The books we need

Epigraph to Anne Sexton’s book All My Pretty Ones (1962):

… the books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation — a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

— from a letter of Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak

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Frightening and lovely!

Thinking about: how I really need to get serious about training the dog, all-black outfits, how much I dislike the word “outfit,” courgettes, lemonade, North Korea, if I will ever read fiction again, mantis shrimp, and the farmhouse smell and feel of our house (hovel) in the summer. (I am calling it summer now, since we hit 90°F this past week.)

Looking forward to this weekend: Kathryn is coming to stay with us, and then we’ll be traveling to see Catherine, Russ, Ava, and new baby Auden!

Small Wire

(c) Grace Farson Photography.

SMALL WIRE
Anne Sexton

My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web,
as doth the vine,
twiggy and wooden,
hold up grapes
like eyeballs,
as many angels
dance on the head of a pin.

God does not need
too much wire to keep Him there,
just a thin vein,
with blood pushing back and forth in it,
and some love.
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This is a funny and strange poem, but I will always recall these lines: “So if you have only a thin wire,/God does not mind.”

(And isn’t that photo by Grace wonderful? Taken somewhere in New Zealand, I think.)

Headed to my parents’ house this weekend for a family reunion, to celebrate Easter, my birthday, and the fact that Laszlo went on trial with an adopter this weekend!

Nothing to eat

There is nothing to eat,
seek it where you will,
but the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants
and the sea, yield it
to the imagination intact.

— William Carlos Williams

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I am looking forward to:

• Getting our yard in shape; planting things (pepper garden, onions, potatoes, flowers). I am desperate for some of our flowers to grow. The daffodils and tulips in the front yard have been taking their sweet time, probably because it’s been so unseasonably cold.
• Actual spring weather. This cold weather and the persistent threat of snow every weekend is really getting me down.
• Rescue adoption event tomorrow, to which I will be taking Laszlo. Here’s to hoping that he garners some positive attention!
• Reading again. I have been in a non-reading funk, mainly because caring for a puppy all day means that I have little ability to divert my attention to quiet, stationary pastimes. I think I have also lost a lot of enthusiasm for fiction, which has never happened to me before.
• Buying clothes and thinking about clothes and paring down my wardrobe. Still musing a lot on fashion and the importance of dressing well. I am reading a poorly organized book on British fashion, The Thoughtful Dresser, but it has inspired some thoughts. For instance: There is a reason why Paris and New York are hubs of fashion. In those cities, women are seen on the streets all day long. In contrast, there is a reason why Wyoming is not a fashionable center; women fulfill different roles (cattle wrangling?) and thus have no need for stylish, meticulous presentation in dress (functional presentation, yes, but no one would see you in vintage Dior even if you owned it). Something else I’ve been thinking about: Why is there such a lack of diversity in men’s fashion? Has it always been this way?

Happy Friday!

Is love an endless feast

(c) New City Arts Initiative.

“Is love an endless feast, or is it what people manage to serve each other when their cupboards are bare?”

— Krista Bremer, My Accidental Jihad

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A mesmerizing question from a wonderful essay from The Sun; something I’ve been mulling over during this season of Lent.

Kelsey and Alex are coming tonight, and I am occupied with dog transport for the rescue; moving a female puppy and Brando to their pickup destinations (on their way to new foster homes) and then hopefully receiving our new foster puppy today, if he can find a ride from Covington, Virginia. Busy, but I love it. I wish there was a way to earn a full-time living from dog rescue…

Another observation about dogs and fostering them: You start to care less and less about material possessions. My pants are coated with fur? Oh, well. The car is stinky and muddy from multiple dogs? It happens. Just so long as the dogs are happy.

If man would be alone

“But if man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”

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Indeed.

Hope you have peaceful weekends. Mine will be spent hovering over multiple calligraphy jobs, but I am feeling up for the challenge. Having the right equipment makes all the difference.

My momentum with Infinite Jest is slowing down a bit. I haven’t picked it up in a few days, and I feel that’s dangerous. I am currently stalled at page 666. That may also be dangerous.

You have a thousand prayers but God has one

NOT SO. NOT SO.

Anne Sexton

I cannot walk an inch
without trying to walk to God.
I cannot move a finger
without trying to touch God.
Perhaps it is this way:
He is in the graves of the horses.
He is in the swarm, the frenzy of the bees,
He is in the tailor mending my pantsuit.
He is in Boston, raised up by the skyscrapers.
He is in the bird, that shameless flyer.
He is in the potter who makes clay into a kiss.

Heaven replies:
Not so! Not so!

I say thus and thus
and heaven smashes my words.

Is not God in the hiss of the river?

Not so! Not so!

Is not God in the ant heap,
stepping, clutching, dying, being born?

Not so! Not so!

Where then?
I cannot move an inch.

Look to your heart
that flutters in and out like a moth.
God is not indifferent to your need.
You have a thousand prayers
but God has one.

Keep the windows open

Frenzy

By Anne Sexton

I am not lazy.
I am not on the amphetamine of the soul.
I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
Not lazy.
When a lazy man, they say,
looks toward heaven,
the angels close the window.

Oh angels,
keep the windows open
so that I may reach in
and steal each object,
objects that tell me the sea is not dying,
objects that tell me the dirt has a life-wish,
that the Christ who walked for me,
walked on true ground
and that this frenzy,
like bees stinging the heart all morning,
will keep the angels
with their windows open,
wide as an English bathtub.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

LOVE this poem. It hits me with such truth and deep, personal applicability today.

We are headed to Southern Pines for the weekend, to see both sets of our parents and, most of all, to meet precious baby Georgia! (Georgia being my parents-in-laws’ new puppy.) I can’t wait. I just hope Pyrrha plays gently and doesn’t try to snack on the wee babe.

Oh, and Happy Anna Howard Shaw Day!

Women who say they’re not feminists

“Because we need to reclaim the word ‘feminism.’ We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist—and only 42 percent of British women—I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it the freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue,’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?”

— How to Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran

To the attentive eye

(c) Erin Boyle.

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”

Economic view of human desire

It seems to me that the view of human nature that has taken on dominance in economic thinking over the last half-century always struck me as a little bit oversimplified and inaccurate. It describes people as wanting to consume. All people care about is consuming. It just never felt right to me. I thought people wanted to be loved…

— Robert J. Shiller, American economist and professor at Yale University, in a presentation I transcribed. 19 October 2012.