Each package weighs 80 pounds.

So said Steve.

I counted/estimated about 60 packages, but they were in such a pile, I couldn't get a good count. They're supposed to put 'em on this afternoon, where they tore the old ones off yesterday. I may be looking at a great big shopping trip for myself to last the afternoon. The idea appeals to me, but would be even more attractive if I had money to spend. It's always something, little Rose Anne Rosanna Danna.

I Love Ya, Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I plan to start the fourth and, I hope, final rewrite of Big Baby. I hope to finish it before the time runs out to submit it to the Alabama publisher's competition in October. Right now I'm about to have a PBRW sandwich for my lunch (peanut butter, banana and raisins on whole wheat). With a big mug of coffee to wash it down.

Temptation!

Well, Steve and Tracy sent over this dumpster which is just about the size of my living room. They said if I have any junk, to throw it in. Hmmm. Looks like it would hold all my old living room furniture, plus all the junk in the basement. They also looked around in the basement, deciding where to put the sump pump.

Seriously, I am about to decide to trash that couch. Mo has scratched one end of it down to the nails. I know, because I scraped my leg on one of them. It looks like Mo might outlive me, so a new sofa wouldn't have much of a chance. I could put Flora's old maple breakfast table in the center of the room and group all the chairs around it, and call it the great hall. The two ancient armchairs could go into the dumpster, too. And the 1950's coffee table, and the piece of junk I'm using for an end table. All the ugly lamps. I love bare rooms.

Steve said they're going to tear the roof off tomorrow, and put on a new one on Thursday.

Shoot!

This morning I ordered a beautiful arrangement for my sweet niece Andy, who has had some really rough surgery. The image of what I ordered showed a square glass container with at least half a dozen pink roses, and some smaller little pink garden flowers. This is what she received:

I guess that teaches me--don't order something you haven't seen in person, unless you know you can send it back. I'll call the place tomorrow and assure them that I won't use their service again. Makes you want to cry.

Bel canto

This afternoon I caught the last few minutes of the Met's performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (on PBS), some of the most wonderful music ever composed by anybody anywhere. The last few minutes are not as thrilling as the whole thing. So I had to go to YouTube and listen to Maria Callas sing an 8-minute-long aria. Then I had to listen to her sing "Mi chiamano Mimi" from La Boheme. Callas and Elvis Presley are the only singers ever documented to sing three octaves. But I think I've said that before. And by now, it may not be true any longer.

The Sound of Snow

Growing deaf, one thing that I really miss
is the sound of falling snow. When I
and Bob-the-cat lived at the very top
of Oak Trail, in a treetop apartment,

it snowed a lot for Alabama.
Bob would hear it and run to the kitchen
where glass doors looked out on a balcony,
and I would hear it and follow the cat.

Together we'd watch through the ice-cold glass,
as someone up yonder seemed to be shaking
a feather-bed with a big hole in it;
and Bob would bump his nose and paws

on the glass; he couldn't figure out why
he never could catch what he saw so clear.
You could hear it best when it started to fall:
Ice crystals blown against the house

rattled or sighed with gusts of wind,
and grew bigger and softer, the longer they fell.
In a while, the world would be full of feathers,
and the air full of whispers. Bob would get bored,

and wander away hunting a warm place
to curl up. I, on the other hand,
I wouldn't leave that lookout point
if it snowed all night (which it never did).

Those were what I call the good old days.
But now, when it snows, if it ever snows,
I learn of it when I pass a bare window,
and sight is the only sense awakened.

By JRC, 6/24/11

Stormy Weather

I drove back from Bham today through the first storm, raining so hard I had to guess where the road was. I thought of one stormy night many years ago, when I drove from Birmingham to Montgomery most of the way between two big trucks, going too fast--65-70 mph--to stay in place but at least knowing I was on the highway. When I got home today, there was a big old sweet gum limb in my front yard, and the storm had stopped for a while.

