It rained in the night last night and I was up to see it. I went out into Judi's backyard and stood in the rain for awhile. It was about 3:00 in the morning and cold, very cold. I was in my pajamas, so I came back inside.
On our walk this morning, I wore my rain jacket, but it wasn't warm enough. Crunch and I went down to the big park for the first time in a few days. (I've been taking him on very abbreviated walks because his hips have been bothering him.) Across the road in the small park opposite the big park, a woman was doing some exercise, planks and high knees and such. She was dressed in a long sleeve t-shirt and capri leggings. Crunch wanted to stop and watch her for a bit and I let him, but only for a little bit. He's an old dog, but he's still interested in the world. I hope to be so, too, when I am an old dog.
Today I came back to the casita because our swamp coolers are getting hooked up and I am waiting for the guys to arrive to do that. When I got here, I had some cheese and crackers and a cup of decaf tea for a light lunch. I almost never drink tea because I would rather drink coffee, but I left the instant coffee up at Judi's house. I probably had time to run to the co-op for more, but I didn't want to blink and miss the workers. Kelly is here, too, and is going to take care of them really, but I wanted to be here to test out the coolers after they're hooked up and turned on.
I started to put away all the study materials I had left out when I went up to Judi's last week. I have a million blank 3x5 cards laying all around and I had left the printer set up on the kitchen table from when I had to print out my last homework assignment. I put all that away and I swept the casita. There's plenty more to be done, for sure, and one of my goals for the break between semesters is to do some spring cleaning. Sigh!
Later in the afternoon:
I was back at Judi's. Crunch and I watched part of an episode of SVU before Dave came. When Dave came, we gave Crunch his dinner and took him for a walk to the park, then we went out for a junky, drive-through dinner. I had a burger. We shared onion rings and tater tots.
While we ate, I showed Dave a hilarious video from Samantha Bee's new show, Full Frontal.
I love Samantha Bee.
When we were done with that, we got online and booked a flight to Minneapolis in June. (We're going to see the Flight of the Conchords when they tour this summer.)
Ah, it's the second to last day of poetry month. Let's make it a good one. How about Jorge Luis Borges, from 1938?
TWO ENGLISH POEMS
Por Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
I.The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.
II.
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghost that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather –just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer her that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow – the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment