Hard Life with Memory Wisława Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

I’m a poor audience for my memory.
She wants me to attend her voice nonstop,
but I fidget, fuss,
listen and don’t,
step out, come back, then leave again.

She wants all my time and attention.
She’s got no problem when I sleep.
The day’s a different matter, which upsets her.

She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly,
stirs up events both important and un-,
turns my eyes to overlooked views,
peoples them with my dead.

In her stories I’m always younger.
Which is nice, but why always the same story.
Every mirror holds different news for me.

She gets angry when I shrug my shoulders.
And takes revenge by hauling out old errors,
weighty, but easily forgotten.
Looks into my eyes, checks my reaction.
Then comforts me, it could be worse.

She wants me to live only for her and with her.
Ideally in a dark, locked room,
but my plans still feature today’s sun,
clouds in progress, ongoing roads.

At times I get fed up with her.
I suggest a separation. From now to eternity.
Then she smiles at me with pity,
since she knows it would be the end of me too.

Lent Begins

People are used to thinking of Lent as forty days of penance and mortification in preparation for Easter. I remember reading that Lent technically is 36 days, making it approximately one-tenth of the year.There are many diverse religions that ask a ten-percent tithe of their annual income.Lent can be considered a tithing of 10% of our year back to the spirit, becoming a better person in the process. It can be a rewarding, and renewing time; a positive time of treating the world a little bit better.
Peace,

A Poem by Nate Slawson

you are the rain

a girl at school
smells like purple
bubble gum,
like she took off
all her clothes
after being stuck
outside during
a thunderstorm
& if I could tell
her why her arms
are boss, why her
neck is boss, why
her hips are boss,
I imagine she would
bandage me softly
like winter.

The Rest of It.

We think of death as taking something away from us or others.
I'm beginning to think of death in terms of rest. Rest from one life before beginning another, perhaps of a different kind or form. Or maybe just rest.

There are times when it is wonderful to be around Aggie. Nothing can match her humor, or her flirtatiousness. Intentionally or not, sometimes behind the bar she pauses and does a little dance, smiling slightly, and I know there will be a time---either a dream or at my life's last moment when a "highlight reel of Aggie" will play across my brain. I do so hope flashbacks of Aggie are my farewell sights of this world.

Words and Actions

A year or so ago, while reading and writing blogs about the shape of my spirituality, I gave up, saying that If I really wanted to know who I was and what I believe, all I had to do was ask people who spend time with me what they thought was important to me. After all, does it really matter what I read and agree with, if it doesn’t translate into what affects people.
So here I am now, on the verge of a new Lenten season and approaching a milestone birthday, coming off a couple of year’s personal exile. “Acedia” is the term the Desert Fathers of early Christianity used to refer to a complete lack of investment in faith, work or world. And I fear I have fallen prey to this malaise. And any of the medications I take seem to be mere maintainance.
Lately, I’ve been really hibernating, staying very much to myself. No little result------just killing time with little to interest me.
So the question------the challenge, really --- is to rise up, respond and produce.
I have never been goal-oriented,; I’m into immediate gratification. So I need to find an agenda which will produce quick, but worthwhile results. Something that will get me out of bed with the first bird of morning and hint of sunrise. I have continued to do little music sketches and I know I can’t live without touching the piano and writing notes on music paper.
I have been concentrating so much on things that seem to block my way, instead of secret pathways leading to where I will be satisfied.
Yes, there are my blogs. But I don’t feel much response. I have only a few treasured musician friends, but again little response to fuel my ambition.
Finally, from the time of ancient greeks , music has had two purposes: order(as in a type of internal astronomy), and as a tool of seduction. Heads up girls.

Heart Break Quotes, Emo Quotes, Sad Love Quotes (clipped to polyvore.com)

I'll bet you could do this with any boy's picture in a yearbooks

Wislawa Szymborzka dead at 88

Under One Small Star


My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.


Wislawa Szymborska

Happy 100th Birthday, Jackson Pollack

El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera

Over the weekend,I received in the mail what I'd guess to be my eighth copy of "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Columbian author and 1982 Nobel Laureate. I first read it in `1988 when the English translation was released and was completely overwhelmed by its magical language and heart-breaking plot of unrequited life-long love. I gave that copy to a friend, never reallly expecting to get it back. Every couple years since then I have this powerful need to reread this book, so I buy another copy and read it and inevitably give it away. This cycle continues to this day. I urge you to buy a copy (or wait for me to finish this one.)







“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love In The Time Of Cholera



WARNING: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WATCH THE MOVIE THAT IS ALLEGEDLY ABOUT THIS BOOK. IT REALLY SUCKS.