weekdays, when there is the threat of a papal bull. We also give Ease-Them-Into-Rehab Upgrades to the more haughty circus and freak show addicts before ceremoniously removing them to the barn catty-cornered to the Computer Turret, now home to the Haddock Family Enterprises Addiction Center -- an entity briefly explained in a previous post, "Passing the Duck Test."
If I were allowed to divulge top secret information, I'd be able to suggest that The Captain himself, plus whomever is traveling with him in the pink submarine fleet -- often the Miniature Badminton Team -- are parties whose unexpectedness no longer causes a commotion. In these uncertain times, who doesn't want to go home now and then?
I am managing to manage things pretty well, despite seeing the world as a visual echo (my terminology for having not quite double vision) and clinging to my trundle bed in an effort to hide out beneath the "real" feather mattress (a humility-inducing thing, as sometimes it is the head that will not quite disappear, sometimes the derrière). The medicos and I had harbored concern about my liver as I tried out three new medications, but surprise! It turned out to be my kidneys that are registering their unhappiness. Whatever -- I am coming off one of the drugs, anyway, the one that enabled not just the visual echo but the mental one, and my hope is that this will calm those spongy filters down. I've dabbled in kidney failure before, due to lupus, and recovered nicely, and so fully expect to do the same now. Why not, eh?
I've gone 24 hours without spasms, except for the two hours with. Monday through Thursday were Hell on Earth, spent writhing and screaming. I'm sure that I came close to death by overdose or mixing-oopsies as I was so frequently driven to take enough of anything to lose my consciousness. You can call me "stupid," you can call me "unenlightened," you can also go straight to "The Dickens" -- directions available on Google Maps.
I'm gonna blame my blogging sloth on kidney failure -- maybe folks will fall for that, as they don't seem to have a heck of a lot of sympathy for the CRPS sanity-shattering pain I live with, or the pus-filled mush that are my bones. Whaddaya think? Oh, my kidneys are limping along, I'm sooooo tired, just cannot write.
Heh heh. Purple prose!
"It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity. So long as originality and lexical precision prevail, the sentient writer has a right to immerse himself or herself in phenomena and come up with as personal a version as can be. A writer who can't do purple is missing a trick. A writer who does purple all the time ought to have more tricks." (Paul West, "In Defense of Purple Prose." The New York Times, Dec. 15, 1985)
For those of you who have inquired about Fred, Bianca (and, therefore, Sven)?
Fred is a bit tired, as he is leading a tone deaf group of militant lesbian existential feminists in the formation of a ukulele band. I could share many a humorous anecdote with you, but will limit myself to just one. The woman whose illuminating idea this was cannot comprehend how to "strum." They spend an inordinate amount of time discussing what "strum" means, how "strumming" might be achieved, as well as using the questionable guidance of a piano with metronome. My contribution to the conundrum has been to shout, midst writhe and vulgar vocalization, "relax, relax, just tell her to relax her wrist." But no one listens to me.
Sven is somewhat stymied, and yes, that is a sight, a stymied Sven! College basketball utterly transforms our
Castafiore, an unrepentant Duke fan, and Sven is just... lost.
I guess that pretty much sums up this post -- the theme of Lost. And, sadly, I must sign off, as a large Maine Coon is amorously eyeing my lap, and making lovey-dovey eyes that are simply irresistible. Yes, I'm off to nuggle with Buddy, the Freakishly Large Kitten.
I apologize if my blog has become a subspecies of MSNBC, a sad-sack simulacrum of policy wonkiness, a frizzy and frazzled, very fuzzy firewall of feminism, a wailing wall of brother worship, and a kibble-driven, scratch-behind-the-ears yowling orgy of feline fascination.
I'm so sorry if my blog showcases personal fixations on heroic bald scarred kids -- though I draw the line at any mention of "angel wings" -- and on Fred, himself heroic and scarred, but defiant of baldness.
Do I weep with regret for forcing you to read abject descriptions of even the most minute cattle prods of CRPS spasticity? Do I sniff and snuffle for stuffing my pain into your brain? Am I embarrassed by the profusion of photography of purple feet? O! I do, I do, and I am.
Apology, regret, and red-faced shame: Check, check, and check.
