A Pilgrimage to the Altar of Saint Helga
(for Andrew Wyeth)
But First Lunch
This room is a valley of flickering
firefly tumbleweed lights
between tall buildings
Lusty Lady – All Clothing 100% Off
winks the sign across the street
My son has found
a numerical pattern in the blinks
We are here to see Wyeth's Lady
clothed and unclothed
Helga in her incarnations
but first lunch
The waiter looks like Groucho Marx
Hear the sound of over fifty spoons and forks
the chatter of the crowd
my children's voices
Seeing Helga
We see Helga floating on velvet crush
her nighttime lake
Little trout of light swim
her body tide-pools
We see her in her Austrian coat
standing
for hours in the snow
with great discipline
We see her with her braids
the nape of her neck naked
where spine joins brain
a white triangle exposed
holy peephole
We see her smile creases
her blue eyes
slips of horizon over wild grass
and her hair
you can feel it
the soft order in those braids
We go home in dark and rain
the autumn trees light our path
every leaf
a flame
in a lantern
Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 10/15/2009
This weekend my best friend Veronique took our family photo's and they are stunning! She is an amazing photographer and I have been abundantly blessed to have her as my friend. We spent the late afternoon taking photo's in her orchard, filled with old farm houses and beautiful trees. I am so happy we were able to take some maternity photo's as well, Veronique has an amazing talent to bring out the beauty in everything. And made me feel beautiful as well, which is hard this days. After our photo shoot, we enjoyed dinner with Veronique and her family. It was a great way to spend a Saturday night! I loved every minute of my time there, and only wish we did this more often! I love each and every photo and i hope you enjoy them as well. If you are interested in Veronique's work check out her website: www.streetpoet.org.
Thank you Veronique for doing such a great job. You are WONDERFUL!
—Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays
Jon Stewart interviews Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show
(click interviews to watch video)
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A poem about walking up and down a hallway a dozen times a day, and studiously avoiding the closed door, the forbidden door, the door which if opened, "will only bring misery on thyself"
There is a door. There are no poems inside me for this door. Not today at any rate. The door is my daughter's and its been shut, more or less, since she left for a one month holiday, two months ago and never came back. No, she's not dead - she's just 'estranging'. I don't know why I am so devastated, shell shocked with grief and loss ... estranging is something my family excel at. I even saw it coming, not because we had problems in our relationship (we were quite close), not because she was lacking for something at home (we've got a pretty respectable life), not even because she had any big or horrible problem that most other 16 year old girls don't have. I saw it coming because its deja vu - patterns, converging. Hell, I even spoke to her about it before she left.
So there is a door. A month has come and gone and I still have not been able to walk through that door and clean up her room. I sit in tears even thinking about it. In fact, I cry, in the car, at work, in the kitchen, the shower and in bed. I've been to the doctor, refusing to take drugs that would numb me out, and stuff the hurt deeper. I've been trying to find my sea legs again. I remain awed by how deeply children can wound; how senselessly and how innocently they betray, how righteously they blame. I can't imagine what is going on for her at the moment. Our brief correspondence has been littered with ends, justifying means.
It doesn't mean things won't change, and we won't sort things out. Love is powerful, even more powerful than family patterns and history, or so I'd like to believe. But for today, there is a door and I cannot walk through it.
(And am happy about it!) The folks at Artbeads.com came across my creativity blog and offered me free stuff if I’d blog about their products. So I agreed, why the heck not?! They suggested I choose $35 worth of supplies so I did. (Score!!) They sent them and I opened them and LOVED them! I didn’t get around to doing anything with them for a while but then sat down one day a while back to make some earrings.
I’ve made two pairs of ultra sparkling earrings now and worn them both to compliments, thank you very much! Today they sent me a card with a $20 gift certificate in it as a way of saying thanks for the blogging… which reminded me to uh... blog something. (Check out the blog post I wrote here) Plus, there is a little coupon code worth 10% off your purchase if you should decide to pick up a few beads at Artbeads.com. The code is: “SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424” and it is good through 12/31/09… so pop on over and pick up a few things for your Christmas projects.
Are you prepared in case of a natural disaster? What do your plan and preparations include?
oh crap no...
yes, i live in Florida, it's the Lightening capitol of the US. We also regularly have hurricanes.
I don't even have one working flashlight. No extra food....nothing...
But lucky for me hurricane season is pretty much almost over, some rain from Ida and then the dry season will come on full force.