On the Road Again

I thought my clinic appointments were for Wednesday and Thursday. Wrong. Tues. and Weds. So I went today and got the bone scan, and will get the mammo tomorrow. Then maybe they'll leave me alone for a while, dadgummit! Every time I'm almost making some progress on the poems, Mo hollers for water or something, or the phone rings to confirm an appointment.

I had picked out about a hundred and twenty poems for my book. But every time I look over it, I add a few more. So what if some of them are bad, or silly? Show me a hundred poems by anybody, and some of them will be less than top-notch. Unless it's Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins didn't write many poems, but every one of them, you can just read it over and over and find new magic every time. His rhythm is strange, so they're not easy to remember. "The Wreck of the Deutschland," and those nuns panting, "Where--where was a--where was a place--?!" And "The Wreck" (in my opinion) is not the best of his poems. Boy, if I was going to copy anybody's style consciously, that's where I would start. Or try to start.

Catching Up

This week I finally got a report from the Clinic on my labs: Everything was normal. Surprise!

I took all my Z-pack last week, and I feel fine. My face and throat don't hurt any more, but I still sneeze and cough, so it must be allergies. Like from cat hair, mold and dust. If someone would only clean the place up! My Amazon/Facebook friend Cindy has all this haus-frau energy; wish I could put her in my basement for about half a day.

I've got through the latest batch of alterations to Big Baby, and selected all my poems for my Semi-Complete volume. Now I just have to revise about two dozen of them.
*
Today I'm thinking of Spring. Or Fall, or Winter. Any season but Too Hot.

The Goose-Girl, by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Spring rides no horses down the hill,
But comes on foot, a goose-girl still;
And all the loveliest things there be
Come simply, so, it seems to me.
If ever I said, in grief or pride,
I tired of honest things, I lied,
And should be cursed forevermore
With love in laces like a whore,
And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady,
And Spring on horseback like a lady.
*
I have an old china vase, with flowers and a girl feeding a goose on it, sitting on the chest in the hall. Every time I notice it, I think of Millay's poem.

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings!
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of--Wheeled, and soared, and swung,
High in the sunlit silence! Hovering there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air!
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark or even eagle flew;
And while with silent, lifting mind, I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God!

By John Gillespie McGee
*
It's that kind of a day. The kind that inspired my favorite poem that I've ever written, "Splendor Before a Storm:"

Clouds with wings of gold
enfolded pale blue morning,
that a moment died, rose up white noon,
and oh bright cumulus
flung clear around
my unsuspecting stratosphere!

How can even God
behold this gleaming day, yet stay in place
while higher every mile the sky grows!  I
would tumble treeward, rumbling,
"See my wonders! See Creation glowing!
Hear my thunder!"

I myself, although
no god or wing-blessed being,
must fling my senses somehow high enough
to reach and reel among
those sun-dipped fields of light,
dance there, cling there, or of sheer worship
die!
*
I trust that, when I was feeling that, I was worshiping the Creator, not the creation.

Lord, I have loved your sky,
Be it said against or for me;
Have loved it clear and high
Or low and stormy;

Till I have reeled and stumbled
From looking up too much,
And fallen and been humbled
To wear a crutch.

My love for every heaven
O'er which You, Lord, have lorded,
From number one to seven,
Should be rewarded.

It may not give me hope
That when I am translated,
My scalp may in the scope
Be constellated;

But if that seems to tend
To my undue renown,
At least it ought to send
Me up, not down.

By Robert Lee Frost (I forget the title).
*
The camera may not lie, but it's awfully inadequate on a day like this.