Who says I don't get through my daily To-Do Lists in an efficient manner? It's the Etch-A-Sketch version of blogging. Or is it more akin to a good Catholic confession? Shake it up baby now... Hail, Mary!
There. Ah, the bearable lightness of the unburdened soul. Now that the evangelical, conservative wing of My Dearest Readers has been appeased, can I get on with it? Because things are just going to shit around Marlinspike Hall and if I cannot vent with wild abandonment, my head will explode -- and how many times can that happen before it leaves me somewhat neurologically impaired? Okay, so I retired my CRPS quilt. It was a lovely hand-stitched thang, washed twice a week for ten years of so, and therefore softer than any damn baby's butt. However, the loose threads and disintegrating batting became an obsession for my little OCD feline, Dobby the Runt. I've swooped down upon his nibbling little head and extracted a good 10 inches of thread from his tiny esophagus. You'd think that defeating this dangerous compulsion would be a good thing, pure and simple. I found online, and on sale, a twin-sized quilt of all cotton, made in India (where they know what to do with cotton), pretty (but not in an obnoxious quilty way -- it recalls a forest floor more than a hunter's cabin), and soft as all get out, even before it's welcome home dip in the washer. What I really wanted, but could not afford? A quilt made of recycled saris. But I know my place among the 47%... and buying a quilt made of recycled saris might upset some numbnut's understanding of poverty. I know, also, that cats are creatures of habit. I get Dr. Jon's newsletters. I read the best vet columns. We have a boatload of pheromone sprays that purport to "calm your cat" in times of change and stress. You know, like when you retire a ratty quilt and replace it with one that doesn't put your animal in danger of intestinal obstruction.
Her troop being on sabbatical from crazed touring, and having moved from our supply of fine merlot toCaptain Haddock's collection of heavy, square, green bottles of rum, Bianca Castafiore has taken to burrowing her ample derrière into my favorite arm chair, snug in one of the few corners in our round bedroom here in the West Wing private apartments of The Manor. She's fascinated with animal behavior. She also hums and mumbles that damned signature aria of hers, incessantly, loudly --
[Comment n'être pas coquette?
Comment n'être pas coquette?]
Ah! je ris de me voir
si belle en ce miroir,
Ah! je ris de me voir
si belle en ce miroir...
which doesn't help a whole lot. The Castafiore somehow encourages the current rampant insanity that reigns among the Feline Triumvirate regarding this new quilt.
I try to drown Bianca out with combinations of television, radio, and my preferred musical choices, none of which come close to Gounod's Faust. My head aches from the noise.
But worse than the brain pain are the aches, scratches, and bruises I am sustaining from the well-planned blitzkrieg attacks on the new quilt, under which is curled, unfurled, and nuggled -- mine own body. Dobby started it, of course.
He jumped, all lighthearted and Dobby-ish, as only a Dobby can be, onto the bed and then, as if in a Romneyelevator, ascended a good 3 feet in the air. The cat was growling like a dog when he landed back on the bed, glaring at the quilt and giving me the stink eye. Stiff-legged and goose-stepping, he approached the quilt... and sank his needle-like little teeth into a section that happened to be covering my right calf. Then off he ran, to organize the troops. I decided to let the blood and accumulated lymph drain freely, because otherwise I'd have to deal with the half-cackling, half-singing Drunk Diva, and my ability to resist coldcocking her was poor, at best.
Anyway, as I've been stuck in bed, due to a perfect storm of Stuff, neither my quilt nor I look terribly appealing. Bloody, bruised, wrinkled, subjected to round after round of coordinated feline terrorism and operatic bullying, dehydrated, and febrile...
So, Dear Readers, you may tire of my Obama-gushing, my knee-jerk liberalism, and how very much of a sucker I am for all things whimsical, but you must grant me this one outlet for the expression of the unbelievable pain and abuse lurking just beneath the sparkling, reflective surface of the moat encircling Marlinspike Hall.
Truth to Power! Truth to Power!
I have a new quilt:::I am the Voice of the Oppressed. Someone please call Tante Louise (and tell her to have the SWAT team bring coffee).*
*Where is Fred, you ask? Have you ever heard of the hyperfocus aspect of ADHD? Last I heard, he is transcribing Wagner's Ring Cycle for ukulele and guitar. Unless the Valkyries evoke some vague memory of me -- as they did, once upon a time -- Fred will be unavailable for several days. Help!
