Poetry Girl Sunday #5

A few songs on my playlist come from the "Bridget Jones's Diary" soundtrack I bought after I first saw "Bridget Jones's Diary" shortly after I read "Bridget Jones's Diary" (!!!)

Listening to them has made me realize I hadn't seen it for a long time, so last night Thing Two & I watched "Bridget Jones's Diary".

Thing Two--my almost sixteen year-old headbanger--remember?  The one who listens to his iPod in the car with ear-pieces firmly-in-ears because he can't stand the music I listen to ....in all fairness I'm not keen on whatever-metal-band-with-some-word-referring-to-death-in-its-name that he's listening to either.

So he shocked me by asking if he could watch it with me.  During the movie we both laughed our heads off.  BOTH of us, not just me.  I've always related to Bridget.  What woman doesn't?  But I realized, watching my too-cool-for-school teenager as he laughed at Bridget in her ridiculous moments and quietly felt for her in her painful ones, that we ALL relate to her. 

Doesn't it always come to this?  Don't we all just want to hear that people, in particular that certain "top person" ..............that they like us "just as we are"??  In all our ugliness & shortcomings & failures???  That they see also our beauty & our strengths & our moments of grace?

Van Morrison, Someone Like You

Mark Darcy: I like you, very much.

Bridget: Ah, apart from the smoking and the drinking, the vulgar mother and... ah, the verbal diarrhea.

Mark Darcy: No, I like you very much. Just as you are.

Mark Darcy: I don't think you're an idiot at all. I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mother's pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And, um, you tend to let whatever's in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences... But the thing is, um, what I'm trying to say, very inarticulately, is that, um, in fact, perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are.

We all crave that kind of love.  Don't we?

*****

No Amount Of Money

would I take 

to sell away

the bowl of peach

blossoms, the snowy-

owl feather, the strands of hair you

tucked behind my ear,

the blunt stare

when I looked

which unnerved me but
sent small aches

to my toes and my fingers

and the tops of my ears--

the brush-moment 

your rough hand cupped 

my rib cage,

or the first kiss.

                         --LGW

Cartoon Saturday #3

On my hour-long "over the river and through the woods" drive to my parents house for Thanksgiving, I turned on the radio and happened upon this show, "The Gathering: A Modern Day Thanksgiving Story" hosted by Blair Brown on National Public Radio.  Here's a link if you'd like to check it out:  http://www.peacetalksonline.org/thegathering.htm

I wasn't sure if I was in the mood for a talk show ...I'm more inclined to listen to music in the car ....but on this day, Thanksgiving, the subject matter of the show became more interesting than any music I might listen to.  In a nutshell, The Gathering is about the glaring disconnect between the traditional ideals for which Thanksgiving was established and the way we continue to conduct our society in the face of many of those ideals.  Specifically, how we have treated and continue to treat the Native Americans who are a vital part of the Thanksgiving tapestry not to mention the Humanity tapestry.

The Gathering however is very constructive and very uplifting.  It is an enlightened, civilized endeavor.  I went back to find how Blair Brown closed the show because my mind keeps wanting to remember it:

"As we gather this Thanksgiving with family, neighbors, & friends, we should acknowledge that we've fallen short of the ideals we celebrate of tolerance, diversity, and community." ....

(those three words)(slay me)

 ...."The work of The Gathering should inspire us to recognize, however, that they are the right ideals and that we must work toward their fulfillment.  Not just every fourth Thursday in November, but every day of the year."

*****

Oh yeah, but this is Cartoon Saturday!  So ta-da!  ......I also "happened" across a couple of perfectly perfect cartoons for the occasion!

And same song, different verse ......

Happy Thanksgiving .....where's the cake?

Monica's Burnt Sugar Cake

http://lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com/

“Ok, here's the Thanksgiving menu so far: apple pie, pumpkin pie, blueberry tart, and ice-cream roll. What am I missing?... Cake. We need cake.”  Grace Adler, Will & Grace

Somewhere in blogland, I read that one blogger channels Lucy & Ethel. (Pioneer Woman, I think?)  This is how well I set priorities; ever since, I've been devoting more brain power than I care to admit to wondering who in TV land I channel so that I can report it to all of you in blogland. 

I wish I channeled Lucy & Ethel.  I would love to be so ditzy and adorable.  Except me-Lucy & Ethel would be spending every show plotting ways to kill all Ricky Ricardo male chauvinist pig-types who cross our paths (which is a lot, if you recall); not cramming our faces with chocolate at the candy factory or stalking innocent washing machine repairmen in our Sherlock Holmes get-ups just to get them to come to our apartments to fix our washing machines first. 

My friends would say I channel Phoebe from Friends but even they--on second thought--know that despite the fact they can totally see me strumming "Smelly Cat" in the coffee shop, I'm just plain bitchier (but only rarely and only at extremely provoked, very understandable moments).

No, I'm Grace.  Slightly bitchy now & then, almost always overwhelmed, overly sensitive, brain-addled Grace Adler--that's me.

