spring, schming

I do not care what love-addled poets may say about spring's blossoms; there is nothing more exhilarating than the zing and crispness of the autumnal air.

gifts of the day

Is there any food cuter than bok choy?

A lovely jar of fennel salt as a thank you for being a CSA customer.

it takes a whole village

are words from one of my all-time favorite songs which I've conducted.  And the phrase is floating around my head as I view a photo of my tribal elders at last week's beach holiday.

"It takes a whole village to raise our children,

it takes a whole village to raise one child,

we all, every one --must share the burden

we, everyone, will share the joy."

the arc of the day

Strange day of roiling warm fog to kick things off

Then, a very damp ferry ride to Bainbridge.

Tasty Vietnamese lunch with a cousin and a birthday gift drop-off to a wee 1 year-old.

Mist-ical city on the return ferry ride.

Bright sun on the walk homewards.

And a rainbow to wrap things up.

stunning & simple

are the words I use to describe yesterday.  It was the ideal day of autumn.  A perfect day for an ice-cream cone; such a simple pleasure and yet, as I sat and indulged, I realized that I hadn't had one since my road trip to California June of 09.  A good reminder to me that while this blog is about being aware of the daily delights, sometimes, one has to create them.

 

The flower boxes are glorious around town right now.

Another shot of my favorite glass mobile.

A good day for the coinage collection!

The happiness of a new peacock-tailed dish towel.

it's good to be the diva

brilliant sunrise

 lemon tart with a friend downtown

poster for my concert

Last night, The Rusty Chords, my retirement group of singers presented a fun program:

The Drinking Song from The Student Prince

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

Down in the Valley

Red River Valley

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

I've Been Workin' on the Railroad

America the Beautiful

God Bless America

Good Night, Sweetheart

Auld Lang Syne 

I had planned on presenting each of them with a signed certificate of thanks and a red rose.  They had planned on giving me roses as well as some lovely musical gifts.  (Not pictured is my umbrella--which was much needed and is in my car.)   

 I have numerous 'diva' signs and stickers and all my emails have it in the title line.  To me, being a diva is not about pitching fits and shrieking unreasonable demands.  To me, it is the highest level of professionalism.  When I embody a diva, when I step on stage, I am fully prepared.  My costume/clothes are perfect pulled together, and my music is READY.  And then I can charm and entertain the audience.

That, to me, is a true diva. 

better late than....

Having an intriguing conversation with a friend regarding language and today stumbled upon an used copy of Nietzsche essays on Schopenhauer and Wagner; and I am tossed again into the delightful pool of graduate school-level ponderings of the world of appearances, the constructs of language, etc. Reminded me of this poem--enjoy!

 

The Ghost of Walter Benjamin Walks at Midnight

by Charles Wright

The world's an untranslatable language
                                                  without words or parts of speech.
It's a language of objects
Our tongues can't master,
                                       but which we are the ardent subjects of.

If tree is tree in English,
                                     and albero in Italian,
That's as close as we can come
To divinity, the language that circles the earth
                                                      and which we'll never speak.

more cookies!

As it is pouring rain, seems an auspicious day to try my new stamps from Seaside.

felled by flu

Trying to find the delight in this (it's not even the good kind of flu where you can lose 7-8 lbs in a couple of days).  I guess I will say that it's delightful to stay home for the day in my jammies, pet Bogart and stare out the window.  Sometimes sitting still is good.

Autumnal Joy

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  ~Albert Camus

penny found at the service station

view from my pillow

summer at the Oregon coast...

sorry that it is blurred, it was pouring; these starfish are on all the light poles in Seaside.

do things really need a title?

When this is the weather,

it is time to pull out the mixing bowls and spices and molasses and bake.

The first tinged leaves on the ground!!!  This season gives me inordinate amounts of joy.

Today's sky defines 'crystalline'.

Three pennies (one of which is a new design) and the coffee fairy round out the delights of this day.

capricious heart

ritual

maya stein

Away from the instant orientation of home, there is still the instinct
for order. In the car, the Chapstick nestles in the well just under
the steering wheel. Gum lives to the left, with a set of napkins tucked
close in the event of spills. The water bottle’s upright in the cup holder,
the map sprawled open on the passenger-side seat. Whatever you need
is just an arm-length away, easily retrieved even in the throng
of traffic, or a curve on a high mountain pass. And this is good,
because the weather is unpredictable, and the highway long
and occasionally barren. The heart, too, is capricious, though here
you tuck everything else – your wanton wants, your certainty, your fear. 

eh. another day

Sun, having a dramatic entrance this morning.

If these don't ripen soon, I'm going to go all fried-green-tomatoes on their back side.

against hesitations

 

If you stare at it long enough

the mountain becomes unclimbable.

Tally it up.  How much time have you spent

waiting for the soup to cool?

Icicles hang from January gutters

only as long as they can.  Fingers pause

above piano keys for the chord

that will not form.  Slam them down

I say.  Make music of what you can.

Charles Rafferty

one year later

It's been a year since I moved into this current place.  Woke to a muffled world of fog this morning.

This was along my route to pick up my CSA box.  While a 1.5 mile walk is nothing at all...

doing so while carrying 20+lbs of produce makes it a challenge.  Ah well, at least it was not raining.

peace. stat.

These neon signs in my 'hood are most amusing.

words on wheels

I knew our visiting poet/author had arrived when I saw the car with California plates and poetry magnets all over.  The company that makes these magnets gave her a free batch as she is stopping by their plant in Minneapolis.

It was an amazing three hours of writing and sharing among the dozen of us that gathered.  I'm still decompressing from that (and from the choir's autumn kick-off as well as the annual Ministry Fair.  Not quite as crazed as an episode of the Vicar of Dibley, but oh so close.)

If you would like to recreate this in your cosy home, make something hot to drink, get a plate of nibbles and use these prompts/exercises:

• take eight post-its and write images from the last two days; choose one post-it and write the back story
• draw seven Scrabble tiles; create a word, pass it to the person on your left (uh-oh, guess this will be difficult on your own), write for 10 minutes using this word as a springboard
• read a poem (in our case, we drew one of the facilitator's from a cool wicker basket) and choose one phrase and create a poem or narrative from that one phrase
• write a 'how-to' manifesto
• and finally, choose a piece of clothing (or food) that you never wear, or that embodies you or that repels you

I came home with ten pages of my writing and this beautiful book (written/illustrated) by Maya.  A delightful way to kick off a new week.

un-titled

ripening tomatoes

'chicken' with lemongrass at a new-to-me Vietnamese restaurant

and a literal two cents found on my walk to a free lecture on Jung.

These are the delight of today.

poetry, poetry

perhaps next week, I shall have some poetry of my own to share--after this Sunday's workshop.  Until then, enjoy this homage to our current weather.

Black Umbrellas

by Rick Agran

On a rainy day in Seattle stumble into any coffee shop
and look wounded by the rain.

Say Last time I was in I left my black umbrella here.
A waitress in a blue beret will pull a black umbrella

from behind the counter and surrender it to you
like a sword at your knighting.

Unlike New Englanders, she'll never ask you
to describe it, never ask what day you came in,

she's intimate with rain and its appointments.
Look positively reunited with this black umbrella

and proceed to Belltown and Pike Place.
Sip cappuccino at the Cowgirl Luncheonette on First Ave.

Visit Buster selling tin salmon silhouettes
undulant in the wind, nosing ever into the oncoming,

meandering watery worlds, like you and the black umbrella,
the one you will lose promptly at the day's end

so you can go the way you came
into the world, wet looking.