"Quick, quick," I thought. "Wake the Fredster up, roust Sven and Bianca from their *very* original sleeping configuration (inspired by a shared Olympic synchronized diving obsession) and gather the Feline Remnant! Hurry!"
These are not my average early morning thoughts, which normally range from "Oh, my God, please, Sweet Jesus, O Holy Mary, I cannot do this again." [as in "...live another day."] The coda is normally, "Christ in a freaking hand basket, where are my pills? Where is my grabber? Where are my legs? Why is there air?**"
After invoking this cheery crowd in the Medieval Kitchen, after the 20 minutes required to make each one a coffee with my one drip Melita cone (I broke the café presse last week), such that I was pouring Sven's stein a refill just after serving Marmy Fluffy Butt her first 13-ounce café au lait porcelain bowl.
It didn't matter! Their grumbling mumbling and weird kinesio tape art (another London 2012 fad) and gigglingly timed requests for coffee top-offs could not, would not, defer me from my joyous intention.
Okay, it *was* difficult to ignore La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, who has reached Tagalog in her project of artistic translations of Gounod's L'Air des bijoux ["Ah ! je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir"], such that there was a constant back beat groove of "Ah! kong tumawa upang makita ang aking sarili kaya maganda sa mirror na ito."
She finally paused in her Filipino practice session to request a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey, and everyone else had worn their wit out; My moment had arrived.
"Good morning, my friends! Magandang umaga, ang aking mga kaibigan! Bonjour, mes amis!" I began with good cheer writ large upon my face.
"It happens so rarely," I began...
"Oh, my God. The miniature gay minotaur went after Field Marshall again," moaned Sven. Field Marshall is 6ft 5ins tall and still growing. He's the largest bull in the world and has not shared with us, as yet, his sexual orientation, although he seems to enjoy his stud work well enough.
"Crap-and-a-half," yelled Fred. "The garderobes are blocked, and right on time, it's our busiest day in ManorFest. I HATE medieval architecture... Would it KILL the Haddocks to fork over enough for a dozen port-a-loos? Do you KNOW what it takes to unclog a blocked garderobe conduit, DO YOU?"
"Fred, dah-ling," purred The Castafiore, "All caps, this is tantamount to shouting. And it is too early to shout, yes, my Fred?" She's been baiting him nonstop ever since he put her on the midnight-to-3 AM ManorMaze Rescue Duty
"*Ack*::*Ack*" was Marmy's contribution, while Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten delicately placed his freakishly large paw into my now cold caffeinated beverage, leaving something small but indefinable floating on my careful foam. Dobby assumed the Perfect Cat Position, and would not budge, no matter the rising kitchen tension.
I began to dole out the heart-healthy and delicious sweet chocolate oatmeal with raisins that I had made, with love, and half-and-half.
That got my Big Girl Diva's attention right away. Bianca's is made with golden raisins soaked overnight in rum. Sven prefers a dark bitter unsweetened chocolate and eight individual packets of Domino's Sugar and Stevia blend, and Fred ruins his with Organic Amber Agave Nectar. The cats add a quarter cup bonito flakes and forego chocolate and sweetener. And oatmeal.
With everyone finally happy, and silent, I finally got to my intended objective:
"I just wanted to let you know that I slept well, don't have a fever, and that I haven't had any CRPS dystonia activity in over ten hours. I am not harboring, to my knowledge, even a single rancorous thought, and am filled with love and appreciation for each and every one of you. Marmy left a poop on the stool by the window in the Baroque Music Chamber, when she easily could have targeted the Oriental Rug Room. Dobby threw up on my new sari quilt,but it washed well, and since it's actually made of old saris, who cares that it faded another few shades? Buddy scratched a hole in the bag of liquified rotten turnips, after taking the lid off of our wheelie bin, and really, it had a homey, nutty kind of smell that we might consider for our next batch of Original Manor Potpourri. Fred scratched my right shin with his untrimmed big toe but the resultant ulcer didn't even bleed. Bianca got to Tagalog and my migraine preventive medication worked like a charm.
