the back burner

living on the edge

We have a super-abbreviated form of The Moscow Rules on a magnet on our fridge. Here's a slightly expanded list, although I'm told there are actually 40. Just thought some of you might need these... I know I will.

Assume nothing.
Murphy is right.
Never go against your gut; it is your operational antenna.
Don't look back; you are never completely alone.
Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
Go with the flow, blend in.
Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
Any operation can be aborted. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.
Maintain a natural pace.
Lull them into a sense of complacency.
Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Don't harass the opposition.
There is no limit to a human being's ability to rationalize the truth.
Technology will always let you down.
Pick the time and place for action.
Keep your options open.
Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.

loose ends

This is the fifth unpublished entry I've got going. Of course, as soon as I publish this, that number will go back down to four. AAARGH! All these loose ends take a lot of energy to sustain! In fact, that (dealing with loose ends) seems to be the prevailing motif of my life, these days. Maybe this is how people live, all the time, and it's just another move that makes one realize how many loose ends there are...

Nah. That's not it. I think it's the quickly-approaching move that makes the over-arching plans and thoughts in the back of my head seem like loose ends. It's a big cleaver chopping right through all of them, between here and whatever point in the future they might have been tied off.

I'm having a big party on Saturday in order to facilitate the goodbye process. If you didn't get an email invitation, it's because I'm assuming you can't come or I don't have your address. So get your rear in gear and contact me for an invitation and directions. :)

a private tragedy

Ah! Lowly ground squirrel, low upon the food chain
yet fastest of all rodents in your biome,
was there ever quicksilver so golden brown,
struck through with spots and streaking russet stripes?
Was there ever lightning thrown down to the earth
with such a liquid, knowing gaze, black as the universe?
Your speed is matched by nothing other than your comeliness,
which we slow-eyed observers only notice
when you halt and fix us with your eye.

I wonder, are these pauses mere vanity?
I would like to think that pieces start to fit,
a slow gathering theory of everything
clicks into place and makes you pause your running.
Maybe each hesitation is another step closer to knowing,
another piece in the puzzle of what it means to exist,
another step towards some unknown destination.

And in that moment that you hesitate too long,
what do you see? What visions do you see
when in that last, ill-fated pause you feel
the clutch of the hawk,
the bite of the stoat,
the pounce of the cat?
Does the world look different? And was your theory right?

I, too, have felt the end of a thing pierce my breast,
carried away to some den or aerie,
possessing and possessed at last
by all my knowledge.

here i am.

So. How does a person spread the news about a visa? By blog! My papers are in and I'll be leaving soon for Europe. No, I don't know when. Yes, I'll keep you all updated. More details to come.

The harder question is how to articulate all the things that are in my heart. A week of thoughtfulness has spawned a number of poems, running around inside of me. I'll try to work them out and backpost on the dates I think are appropriate.

departure

I remember how the bombs fell every day.
I remember how we walked tenderly across rooms and open spaces,
always afraid of someone or something cracking open.
And even wind and sunlight felt heavy, pelting down
against our eggshell hearts and our tender nerves.
And one day they invited you to the moon, to translate for the delegations.
And one night both of us decided to give this place a rest
(only at night, always at night did we talk;
the distant flares made for too much light during the day).

We sat to pack and to make decisions, hard ones.
A dumb tension dulled the moment’s edge
until from the corner of my eye, almost bashfully,
I saw you take a jar of orange marmalade
made from my parents' groves:
picked, peeled, and canned at the height of the season,
a golden sunset in a glass, lying on the linens
just beneath your fingers
(enough, in themselves, to persuade me).

Later, when I thought you had turned your head
and the weight was getting close, I set aside
an extra pair of working pants and in their place slipped in
the elder poets, who wrote before the war and whose
dusty revelations we discovered long ago.
Measuring, mustering, your eyes flicked back and forth
between good pants and this thing I know you love.

That night we laid together
more tenderly and raw than most folks ever feel:
our eyes alive to the breathing dark of the house;
our small, twin rocketpacks full of clothes and sheets, a book, some jam;
our shrouds, dirt, and sugar chosen and packed away,
while our minds busily built categories, tags, and labels for
a household of abandoned things.

(it's a better listen than a read)

I heard this a week ago on the Writer's Almanac, and I've been meaning to share it ever since. You can find it (and others) in their archives. (No, Donnie, it isn't one of mine. But I do like it more than some of my own.)