From "John Brown's Body" by Stephen Vincent Benet

~~~
"A brief, white rime on a red-clay road."
                                *
I have seen it! I have seen it! I have seen it!
And I have heard the invisible horses charging
wildly down it, dragging an iron-wheeled cart.
So long ago, only the memory of a memory,
but part of me like the sound of my heart in my ears
waked from a dream foreshadowing past and future.

By me 6/15/11

"Thoughts Of an Old [Woman] In a Dry Season"

A few times in my life, I have forgot something on the stove or in the oven until it burned up. So I routinely check to make sure everything is turned off before I leave the house or go to bed. It occurred to me this morning that I'm not the only one getting old and living largely by herself. So I hope Susan and Ramey, and even Jed who ain't no spring chicken, will learn this practice from me, if they don't do it already.
*
I'm working on the book again today, mostly on the time line--trying to make sure I haven't got somebody born before his mama. I've got a file this thick, with calendars for years in the 1940s, histories of Oak Ridge and Redstone Arsenal, wildlife and landscape features I remember on the mountain. I guess I'm just in love with that book. I didn't feel anything like this for the romances I wrote; that's probably why I abandoned them: they just were not my thing.

Deb, who comments here sometimes, said that she writes children's books. Ramey does, too, writes and illustrates them. I want to write one about the Maynards' children, Patsy, Joyce, Ramona, Susie and Franny (I just changed the twin Sally's name to Franny).

They're almost like little stair-steps, born in 1936, 1938, 1941, and the twins in 1943 or '44. Patsy (called Patrick) is the level-headed one, and Ramona the "holy terror." Joyce (Josie) is the "Big Mouth," who offends all of them with her perceptive comments.

I haven't decided whether to write them as little children, or as teenagers. I guess I know more about little ones, because I never was a teenager. At least, not a normal one.
*
So, I need to go to the store today and get the makin's for biscuits. I crave biscuits, although I hate the doughy innards. I just eat the tops and bottoms.

Several years ago, two different people (I think Ramey and Jed) gave me bottles of maple syrup. The bottles are shaped like maple leaves. I ate one bottleful, then opened the other one. The cap on the second bottle was always hard to open, and after a while I couldn't open it at all. It has sat there in the refrigerator for at least two or three years. What I need to know: If I ever manage to get the top off, will the syrup still be safe to eat?

Poem for Sunday

Sourwood Honey

We fanciers of sourwood honey have a theory:
It's what was meant by "nectar of the gods,"
Back when hyperbole was common usage.
Some still claim that it's made by bees and angels;
Too ignorant to argue, I imagine
The keepers of the bees turning around
Three times  and genuflecting toward the east,
Before they loose the bees among the blossoms.


By JRC, 06/12/11

*
6:45 p.m.: I was up very early this morning, and I meant to go to the last performance of "Second Samuel," if it wasn't sold out. But I felt so bad--my cold or whatever is worse today--that I lay back down and slept until it was too late to get to the church at 2:30.  Maybe the antibiotic is just loosening up the congestion, but I've coughed and sneezed till I'm exhausted.

I've spent the last 4 hours going through the Big Baby manuscript, making changes and explanations, including the ones Susan marked when she read it. Her remarks, like Ramey's, were very helpful, and I really appreciate their reading and commenting.

Cats, Cats, Cats

I've been having an attack of conscience, about that old black cat that showed up here last year looking like a Sherman tank had run over him twice. I fed and watered him, and sprayed the peroxide at his wounds, and he's still alive, because he showed up yesterday. He only comes by occasionally, and he really is a mess at this point. I guess if I can ever catch him, I'll take him to the vet.

Ramey said she would come and get this stray, but I forgot to ask if she meant this year or next year. We thought he was a girl, but he said no, he'll look more masculine when he gets some meat on his bones. He really is a sweet baby. If I kept him--which I won't! I won't!--I would name him "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes," and call him J.D. for short. (J.D. Salinger wrote a story with that title.)

I really can't have another one in the house. I haven't let either black or white cat come in, and don't plan to. There's no mention of cats in the Bible, at least not domestic ones, probably because the Egyptians worshiped them. (That's probably where cats got the idea that they really are, if not deities, at least royalty.) I wonder why the Lord made them so sweet.

