So, who do I tell?

In my small world, a new Maryse Condé novel is A Big Thing. I love Martinique, and want to spend time in Guadaloupe, which is MC's home. I spent an evening with MC in my friend's living room in Nishinomiya. I love her. I love her books. She is a mystery. Her translator, Richard Philcox, is her husband, and their marriage is a mystery. But her novels are stupendously wonderful.

So I had to have her latest. "The Story of the Cannibal Woman" (yes, in the original). Wow.

Maryse told me the best Carribbean restaurant in New York is the Bambou...and I went, and it was beyond my dreams ("this cozy, elegant room...reminds me so much of the elegant restaurants in the islands")...now it is "developed" into this dreadful modern thing. Alas. The "old" one was like stepping into Martinique----a lovely home, that is, not the city streets, which have their own charm!

The "old" one was reviewed 11 years ago....so change happens. Alas.

Grizzly Bear Ranch

Julius Strauss posted from Grizzly Bear Ranch, and I asked for a postcard.....and I posted a comment....about GBR being great stop-off on the healing journey.....

The Violence of Soundbites

The US media is being taxed and attacked over their attention to the sensational and to the soundbite. Editorials are with the students who are paying attention to the important things.

In the meantime, Seung-Hui Cho's family sent out an apology letter...knowing Asia, that letter was so so culturally-rooted and so heartfelt and so hit the mark, and the US media will make soundbites of it.

The students at Virginia Tech, and the Seung-Hui family, are in the core of this; the frenzied media looks shabby.

Bricklayers

I heard a joke:

A guy was passing some bricklayers working, and asked, “What’re you doing?”
1st one: “We’re layin’ bricks.”
2nd one: “We’re buildin’ a wall, Ok pal?”
3rd one: “We’re creating a sanctuary, a place where people can come and open up their hearts and maybe find the best part of themselves, maybe find the true meaning of life.”

Now, what the difference among these bricklayers?

The first two are from New York and the third one is from California.

I keep asking my friends here to help me with the bricklaying--how to find storage space, how to find a moving company, how to find.......etc.

But my job is to be from California. Gotta get back in touch with the inner life!

Weather tonight

Yep, at 9:30 p.m. Eagle River AK time, we are 41°F, and so is Paris!!!!!

Weather Forecasts

The forecast today was for snow-and-rain. We had a little sunshine. Weather forecasts are like foretelling Mother's passing---kinda like being at the roulette wheel in Vegas. It is interesting living in that situation totally
......suspended, and needing to believe in a stable Heart that is Waiting.......

I love checking the weather in Eagle River, Tokyo, New York and Paris on my Dashboard. Inevitably, a minimum of two are the same--it can be ER and NYC, it can be Tokyo and Paris, it can be NYC and Paris, etc. etc. etc. Very fun! Right now, Tokyo and NYC are the same. Sometimes, three are the same!

same = within a degree or two

Hard time bloggin'

3 sisters together for the first time since we were little---having a good time--but blogging takes a back seat....so read how we live here in Alaska--the first 5 posts chez Elise
http://www.elisepatkotak.com/

See you later!

Not Knowing What's Coming

"Perhaps it is good that at times we do not know what lies ahead, or we would not attempt it, and failure would be inevitable." Anne Perry, A Christmas Journey, p. 172.

Takes a lot of thought to know if not knowing what lies ahead is good or not . . . now at a new stage of uncertainty, how to plan for the next six months, parameters unclear making living in the present attractive, but something has to be in place and there is a great desert where an image of "where to go from here" should be. If I knew how the next six months would play out, would it help?

"Without Reservations"

MGF sent me a book, Without Reservations, by Alice Steinbach. My mother's name is Alice, and the caregivers all call her "Miss Alice"--my and my daughter's middle name is Alice, so happy convergence. Alice's meeting and subsequent obsession with Naohiro, and her hobnobbing with Japanese, fascinated me, of course, and I was also caught by sentences like, "It was time to let go of worrying about such things as whether or not I looked foolish in a pair of trendy shoes." And naturally I read the Paris chapter first!

Journeys and Passages

Such familiar signposts---journeys and passages. And the final passage is theoretical to all who have not accompanied someone through it. So no need to detail it here, although I wish I could find blogs, lists with caregivers-in-the-final-passage to help vent, all I can say is that it is hard, without 100% support, to keep in balance to see it through. But that is what the inner life is about! I am sorry for myself (fresh pity party!) that it is so alone; yet all of life's major passages are alone, aren't they.

So if I am sporadic, it is not because I don't wanna blog! It's those darn life passages that get in the way!

Decompression

This is how Julius Strauss decompressed.

War correspondent

Got to hear Julian Strauss today....opened a very wide window to the world for me. I can't get the stories out of my head---awesome speech....

Julius blogs right here at Blogger and is writing about being here in Anchorage for a while.....

I wish he'd write about how to decompress after very trying years.....how'd he do it?

High Finalist Broadsided's Switcheroo contest

Broadsided had a Switcheroo contest.

And I entered. And, it seems, if I am reading the msg correctly, "On a more personal note -- we loved what you saw in the artwork and your poem was in our top two," that maybe I was a runner-up. But in their "permission to post this information" message, they said to call myself a High Finalist. Sounds good to me!

"Anna Mueller's 'Dishes' took the day.

My entry is here.

"Chairing Mary"

Seamus Heaney, '95 Nobel Prize laureate, wrote:

CHAIRING MARY

Heavy, helpless, carefully manhandled
Upstairs every night in a wooden chair
She sat in all day as the sun sundialled
Window-splays across the quiet floor.

Her body heat had entered the braced timber
Two would take hold of, by weighted leg and back,
Tilting and hoisting, the one on the lower step
Bearing the brunt, the one reversing up

Not averting eyes from her hurting bulk,
And not embarrassed, but never used to it,
I think of her warm brow we might have once
Bowed to and kissed before we kissed it cold.

Published in The New Yorker, June 27, 2005, and used without permission

Almost two years ago I read this poem and was mightily moved. I was still lifting Mother from chair to bed, to wheelchair, to stair glide, etc. etc. I even made a page with pictures and all.....but, having been raised with non-demonstrative love, I found it impossible to bow to and kiss Mother's warm brow. For a while. One night I kissed Mother's brow at the last relax-and-good-night ritual. Then, recently, I found myself kissing that brow at other times, and always last thing at night. It has become familiar now, what was so difficult and unfamiliar before. Mother always smiles.

Thank you, Seamus Heaney, I'm glad I once could shake your hand.