Category Archives: Life

Song

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Love and harmony combine
And around our souls intwine
While thy branches mix with mine,
And our roots together join.

Joys upon our branches sit,
Chirping loud, and singing sweet;
Like gentle streams beneath our feet
Innocence and virtue meet.

Thou the golden fruit dost bear,
I am clad in flowers fair;
Thy sweet boughs perfume the air,
And the turtle buildeth there

There she sits and feeds her young,
Sweet I hear her mournful song;
And thy lovely leaves among,
There is love: I hear his tongue.

There his charming nest doth lay,
There he sleeps the night away;
There he sports along the day,
And doth among our branches play.

Blake, from Poetical Sketches

Firebird

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firebird

Sometimes we don’t know what it is that we’ve captured. We know it’s magical. And the most beautiful thing we’ve ever held in our hands.

We can’t believe that we’ve been asked to let it go. And that’s the mystery of it — not that the Firebird is (we’ve accepted that, it’s there in our grasp!) but the letting go — because we can’t yet know the blessings that will follow. Or even if they’ll follow.

Firebird myth here.

Not writing

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Can’t. Feeling low. Browsing through The Portable Romantic Poets (blogged before about the book here) looking for something mournful enough to match my mood. This can’t be healthy.

“I am the self-consumer of my woes.”

I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live – like vapors tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams . . .

That’s from I Am by John Clare, which would be a bit much here, copied over in full, even in my mood. A fragment’s enough.

Tomorrow’s a new day. I wish it were spring, though, instead of November.

I wish, I wish, I wish.

Why the nerves in your mouth matter

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Because if you can’t feel anything while you chew your food, you might accidently start gnawing on the inside of your mouth while you eat. Without knowing it. Except that for some reason your teeth don’t seem to connect the way they usually do. And is that blood you taste? Then it dawns on you (along with the awareness that this is not you’re brightest moment) that you’re chawing the inside of your lip. Hard. So you go to the powder room & turn your lip inside out to check in the mirror and ooooooh yuck.

(Yeah, I was at the dentist this morning. Drilled & filled. More to go, too, but we’re working on it a little at a time . . . )

And don’t forget the doggy bag

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Via one of Michael Blowhard’s always-worthwhile round-up posts, here’s a Christian Science Monitor piece that makes a point I’ve noticed myself: the cost of eating out is on par with, if not lower than, the cost of buying and preparing your own food.

This assumes you shop at the higher end of the supermarket food chain — and also assumes the time you spend preparing meals has a dollar value. If your definition of home cooking is to prise open a #10 can of franks-n-beans and dump some in a saucepan, the argument falls apart ;-)

Otherwise, as says one Mark Bergen, “pricing specialist,” Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota: “Simply put, restaurants are more efficient than you are.”

Some nice data about the resturant biz in the article too, though. Their profit margins are under 5 percent. And “most turn over more than their entire staff each year, a rate that has contributed to a decline in service over the past 10 years, experts say.” Yeah, that does explain a lot.

And of course, some requisite hand-wringing about portion size and how that’s making us fat. As if the doggy bag had never been invented. After golfing with my parents last weekend, we stopped at the Doug’s Fish Fry in Cortland. They were offering a fried oyster special. I ate half of mine and had the other half for lunch yesterday. Mmmmmm. (Heat them up under the broiler, a minute or so a side, just until the breading starts to sizzle, crisps them back up without overcooking the oyster.) (A trick I’ve perfected by reheating the ubuiquitous “chicken fingers” that my daughter often orders when we eat out.)

I’m not advocating a steady diet of deep-fried breaded whatever, of course, but in moderation? And they were oysters!

Why I live in Rachacha

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Barnie Fife, speaking from the Great Beyond (or on a breather between reruns?) left a comment on my next to the last post. Apparently my living in Rochester, New York fills him with wonder.

I never planned to move here. I moved here originally to attend a nearby college. Long story short, I fell in fascination with yet another complex but self-destructive individual (a tendency I’ve curbed at last now by adhering to a policy of social isolation, *sob*). Ended up married because I once again failed to acknowledge the taint of doom tickling my nostrils. (I guess that makes it mutually assured self-destruction? LOL) Now I have a wonderful kid. We’re in a great school district, her dad is here, and yeah, I chafe sometimes in the reins but I’m a big girl now.