And my wonderful parents have underscored that new epiphany by requiring that all I need to provide for Thanksgiving dinner at their house today, is dessert.  And yet I'm still overwhelmed ....sigh.  Oh, not really.  Well slightly .... 

Write back and tell me who YOU channel!  I want to hear!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Don't be overwhelmed!  Don't be bitchy!  Just eat!!

Love you, Grace

PS--The beautiful cake above was baked and photographed and blogged about by the exremely talented Monica over at Lick The Bowl Good. Take a moment to check-out her delicious food blog and her darling pets Autumn (doggie) & August (bunny) at: http://lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com/ 
Thanks Monica for letting me use your pic!

Post-It Note Tuesday #2

Poetry Girl Sunday #4

I have lost two dear family members this year.   I am 48.  Although it is not the sole domain of my age group--it is a fact of life that the older we get the more people who have mattered in our lives will die.

We humans have a hard time completely grasping death.  In my uncle's case, I hadn't seen him for years.  Yet his death affected me greatly.  I found myself wondering if he had any idea what he really meant to me?  He was an engineer who helped develop the tiles that kept the Apollo capsules from becoming fireballs as they reentered the Earth's atmosphere.  He was a curious-minded inventor.  He was a fun uncle.  He always got down on our level, literally.  There's a picture of my sister & I, we look like we're four & five at the time, on the floor with Omar.  He's showing us something--one of us is pointing excitedly.  We're all three enraptured by the excitment of it all. 

When my boys were approximately the same ages as Lisa & I had been, Mil & Omar came for a visit.  At one point I couldn't find anyone.  Finally I heard noises in the downstairs coat closet.  Omar had the boys in there showing them something you could see only in the dark.  Now, I ask you, if you heard a story about a woman's uncle who had her two little boys in the closet with him, what would you think?  But now that you know Omar, you know.  The piece of titanium alloy that he brought all the way from Los Angeles, just to show the boys, still sits in a place of honor on Thing One's dresser.

Omar was married to my mom's sister.  We all knew that Omar was the most brilliant member of the family--the family he married in to.  In a cruel twist, Omar spent the last ten years of his life losing his mind to something like Alzheimer's.  I never knew exactly what it was.  It didn't matter.  When he died in June on Father's Day, I hadn't seen him for nearly six years.  My every day existence was not going to miss him.  But did he know how much I loved him?  Why didn't I just tell him that, emphatically if necessary, before the end?

Death is so strange.  One second you're there like you've always been.  The next you're not. 

Speaking for myself, I'm not very good at remembering this as I'm caught up in the throes of regular day-to-day living.  I take for granted that you are always going to be a breathing, heart-beating influence in my life. Plus I tend to dwell, stew, on the things and the people and the things about the people that bother me--and often, I have no doubt, I am quite right to be bothered by them.  But when you're gone and it's all over, what is left has little to do with those things I spent so much time stewing on.

I'm going to leave you with two poems today that may seem a little disparate, but if you give them time to simmer together perhaps they will become good food for thought as we gather with our loved ones for Thanksgiving this week.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.  No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
                                  --Robert Hayden


from To Lou Andreas-Salome

.....For I don't think back; all that I am
stirs me because of you.  I don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation.  Longing leads out too often
into vagueness.  Why should I cast myself,
when, for all I know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.
                                   Duino, late autumn 1911
                                   --Rainier Maria Rilke

Cartoon Saturday #2

Picking on Sarah Palin today! .......OH SO EASY ........

As Mr. Darcy inquired of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Predjudice,  "Are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility of all this?"  I shall delicately twist dear Lizzy's retort and say this, "I never saw such a woman. I never saw such (in)capacity, and (bad) taste, and (poor) application, and (in)elegance, as you describe united."

This post is dedicated to my Mr. Darcy friends (you know who you are) who love to taunt me about that thing from Alaska.

I once heard a commentator refer to her speech pattern as a "Word Salad" .....I thought, now that is an analogy worthy of the analogy-academy-awards!  Perfect.  And this cartoon perfectly captures the tossed salad.

THE END

Golden Blogroll

Yay!  I've been blogging a month now (almost).  Day after tomorrow. 

I think this is gonna stick!  I'm not always the best at sticking with things .....but some things I stick to like super-glue!  I think blogging might be super-glue for me!! 

I never read a blog before I started writing a blog so I was clueless about blogging when I started.  In the meantime I've come across lots & lots of blogs.  Let me say this: there are an incredible number of extremely talented people out there in Blog Land.  It's intimidating.

The business at hand: for the one-month anniversary of this blog, I'm launching my Golden Blogroll.  It's gonna reside in the Right Side-Bar (it's there now ....go check it out!) and it's going to showcase my, so far, all-time super-favorite blogs.  These are the blogs that intimidate me the most.  That said, if you're on my Golden Blogroll, don't get a big head because that's something else I love about each and every one of you--your total humbleness.

Dear readers, I encourage you to check these blogs out .....and when you do ......please leave them a comment that I love them.  Maybe, then, they will be my friend??  hee hee I'm really not that pathetic.  Yes she is.  No I'm not!!  Yes you are .........