** "Why is their air?" Cosby's third album, is my first memory of recorded formal comedy and I loved it. Still do. Much in the same way that I loved a catcher's mitt and wanted to use it in lieu of a proper first basewoman's mitt. That may be how I built up my left wrist to such awesome proportions, a useless attribute because, right-handed, it did nothing to help my future forehand, but did inspire acumen as well as necessity for two-handed backhands.
We had quite a start to the day: The café-presse broke, as café-presses will do, right when you want coffee; Dobby discovered non-hairball inspired projectile vomiting, which I joyously cleaned up; I infused twice the amount of an antibiotic and decided to care less; The West of the Lone Alp Tête de Hergé Water Municipal OverLordShip sent us the sweetest municipal worker ever, even if he did keep slapping me on the shoulder [He told me that I "looked fetching today," so he can slap the hell out of that boneless hump as much as he likes, and he also declared the outrageous water readings to be the fault of the electronic doodad and not the result of a gushing leak, or my two diuretics.]; Then the ants attacked, again, this time traversing the back porch, the kitchen window, and proceeding, lemming-like, to drown themselves, en masse, in a sink full of soapy water. This was accomplished in the course of 30 minutes, as I *know* there were no aunts committing suicide a half hour earlier, when I so carefully hooked myself up to the wrong antibiotic -- right next to the Death Pool of soapy Lemon Ajax. Meanwhile, the Special-Oh-So-Special Topiary Team arrived to try and rectify some of the burgeoning Labyrinth issues... and we had to send La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore out to oversee their work, despite her obsessive reworking of the Jewel Song (Gounod's Air des bijoux) into a soulful Lithuanian version. Unfortunately, her tendency to transpose parts with Latvian translation... well, we're not sure her focus is entirely on the correct training of the British Boxwoods.
That can be a real life-saver on mornings such as this 'un.
And as I calmed down, I realized I didn't like today's poem much. So I locked myself in the Computer Turret (one day soon, I'll explain the modifications we've made to accomodate slithering into that space from a power chair, with CRPS-flaring legs, a reconstructed ankle and elbow, a prosthetic hip, one prosthetic shoulder, and one shoulder gone missing... using the rope ladder/bridge strung from our small tower to the barn, now the Rehab Center for Carnies and Wayward Acrobats.)
And I spent several hours with George Oppen, renewed that love. Fred was good enough to ferry up a thermos of excellent coffee mid-afternoon, and the Marlinspike Hall Domestic Staff showed me the kindness of pretending they didn't know it was me up here delivering my usual arias of "damndamndamndamn" when the Screaming Ninny CRPS Dystonia Spasms showed up.
I'm in a sharing mood, as your current thought ("Dear Jeezus, does she have to share everything?") attests.
Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation, my intention to start a sort of poetry war action, and my outright theft of their holdings, here are Sections 1-22 of Oppen's Of Being Numerous:
1
There are things
We live among ‘and to see them
Is to know ourselves’.
Occurrence, a part
Of an infinite series,
The sad marvels;
Of this was told
A tale of our wickedness.
It is not our wickedness.
‘You remember that old town we went to, and we sat in the ruined window, and we tried to imagine that we belonged to those times—It is dead and it is not dead, and you cannot imagine either its life or its death; the earth speaks and the salamander speaks, the Spring comes and only obscures it—’
2
So spoke of the existence of things,
An unmanageable pantheon
Absolute, but they say
Arid.
A city of the corporations
Glassed
In dreams
And images—
And the pure joy
Of the mineral fact
Tho it is impenetrable
As the world, if it is matter,
Is impenetrable.
3
The emotions are engaged
Entering the city
As entering any city.
We are not coeval
With a locality
But we imagine others are,
We encounter them. Actually
A populace flows
Thru the city.
This is a language, therefore, of New York
4
For the people of that flow
Are new, the old
New to age as the young
To youth
And to their dwelling
For which the tarred roofs
And the stoops and doors—
A world of stoops—
Are petty alibi and satirical wit
Will not serve.
5
The great stone
Above the river
In the pylon of the bridge
‘1875’
Frozen in the moonlight
In the frozen air over the footpath, consciousness
Which has nothing to gain, which awaits nothing,
Which loves itself
6
We are pressed, pressed on each other,
We will be told at once
Of anything that happens
And the discovery of fact bursts
In a paroxysm of emotion
Now as always. Crusoe
We say was
‘Rescued’.