That said, Rochester is also a great city in a lot of ways. The traffic is manageable — for example you can live in a rural bedroom community, the sort of place where you can keep horses if you want, and your commute into downtown will still be only a half hour or so. My neighborhood in particular is a little corner of paradise, aesthetically and small-c culturally — and I don’t have to be a zillionaire to live here, in a spacious circa 1920s home with hardwood floors and a fireplace. While our museums and sports teams are officially second tier, because we don’t have the demographics to support first tier, they’re high enough caliber to give kids a taste of what’s out there — i.e., the city is a suitable jumping-off spot for a kid with aspirations to make the world his home, if he has the inclination & chops.

And if you hanker for big city culture, the plane ride to NYC is only 45 minutes and thanks to JetBlue tickets can be had for under $100. Toronto is a three-hour drive.

We have great public parks. Mendon Ponds Park, for instance, has 30 miles of self-guided nature trails. You can be there from just about any place in the greater Rochester area within minutes. We’ve got the Erie Canal, great place to bike, jog, walk your dog. Since we’re in a temperate climate, you can mix up your outdoor activities seasonally (if you can’t fight it, have fun with it!)

We’ve got great healthcare, including a first-rate research hospital.

Our crime rates are well above the national average but not out of line with other Upstate New York cities.

We don’t have to worry about hurricanes or earthquakes, just snow and the occasional ice storm, but it’s like anywhere in that regard. Be smart and prepare yourself for self-dependence for a few days. At least your house won’t be smushed into a pile of sticks when it’s over.

The biggest downside is that because this is New York State, our taxes are ridiculous and our politicians are worse. At the local level, their moribund thinking has cost us the embarrassment of the so-called Fast Ferry; shamelessly, they’ve put that behind them (despite the fact that the damn thing is still in dry dock here, apparently unsaleable) to push the so-called Renaissance Square down our throats (new post coming up on that shortly).

I’m sure there’s more that’s good about this city but this gives a taste. Despite its flaws, if I were a young married couple planning a family, Rochester would top my list of places to live.

That said, me personally? I don’t know where I’ll end up once my kid has flown the nest. I can work from anywhere, so I’m not tied to any location for income. I’d like to be in a relationship again someday, that will probably influence my choice. I’d like to be able to golf year-round. I ache sometimes to smell the ocean. But I also love the flora/fauna of the Northeast — the hardwood forest, and the geography, the hills. I’d like to stay close enough to a world-class city to jump in regularly for a visit but I also need a base somewhere with space and trees & a bit of privacy.

So who knows? But I guess not knowing is part of the fun of it . . .

We are led . . .

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We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro’ the Eye,
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night,
when the Soul Slept in Beams of Light.
God Appears, and God is Light,
To those poor souls who dwell in Night;
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of Day.

(William Blake)

Settling oneself

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When I was younger, I let my emotions drive my choices (often to my eventual sorrow, sigh) and I suppose I still do to some extent but at least now I make an effort to engage my emotional responses as consciously as I can — part of which involves trying to free them such that they flow their courses more easily, reveal themselves more fully & thereby reveal also the contours of the landscape their flowing paints.

Since I’m by nature a kinesthetic person this involves paying close attention to where feelings lodge. Lately I’ve also jettisoned the distinction between purely physical feelings — e.g. pain or tension — and emotions. My working theory is that there is no difference, really: the physical body acts as a tangible map of the emotions; physical sensations are simply a more intense inclination of the map’s contours.

So I look for tools that help me bridge through my body to the emotions beneath it, and here’s one of the best I’ve found: a book of exercises that combine yoga and the stimulation of accupressure points. Awkward title, unfortunately — Acu-Yoga???? — but I can forgive that; it’s one of the most valuable books I own.

Whether the techniques described in the book actually “do” anything is, of course, entirely a matter of speculation. Perhaps the exercises are more a way to ritualize a routine of auto-suggestion and physical relaxation.

But it works. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it.

How to interpret a weather forecast

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1. Select a source. Say, the National Weather Service.

2. Find the forecast for your region.

3. Read the text.

4. Plan for the exact opposite. If the text says, “90 percent chance of rain,” think “hooray! let’s go on a picnic!” If it says, “partially cloudy,” think “man the lifeboats.” If it says “thunderstorms likely,” go ahead, run outside to fly your metal kite, you’ll be perfectly fine.

(Can you tell I’m a bit disgusted with the accuracy of the predictions lately???)

Where’ve I been

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Working a lot. Golfing some. Plus after a couple years of coasting in my personal life . . . well, let’s just say it’s getting interesting.

I’ll try to get back into my head & blog some more over the next couple of days. We’re supposed to get a ton of rain tomorrow, that should settle me down. And any day now I’ll start to sleep better again. I’ve been waking up early every morning, too wound up to keep myself settled. I’m not complaining, it’s fun in a jittery kind of way :-)