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Posts from February 2009

My officemates

Myofficemates
Out my office window in the AM / February 2009

I heard wild noises outside my office window. Drawing back the curtains, I beheld my turkey vulture office mates on break. They strutted. They flapped. They swiveled their heads this way and that. They sat staring intently. They soaked up the sun on the rooftops and chimneys while I basked in the warm rays that streamed through my back window. Soon break time was over and the pack of them were off again soaring through the trees. I was left alone at my computer.

The pattern of my life

Patterns
Notorious Non-cooperative Knitting / bag before felting / Feb. 2006

“After a dead serious consideration of the effects of this committee's work and of my relation to it, I find that for the following reasons I must refuse to cooperate with this body.

... as a poet I must refuse to cooperate with the committee on what I can only call esthetic* grounds. The view of life which we receive through the great works of art is a privileged one — it is a view of life according to probability or necessity, not subject to the chance and accident of our real world and therefore in a sense truer than the life we see lived all around us. I believe that one of the things required of us is to try to give life an esthetic ground, to give it some of the pattern and beauty of art. I have tried as best I can to do this with my own life, and while I do not claim any very great success, it would be anti-climactic, destructive of the pattern of my life, if I were to cooperate with the committee. Then too, poets have been notorious non-cooperators where committees of this sort are concerned. As a traditionalist, I would prefer to take my stand with Marvell, Blake, Shelley and Garcia Lorca rather than with innovators like Mr. Jackson. I do not wish to bring dishonor upon my tribe.”

~ Thomas McGrath's Statement to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)


* esthetic: a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful


The light of heart and eye

Restoremywarmth
I take with me a taste of earth / Feb. 2009

Take me behind your eyes...
Restore the color of my face;
my body's warmth,
the light of heart and eye
and salt of bread and song
and taste of earth.

~ from "A Lover from Palestine" by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish