I am cleaning out papers... seeing in December 2011 I quoted this:
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. -- William Makepeace Thackeray
What a wonderful middle name! I need to "make peace" with the fact that, true as this is... I am not making time for my own thoughts unless I am writing a poem. I came across this note from 2007 in
The Seattle Japanese Garden -- no crutch of wiki or google, no doublecheck on etymology -- just a "crutchless moment" unconnected to anything-- and then I see the Striped Maple leaning on a crutch and write In the Japanese Garden, March 29, 2007.
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Well, now for looking at notebooks. No one needs to read them, but I like re-reading. This one was given to me in May, 2018 by Jocelyn, the then mayor of Rennes on a visit to Rochester.
Rivers... some braid their hair (Rita Dove, La Chapelle), some like yesterday, in Ellison Park, laze between muddy banks, licking all that springs up from the bottom -- and a series of l's appear... lapping, linking, and LOVE and doubLe -- no leaking away in worry.
Oct. 2020: water skaters rival solo drops released by leaves over Botheration Pond. Eloquence of subtle echoes, as a raindrop pearls on a leaf...
But there, in 2020, I have started a new journal, and remembering all that had happened since February and spelling out All That in seven letters. (Joke my mother used to tell)... and thoughts about our inner oysters negotiating thoughts and feelings.
and today after a visit with my best belovèd daughter, and thinking of our best belovèd son, a conversation last night with one of my sisters who is writing her book of travel stories and her "charming Italian translations", I receive a reply from a poet friend about my comments about John Ashbery's poem "Myrtle" and how he leaps into naming a river after a long-lost girlfriend. I coined a phrase: "thinking management" evident in a poem.
I love that someone came up with the germ Gregueria, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greguer%C3%ADaa one line poem which combines metaphor and humor. Example: Hummingbirds are quarter notes which have left the nest of the flute. I was reminded of Francis Ponge and Parti Pris des Choses and the French spelling of oyster. huître where the I hides under the hat of a circonflexe.
I suppose a Gregueria about the oyster might be this: Aside the impenetrable fortress in which it lives, the oyster's entire living world may offer more than a gastronomic delicacy in a pearl— the perfect metaphorical response to minor irritations.
He humorously portrays the disposition of "things"-- in small lyric paragraphs... In the case of an oyster, even the spelling confirms this small shellfish is nothing short of a miracle, for inside the impenetrable fortress (which, worse than stone, will cut your fingers and break your nails) is an entire world many enjoy eating and drinking... and unexpected dividend, the small halos it secretes around an irritating molecule of sand, turns into a pearl. Were we humans even half as gifted.
Invisibles...in Portuguese Saudade and a nostalgia for something that does not exist.
I return to this theme again and again. The valiant effort of a spider to spin its silk; the way the sea cradles life, and wind cradles wheat, and the universe cradles limitless worlds-- this amazing embrace of something larger to keep us going. Sun spotlights, bubbles rising to the surface of a brook, a spill of light down angel stairs,
Goodbye friendly reader. Try not to use up your life in hating and being afraid. -- Stendhal
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