Pterodactyl Time!

Major, major panic attack, Friday night and all day yesterday. When it began to let up, it was like the sun rising. But it was eleven o'clock last night. So I went to bed and slept off and on for fourteen hours.

Those spells are hard to describe. I remember a bad one that occurred when we lived in Montgomery. My husband was away on a business trip, and I called my friend Marzee. She got her older daughter to stay with my children, and she took me to a movie to see if it would distract me. The movie was "Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines," or something like that. I literally ran out into the street, not screaming. But running up the street for a block or so and back dissipated the panic attack. I'll have to remember that for next time. Running up the street in my pajamas, I'd probably get picked up and taken to the pokey.

I could run the 20-or-so steps up and down the deck, like Jack Aubrey pacing his quarterdeck.

*

No, the 1963 movie was "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World."

Maybe another cup of coffee. . .

"This is the day which the Lord has made," and I'm thankful to be alive in it. Meanwhile, I'm trying to think, see and hear things that are more cheerful than the weather outside.

That was a mistake.

Renoir must have been a cheerful chap, his pictures are so colorful. Even when his arthritis got so bad  he had to tie a brush to his hand. I think that was Renoir.

***

Mr. Reed's crew cleaned up the yard last week, so at least there are not many leaves and branches for the rain to wash around in piles. Lots of puddles in the back yard.

Doctor Zhivago

TCM is showing this film, and I'm posting this during the intermission. When I first saw this movie in the late 1960's, I thought it was the best movie that was ever made. I haven't changed my mind, and don't expect to.

(Wednesday:) However, I promise myself not to read any more Russian novels. Over the last 60 years, I've read three by Tolstoy, three by Dostoevsky, and one by Pasternak. Not to mention stories by the more cheerful Chekov, who if I remember right at least wasn't into axe murders or death by snow.

Of the Germans, I've read three Hesse novels and some Schiller plays. I've read two French novels in French, which is the best way to read them, as you're not quite certain what they're about. In junior high school, one of our books had a bowdlerized story about Cosette and Jean Valjean, which ought to be enough of Les Miserables for anybody, especially if you've seen the multiple movies. And I read about half of Don Quixote, and two-and-a-half Garcia Marquez works.

I also read Balzac's Pere Goriot (in English), and I liked it. And they're all good books, but from now on I think I'm sticking to English classics and American trivia. Once you've waded through Hemingway and Moby Dick, and yawned through Scott Fitzgerald and a few others, you're due a little entertainment in your retirement.

Book Signing

S

Date: Saturday, April 5, 2014
Time: 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Place: Leeds Arts Council

I went by the Arts Council yesterday and talked with Pam and Sandy, who set me up for a signing the first Saturday in April. They asked if I wanted to have refreshments. I could just imagine myself spilling libations all over everything, knocking over paper cups, etc. No, no refreshments. But I would love for everyone to come and give me moral support. I'm expecting a big crowd. Yeah, a great big crowd.

*

Cooking a pot roast for supper, and watching a good old movie--"Sergeant York," 1941. No wonder I always thought Gary Cooper looked old; he was 10 years older than my daddy. Also in this film are Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Noah Beery, June Lockhart and lots of other old stars.

*

Here I've sat wondering how to ask Jim and Liz Reed to let me have a book-signing at Reed Books in Birmingham. And just now Jim posted on Facebook inviting me to sell books there! I shouldn't be surprised. He has always been so kind and gracious, to me and other writers.

Wrote Myself a Book

It's here!

What do I do now?

*

It's listed on Amazon.com, but I haven't yet got it in an ebook.

NOTICE!!!

If anyone is trying to send me an email: All day today, when I try to receive or send email, this is what I get:

Unable to send or receive messages for the Charter (jocage) account. An incorrect password was entered. The next time you send or receive messages, you'll be asked to enter your user name and password for this account.
Server Error: 0x800CCC90
Server Response: -ERR invalid user name or password.
Server: 'pop.charter.net'
Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x800CCC92
Protocol: POP3
Port: 110
Secure(SSL): No

I've tried to find "help," but there ain't none. IT does no good to reenter my user name and password, I just get the same thing. I'm beginning to get annoyed.

I am old, Father William.

The last two books I've read, or tried to read in the case of the Roman one, had scenes or descriptions of people torn apart, one by animals and one by war, with their "nine miles of tubing" scattered over the landscape, preceded and followed by scenes of unutterable misery. Such prose is probably therapeutic in some way for the writers, and that realism is real is indisputable. But a couple of vicarious doses is about all I can take for a while. I need an antidote, maybe a little bit of Lewis Carroll.

 

***

 

Yesterday I saw that bobtailed squirrel up close. That is one weird-looking animal. Its face and underside are streaked black and gray, and the rest is either black or charcoal gray. The little old ratty-looking tail is hardly enough for him to lean back on. Wish I could get a photo of him. Or her.