So we have chosen.
7
Obsessed, bewildered
By the shipwreck
Of the singular
We have chosen the meaning
Of being numerous.
8
Amor fati
The love of fate
For which the city alone
Is audience
Perhaps blasphemous.
Slowly over islands, destinies
Moving steadily pass
And change
In the thin sky
Over islands
Among days
Having only the force
Of days
Most simple
Most difficult
9
‘Whether, as the intensity of seeing increases, one’s distance from Them, the people, does not also increase’
I know, of course I know, I can enter no other place
Yet I am one of those who from nothing but man’s way of thought and one of his dialects and what has happened to me
Have made poetry
To dream of that beach
For the sake of an instant in the eyes,
The absolute singular
The unearthly bonds
Of the singular
Which is the bright light of shipwreck
10
Or, in that light, New arts! Dithyrambic, audience-as-artists! But I will listen to a man, I will listen to a man, and when I speak I will speak, tho he will fail and I will fail. But I will listen to him speak. The shuffling of a crowd is nothing—well, nothing but the many that we are, but nothing.
Urban art, art of the cities, art of the young in the cities—The isolated man is dead, his world around him exhausted
And he fails! He fails, that meditative man! And indeed they cannot ‘bear’ it.
11
it is that light
Seeps anywhere, a light for the times
In which the buildings
Stand on low ground, their pediments
Just above the harbor
Absolutely immobile,
Hollow, available, you could enter any building,
You could look from any window
One might wave to himself
From the top of the Empire State Building—
Speak
If you can
Speak
Phyllis—not neo-classic,
The girl’s name is Phyllis—
Coming home from her first job
On the bus in the bare civic interior
Among those people, the small doors
Opening on the night at the curb
Her heart, she told me, suddenly tight with happiness—
So small a picture,
A spot of light on the curb, it cannot demean us
I too am in love down there with the streets
And the square slabs of pavement—
To talk of the house and the neighborhood and the docks
And it is not ‘art’
12
‘In these explanations it is presumed that an experiencing subject is one occasion of a sensitive reaction to an actual world.’
the rain falls
that had not been falling
and it is the same world
. . .
They made small objects
Of wood and the bones of fish
And of stone. They talked,
Families talked,
They gathered in council
And spoke, carrying objects.
They were credulous,
Their things shone in the forest.
They were patient
With the world.
This will never return, never,
Unless having reached their limits
They will begin over, that is,
Over and over
13
unable to begin
At the beginning, the fortunate
Find everything already here. They are shoppers,
Choosers, judges; . . . And here the brutal
is without issue, a dead end.
They develop
Argument in order to speak, they become
unreal, unreal, life loses
solidity, loses extent, baseball’s their game
because baseball is not a game
but an argument and difference of opinion
makes the horse races. They are ghosts that endanger
One’s soul. There is change
In an air
That smells stale, they will come to the end
Of an era
First of all peoples
And one may honorably keep
His distance
If he can.
14
I cannot even now
Altogether disengage myself
From those men
With whom I stood in emplacements, in mess tents,
In hospitals and sheds and hid in the gullies
Of blasted roads in a ruined country,
Among them many men
More capable than I—
Muykut and a sergeant
Named Healy,
That lieutenant also—
How forget that? How talk
Distantly of ‘The People’
Who are that force
Within the walls
Of cities
Wherein their cars
Echo like history
Down walled avenues
In which one cannot speak.
15
Chorus (androgynous): ‘Find me
So that I will exist, find my navel
So that it will exist, find my nipples
So that they will exist, find every hair
Of my belly, I am good (or I am bad),
Find me.’
16
‘. . . he who will not work shall not eat,
and only he who was troubled shall find rest,
and only he who descends into the nether world shall rescue his beloved,
and only he who unsheathes his knife shall be given Isaac again. He who will not work shall not eat. . .
but he who will work shall give birth to his own father.’
Source: New Collected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2008)
Ants be damned, water workers be blessed, gratitude for Melita coffee filter cones, and thanks to Fred, but most especially thanks to George Oppen, who nailed poems to wood, and who STAVED, STAVED, STAVED, and singularly rendered it a not-necessarily transitive verb.
Final Cut