You wouldn't think one little animal, weighing 10 pounds or less, could make a retired and solitary person miserable. But Mo keeps me semi-miserable about a tenth part of every day.

Gettin' Better

They finally called the pharmacy and left me a prescription, so I went down this morning and got a Z-pack. Took the first double dose and slept a lot today, so I am feeling better. Amazing how simple it was. I wish I had insisted on treatment two weeks ago; by now I'd probably be feeling 10-15 years younger.

Never apologize!

I have to get over feeling apologetic about my poems. Cuckoo as some of them may seem, they're what pop into my head and have to get out.

I thought my sinus infection or inflammation was better, but today it's much worse. And after two weeks, I still haven't received the results of my labs and CT. So a few minutes ago I phoned the clinic, forgetting that they'd all be out to lunch until 1:30 or 2:00. Anyway, I left Marie a message to get them to call me in something for the sinus, and to let me know about the tests.

I had it made up in my mind to change doctors, unless there was a good reason for "writing me a letter" (which apparently he didn't even do) instead of phoning me the test results. And not doing anything about the misery in my nose. But number one, I've tried to change doctors before, and the HMO wouldn't permit it. And number two--I forget what.

Couple of nights ago, I watched "The Sixth Sense" on TV. That's a very sad movie.
*
The poem today:

On Leaping Into Marlowe's Faust
(and Tiptoe-ing Away)

Least said, the soonest mended: I decline
The merest slight to Marlowe's “mighty line.”

For centuries, men rewrote the Faustus play,
Till how it was to start with, who can say?

I don't deny, one line my fancy grips:
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?”

And one more line still sticks with me, to wit:
“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it!”

Let veils of charity the rest obscure,
And Marlowe's reputation long endure.

Too bad he's not beneath the Abbey stones;
A lonely unmarked grave received his bones.

Poor Marlowe, stabbed to death at twenty-nine!
Who could begrudge the man his mighty line?

By JRC, 6/7/2011

My folks already think I'm crazy.

My Twin
*
A few days before our birth,
I left that body and found a live one
ready to come out.
He needed to be born by himself.
He always rang like Christmas,
but the bells were in my head and came with me.
When his “little shaky leg” shook,
I could hear sleigh bells.
He learned to shiver himself from head to toe
like a wet dog shedding raindrops, and when he did,
I heard the glass balls and bells on a decorated tree
trembling together and ringing.

by Joanne Cage, 6/6/2011

"Second Samuel" was Super!

The play was wonderful. The young guy who played "B. Flat" talked and emoted practically throughout both acts, with a real or assumed speech impediment thrown in. Ramey was the prettiest lady--she played Miss Ruby who worked in the beauty shop. I was fascinated with the players' given names--Omaha Nebraska Madison was the cute blonde who ran the beauty shop. Her husband was Frisky Madison, and one of his kinfolks named their baby after him: Madison Wisconsin.

I was so proud of Ramey--told everybody, "That's my baby sister, you know!"

Jed couldn't come, and India was feeling puny, so I went to the play by myself. Saw George and Sue and Rev. Lynette and everybody whose names I didn't remember. Yes, I feel guilty for not going to church. But crowds confuse me and I can't think or do anything except try to keep a frozen grin on my face. Funny, I've never had that problem when I was on a stage or at a desk and the crowd was in front of me. But when they're all around me everywhere, I'm lost. Maybe because everybody else is so tall.

Just before I left home to go to the play, I had a stomach upset, then I had to scurry to get ready, and forgot my camera. The "playhouse" was cool, but the narthex of the church was hot, and of course it was hot outside. All the temperature variations gave me the "swirl and ache" again, so when the play was over, I high-tailed it to the Tracker and came home.

Sister Susan and Niece Andy were the only other family in the audience. Susan has a synopsis of the whole play on her blog today (Blackberry Creek), with pictures and everything. But no picture of me in my four-year-old summer dress I had never worn before but put on because it made me look taller. But I  understand: Why photograph the "Old Party" in the family, when they're always there and you have to look at them occasionally, whether you want to or not?