"Afraid So"

Is it starting to rain?
Did the check bounce?
Are we out of coffee?
Is this going to hurt?
Could you lose your job?
Did the glass break?
Was the baggage misrouted?
Will this go on my record?
Are you missing much money?
Was anyone injured?
Is the traffic heavy?
Do I have to remove my clothes?
Will it leave a scar?
Must you go?
Will this be in the papers?
Is my time up already?
Are we seeing the understudy?
Will it affect my eyesight?
Did all the books burn?
Are you still smoking?
Is the bone broken?
Will I have to put him to sleep?
Was the car totaled?
Am I responsible for these charges?
Are you contagious?
Will we have to wait long?
Is the runway icy?
Was the gun loaded?
Could this cause side effects?
Do you know who betrayed you?
Is the wound infected?
Are we lost?
Will it get any worse?

Poem: "Afraid So," by Jeanne Marie Beaumont from Curious Conduct. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2004.

John Donne

Eliot liked him. So does Veronica Chater.

But my Canadian friend doesn't.

quote of the day

"[These early memories] may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go further back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and acuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood."

(Charles Dickens, David Copperfield. Wordsworth: Hertfordshire, UK. 1999. p. 15)

asleep

the breeze twitches across my skin in starts and stops
as my legs swim slowly through the bedclothes,
mouth muttering, excusing, explaining
how I carry the weight of myself.

the whole room is full of stirrings and darkness:
autumn leaves and trash cycloning up from the floor
furtive papers flapping in the corners
from the quiet whirr of a ceiling fan.

trees and criminals have crowded into my chamber,
the wood between the worlds of sleep and wake
where men are blown about like flies before
the wingbeats of some great celestial bat.

tonight I dream the dreams of the night watchman,
alone with his imaginings in the hallways of the proud.

props to the heckler

Do men read? What do they read? What's their motivation and to what end are they reading? Just some questions that came up after reading an old post on oh my heck!.

books, glorious books!

Dear y'all:

Below is a list of the best dang books I ever read. It's for those of you (you know who you are) who keep askin' me to recommend books for readin'. I'll update it from time to time, but I'll just let it be archived when it gets old (so you'll have to go huntin' for it). Here's to literacy! WOOOH! Love them words!

Bob

Watership Down, Richard Adams
Pride and Predjudice, Jane Austen
Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
Farenheit 451, Ibid.
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ibid.
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
A Man Called Thursday, Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Hard Times, Ibid.
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
To Live in Peace, Mark Gornik
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
A Circle of Quiet, Madeline L'Engle
A Wrinkle in Time, Ibid.
Till We Have Faces, Clive Staples Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet, Ibid.
Talley's Corner, Elliot Liebow
Nectar in a Seive, Kamala Markandaya
Walking with the Poor, Bryant Meyers
Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Connor
Wise Blood, Ibid.
1984, George Orwell
Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
Too Late the Phalarope, Ibid.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Rocks in My Pockets, Cynthia Rylant
The Busman's Honeymoon, Dorothy Sayers
Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen
Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands, Paul David Tripp
The Mountain People, Colin Turnbull
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Book of the Dunn Cow, Walter Wangerin, Jr.
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
Embracing the Infidel, Behzad Yaghmaian

(To make it on this list, the book had to make me make some noise after turning the last page and putting it down. As I remember other books, I'll put them up.)

the long walks are the best

This morning I ran to the corner and down past the VA Hospital to Emory, in order to meet someone for another run. (I know, I know. What was I thinking?) Then, after breakfast, a shower, and some phone calls, I walked up to that same corner and kept going until I got to Atlanta Coffee Roasters, where I've been ever since.

I remember watching the cars on my way here, plodding forward in my flip-flops with bags hanging from each arm. Most of the drivers, I thought, wouldn't understand the distance between here and there the way that I was understanding it at that point, step by unhurried step, grasses brushing my feet.

If ever I walk away from this time of waiting, I want to think of it like this morning's walk – a slowing-down reminder of what it takes to get from place to place. Sometimes we move too quickly for our own good.

Important Things

This morning I had my first ever video chat with not one, but two of my favorite people, calling from the ends of the earth.

And in other news, Helena Bonham-Carter is signing up for Order of the Phoenix. (Current) Favorite actress meets favorite book of Rowling's (so far). Get excited.

Quote of the Day

Christ Is My Hope

You can say the word.
Unworthy though I am,
o bread of life,
o bread of life,
I will be healed and come.

Hold me in your arms,
bridegroom of my soul,
o bread of life,
o bread of life,
I will be healed and come.

Christ, Christ is my hope.
Christ, Christ is my light.
Christ, Christ is my hope.
Christ, Christ is my light,
o my light.

I have been afraid
but I’m on the way to this table.
O bread of life,
o bread of life,
I will be healed and come.
- Karen Peris