So I Always Know Where To Find Them

Robert Frost, Alabama Wildflowers, Complete Shakespeare, Tennyson, Famous Ghost Stories, A Field Guide To the Birds, Twentieth Century American Poetry.

Waiting

Every morning I get dressed, in case UPS or somebody delivers a box of books, and I spend the waiting time getting some chores done. So this week I've paid the bills, renewed my car tag, submitted entries to the writing contests of Alabama Conclave of Writers (first chapter of a novel, and one poem), Ala. State Poetry Soc. and National Federation of Poetry Societies (a bunch of poems to each), done many loads of laundry, and kept the house from molding over, I hope. I tried to read a book about some druids who were inducted into Caesar's army and went to Rome, but halfway through it I couldn't take any more so quit.

Yesterday evening I went over to Sister Susan's for her birthday bash, and that was a pleasant break. We feasted on pizza, chili, ice cream, and the most beautiful birthday cake I've ever seen.

Jed went to Texas last week, and unless he gets lost in that enormous state, he'll be back in Atlanta this weekend.

A neighbor down the street threw away a shelf section built of heavy lumber, and I toted it up to my place, thinking I would lay it down at the end of the driveway and plant flower seeds in it. I've got leftover packages of marigold, catchfly, cosmos, forget-me-nots and Shasta daisies. Maybe Jed can help me get it set up, next time he comes over here. My little hyacinths are trying to bloom along the front walkway.

"If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
and from thy slender store
two loaves alone to thee are left,
sell one, and with the dole
buy Hyacinths to feed thy Soul. "
--SADI  (Moslih Eddin), 13th century Persian poet

A Very Old Poem By Me

Song For Thom, Too Hard To Sing

The first note and the final autumn leaf

fade, both battered by the lonely wind.
A snowflake whirls away a rain-gray tear
that covered up the mind.
Because there is no first note small enough,
no scale so real this singer can embrace it,
and since there are no fresh tears cool enough
to shed for Thom, or shed for winter winds
(however beautiful the shapes they blow
to nowhere out of hope),
the mind forgets the sea-washed symphony
of sunburnt melody, and only the snow remembers.

Because there is no grief

too large for late-born singers
of haunted broken harmonies of fear;
and as I, long since lost, forgot the way
to that high staircase where old melodies
and memories reunite; I relinquish then the face
that haunts the nows. And here’s
a wish for him who sends to nowhere out of hope
his face: this thought is as an orchestra
gone flat, a discord of Decembers.

The days keep drawing in,

the night is cold and dark without a star.
Because there is no grief too large
for too-late singers, and no handkerchiefs
for tears remembering too soon for sleep,
I’ll think of Thom, who could sing anything

and, thinking of him, I will not fear

to dance all night through glissandi of dreams.
And then, although the sun comes up,
I find the daylight is not brave enough
for my faint chords to imitate,
nor lyric so complete for mystery
to bind it to my real.
And so I sing no words;
I hum no lullaby without the words,
but wink away a rain-gray snowflake
that used to be a tear.
If Thom were here, he’d know how to sing it.

By Joanne Ramey, 1955
*
This a the final revision of a poem I wrote in 1955. So it's one of my oldest poems. I was at the University with no money, high school clothes gone raggedy and too big since I lost baby fat, but in spite of it all a big old loud-mouth boyfriend that I couldn't stand to listen to. But he was handsome and had cigarettes. I finally gave him to Adrienne.
*
Across the hall from me at Tutwiler dorm lived Eileen W. whose daddy was rich as old Jay Gould and owned about half of Florida. She lent me fabulous clothes for dates and other dress-up occasions. I will always love that girl.

Whoops, Mr. Moto!

Today I got dressed and mailed a couple of entries to the 2014 contests of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. I'm afraid that was my two chores for today. Well, I also went by the store and bought some more cans of green beans, which have become my favorite food lately. I can't cook green beans worth a flip, but I love the canned ones.

Hickory Dickory Dock

Late lunch, and I ate too much. Steak and gravy cooked fork-tender, mashed potatoes and green beans. I need to go back to my non-cooking mode. The clock doesn't have anything to do with it. When Jed was here last week, he saw one of Mo's old mouse toys somewhere and set it on the clock. I just thought it was cute.

Cyrano de Bergerac

The most beautiful work of fiction or drama I have ever read, the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. English language, literally translated into French (or any other language, I suppose), would probably strike French readers as more or less comical, or at least boring. I long ago read an almost literal English translation of Rostand's play; in spite of the stilted language, it was a beautiful work.

And then I discovered the Modern Library edition of Brian Hooker's translation of Cyrano. I have read this book almost to pieces. It is stained with spilt wine, coffee and tears.

I used to feel sorry for people who like to read, who have never read this book. But the pity for others has turned into a sort of miser's glee for myself. I own something precious that nobody else I know possesses. I won't urge it on my friends, because I've done so with other works and found myself disappointed by their judgment and comments.

The movie "Cyrano de Bergerac," made in 1950 and starring Jose Ferrer and Mala Powers, is very good. The book, the play, is exponentially better.