I had occasion this week to ponder that theory, and it may have a few holes in it. On Tuesday, I called the clinic and asked Marie (the secretary) to get Onae (the nurse) or Dr. Gruman (the giant) to call me with the results of the tests I'd had the week before. A bit later, Marie called me back and said Dr. Gruman had "written me a letter." A letter? Too mystified to think, I muttered, "Thanks." Then I walked the floor for a day or two, wondering what they found that the M.D. was too cowardly to tell me about on the phone. Always before he has phoned within a couple or three days and told me something, sometimes reading last year's test results.

Based on the tests they did last week, all I could think of was AIDS or a brain tumor. I still haven't received the letter, but have had time to get over the terror.

Last week at the clinic, I had the satisfaction of noticing that he's getting gray-headed.
*
A funny thing happened when I found my seat, B5, at the play. Each seat had a removable cover on the back with the seat number written on it. In my row, the numbers ran B1, B2, B3, B5, B4, B6, B7 and B8. I sat down in B5, and the lady who came and sat in B6 said I had to change because someone had switched the numbers. She was quite officious and seemed to know what she was talking about, so I got up and started changing the covers on the seat-backs. The man in front of me remarked it was strange that "the House" couldn't count to 4, and the bossy lady hinted that I should have figured it out for myself. I said, "I just thought it was some local custom that I'm not familiar with."

The Big Day--Ramey's Premiere

I worked all morning on the poems. Now I've got to eat something and get ready to go to the Play. Can't wait! I called Jed, but he's working on his big Phoenix presentation and can't come today.

Radiology called me and said come June 17th for my Dexascan/bone density test. My mammo appointment is June 22nd. So this, too, is going to be a busy month.

Book Plans

I just had one of those light-bulb moments: I've written and saved several hundred poems--around 400, I guess. Most of them probably aren't worth saving, but have a "germ" of poetry somewhere in their innards. So what I want to do is take each of the doubtful ones and play with it, and try to make a real poem out of it, and deep-six it if it continues to embarrass me. I hope they will all cooperate and come together as a respectable little book of The Complete Poems of JRC.

Tomorrow night!!! Ramey opens in "Second Samuel" at the church "playhouse." I called to reserve two seats, and sweet little Sue-Baby put us in the second row. So maybe I can almost hear a pin drop onstage, not to mention what the actors say. I hope Jed comes over tomorrow to escort me to the theatah.

Last night I watched a PBS "American Masters" show about my all-time favorite orchestra conductor, the Met's own James Levine. Jimmy, like most of us old folks, now looks like a little Hobbit. -- Well, actually, he always did.

George Washington, Chapters 26-28

Somewhere in the clutter, I lost George Washington, The Indispensable Man, when I had only read less than half of it. But a few days ago I found it. It's a long book, crammed with essential stuff you can't just scan or skip, but must go back over, some of it to savor. It makes you proud, not only of Washington but of all the superstitious, cowardly, self-serving, greedy, ordinary PEOPLE who established this nation and this unique government. On the bones of the rightful owners/original inhabitants, of course. But, as the colonists' ancestors had done the dark deed of dispossession, two hundred years earlier, they thought they owned the place.

Chapters 26-28 tell about the writing and establishment of the U.S. Constitution. Unbelievable, but it happened.
*
Anyway, it's a great book, by James Thomas Flexner. As the servant girl told Ripsie in China Court, "He must have all of he names." He died in the first decade of this century, just a few years short of a hundred, one of these long-lived Capricorns--if I am permitted to claim that much of a relationship. George Washington was originally a four-volume National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, and he himself boiled it down to the one-volume paperback that I'm reading. It will have taken me at least two weeks, all told, to read it, so I'll never impose it on our book club, if we continue to have a book club. Although I agree with more than one reviewer who said that every American should be required to read it.
*
Abigail Adams said of Washington, "This same President has so happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate and yet carrying his point, that, if he was not really one of the best-intentioned men  in the world, he might be a very dangerous one. He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good."