Richard Brautigan's Birthday

“I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard.” ― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

Thinking About Merwin's Poems Today

I was listening to Fresh Air again on the way home and caught a rebroadcast of a conversation with W.S. Merwin. He won his second Pulitzer Prize for poetry on April 20 for The Shadow Of Sirius.

In the interview, he read from a poem about a photograph of his mother, taken when she was young, which had faded and was deteriorated and all he was left with was his memory. From there it led to a discussion about memory itself, and whether we should document our lives with photos and journals and such and involve ourself with preserving the details of the "past," or focus our efforts on the "now."

During my younger years I saved everything. I preserved photos, videos, scrapbooks, and enough journals for someone to publish my whole sordid life in a multi-volume boxed set should they choose to do so in the future after I am famous or dead. I also spent five years tracking down the family history...gathering photos, articals, obits, death certificates, old letters and anything I could to try to document where I came from.

Now as I'm getting older I do it less. Pictures for the past 5 years sit in boxes or drawers willy nilly mixed in with all my other junk. My journals have been hit or miss too, with weeks, and even a whole month gone by with nothing really to show for myself. I like to spend time outside in the garden, or reading, or spending time with friends or my pets. Writing gets put off.

Merwin read from another poem he wrote about what it felt like to be in his parents' house after both of them had died. It dealt with the grief, and trying to remember conversations, and also the task of sorting belongings. His father had been minister, and had requested all his sermons be burned. I can relate to that. Part of me wants all my own journals burned. My writings, my personal thoughts. Because they are unpolished, carelessly worded. Easy to misinterpret.

The last line of the poem grabbed me because of it's simplicity, yet deeper meaning. In that house, that space occupied by his parents who were no longer there, suddenly it occurs to him.

"I can do anything I want."

----

The Sunday Morning Muse, August 17, 2008

Cross


My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?


--Langston Hughes

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This poem jumped out at me as I was reading a book by Wayne W. Dyer, called Wisdom of the Ages. It's a book full of poems and philosophies from some of the greatest thinkers. I open it time and again and read a passage. It's one of the books that will never leave my library.

The Sunday Morning Muse, July 20, 2008

This is one of those rainy days. Nice rumbling thunderstorms.... a breeze through the window screens. I don't feel like I have to "do" anything.
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Why is it that society puts so much pressure on people..... (expecially kids) to "DO SOMETHING" all the time?

Haiku:

Give yourself a gift.
Don't DO anything right now.
Just let it all go.

---------------------------

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I can write Haiku on a train
I can write Haiku in the rain
I can write Haiku on a wall
I can write Haiku in a stall.
I can write Haiku with a friend,
I can write Haiku and hit SEND.

It’s quite easy to write Haiku,
If I can do it, so can you.

---
(Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.)

The Exorcist Versus the Quake of ' 08

I'm sure by now you've heard of the midwest Earthquake this past week. But I bet amidst all the accounts of cupboards shaking, and windows rattling, and folks who were afraid to enter skyscrapers you have not heard an account as thrilling as this one by my friend in Chicago. A stream of consciousness that would make the hardiest of beatniks cringe.

Too funny. Your first thought was Linda Blair?
-

Graphic: (The Avatar I made of Suki in Chi-town.)

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She also got me started on Haiku this weekend. Now I'm addicted.

-

Special Delivery

Present on the porch.

The cat ate the rabbit's head,
Left the rest for me.


Face in the Crowd

Without my glasses
I thought he was good looking,
Turns out he is not.

The Sunday Morning Muse, April 13, 2008

The Russians are coming
and they will lead us
into boxcars.

Aunt Millie worried
all the time
about them.

She kept an orderly house and
made pierogies on Fridays
during Lent.

Babushska around her head
and polyester pants
splitting apart in the back,
I saw her on the porch roof
painting the overhang.

When the Russians come,
she said,
They will say
Millie had a nice roof.

---
MJ Copyright, 1987

Aunt Millie would have been 98 years old this week. I wrote this as a tribute to her. I remember when I was growing up she took the Cold War seriously. Of course I always wondered where she thought the Russians would take us in those boxcars. Cleveland? After all this wasn't Nazi Germany.

The Sunday Morning Muse, March 20, 2008

Reverend Dan works overnights
at the mini mart.
He used to host a Sunday Gospel Hour
on the local radio station,
but he got behind on his bill.

Now he spreads The Word to the
late night crowd
when they stop by for cigarettes
or lottery tickets.

He keeps a gun on top of the
Bible under the counter.

-

M. J. -Copyright 2004

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

--The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper