Oct 2, 2005 | Uncategorized
Saw Aunt Jennifer yesterday at the grocery store. She was 80 if she was a day and hunched over, carrying a great big purse. Her hair was dyed reddish-brown, and she wore a subdued plaid dress with support hose and clunky shoes. Her husband, a big man on the motorized scooter the grocery store provided, rolled up to the self-checkout while AJ pushed the grocery cart slowly behind. When she caught up, he jumped off the scooter (looking very spry) and proceeded to berate AJ.
“Quick, if you go out that door, you can catch her.”
AJ looks slightly confused, her gaze darting between the two exits closest to us.
“She's right out there, hurry up and you'll catch her before she goes.”
AJ heads for a door.
“Not that damn door, that door,” Uncle yells, stabbing the air with a beefy finger.
She was back a few minutes later, her quarry caught I suppose because Uncle wasn't rude to her again. I was so irritated I forgot to scan my twenty cents off butter coupon. The first rule of dealing with others is respect. She may be a horrible shrew who's ruined his life (I doubt it), but yelling at her in public is just wrong.
I hope she unsheathed her claws when they got in the car and told him not to ever embarass her in public again. I hope she told him he was a rude, insensitive old pig and I hope he felt so bad he apologized profusely.
I hope she doesn't just embroider tigers; I hope she is one. Mean old Uncle.
Sep 30, 2005 | Uncategorized
A discussion in my writers' group the other night made me think of poems and how to say so much with so little. A new person was there who writes poems. She's very young and undeveloped, but once she learns to hone those images, she'll probably write very good poetry. One of her poems was very good, and it was the most sparse of the ones she brought. Her imagery was right on, so I'm quite sure she'll develop as a poet so long as she doesn't give up (always a danger with writers).
I was inspired to go hunting through the store for one of my favorite poems. I read it to the group to mixed reactions. The fact it rhymes put some of them off, mostly because people have this idea that rhyming is passe, but when we discussed the imagery and what it meant, we began to come to agreement on the power of the poem. I've found this poem in many places on the web, so present it here in hopes I am not violating any copyright issues. I urge you to read more poetry by Adrienne Rich.
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
What does this poem mean? Is Aunt Jennifer physically abused or just oppressed, as a woman of a certain time would have been? Are the tigers representative of her spirit? Or are they merely masculine images of a freedom she can never aspire to?
There are many ways to interpret the poem, of course. I like to think AJ is repressed by patriarchal expectations of what a woman's role is, and that the tigers are representative of an unrepressible feminine spirit that remains unbowed beneath the outward manifestations of obedience. AJ the woman is broken by her life; AJ the spirit cannot be broken. Just my 2 cents and why I love poetry. 🙂
Sep 29, 2005 | Uncategorized |
Monday night, we stayed in Waikiki. I've never actually spent the night there, though Mike had a hotel room courtesy of the gov't for a month when he first got here. Since I stayed behind in Germany with our pets, waiting for them to complete the “quarantine” before we could enter Hawaii, I missed out on the experience. A year and a half later, I'm finally catching up.
We had a 13th floor room. I am afraid of heights, and so was a little wary about getting close to the edge of the balcony at first, but I mellowed enough to sort of lean on the railing for half a second before I plopped myself in a chair and stared through the bars instead. 🙂
Waikiki is blazing with activity at all hours of the day and night. We weren't sure what we planned to do, but since we checked in around 4 and were practically starved, we went down to Biba's and had drinks and an appetizer while waiting for them to start serving dinner at 5. I had a drink called a Tropical Itch (it even came with a back scratcher). I am not much of a mixed drink person, usually, but what the hell I thought. Mike ordered a Mai Tai. When the drinks came, I took a sip and nearly choked.
“What?”
“Bourbon,” I said, picking up the menu and reading the ingredients. How did I miss that?
“You can tell it's got bourbon in it?” Mike didn't quite believe it.
“Huh, can I,” I said. See, in the South, bourbon is the mixing booze of choice for teenagers (or was back in the 80s). I've had more Old Charter and coke (or Mountain Dew–yes, eewww) than I care to think about. I was a kid, though, so give me a break.
And then there was the time my mother and I sat at the bar in the Mount Vernon Inn and had a Mint Julep whilst waiting for Mike and his parents to complete their tour of our first president's abode. I don't remember why in God's name we decided to order Mint Juleps, except I think the enticement to drink a Southern beverage that used mint grown in George Washington's very own gardens was too tempting to pass up.
Neither Mom or I are whiskey drinkers, but it was that darned mint, I tell ya. So, we plop at the bar, peruse the menu, and order. I wish I'd known how Mint Juleps were made. I sort of envisioned a mixed fruity drink. I guess Mom did too. Um, no. Bourbon poured over ice and mint leaves. Supposedly, there's sugar in there, but danged if I tasted it. Needless to say, half an hour and one Mint Julep later, I was getting pretty sleepy. I don't remember much, except falling asleep in the car on the way home. ONE drink, dammit. Bourbon is burned on my brain for all time.
I finished the Tropical Itch with no side effects, thankfully. Mike decided to order one for himself, but I got a glass of house red instead. We ate dinner and strolled to the beach to watch the sunset. I know, I know, tons of sunset pics on this blog already, but it's too beautiful and I can't help it. Then we sat on the beach and watched the shark bait, er, tourists swim in the darkening water (Shark party, table for two, beachside. Special today is tasty arms and legs…)
We sat there for a long time, listening to the music from the beach bar and watching the stars come out. For some reason, country music was the order of the day, which seemed a bit incongruous. Finally, though it wasn't even 8PM, we opted to go back to our room where we sat on the darkened balcony, drinking a bottle of red wine we'd brought along and watching the twinkling lights of Honolulu. Far below us, a luau was taking place, so we had the pulsing drum beat of a Tahitian dance and then got to watch the spinning fire sticks wielded by a Samoan dancer as the drums tattooed faster and faster.
I was almost reminded of Marlow and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, of the mesmerizing drum beat in the night and of Kurtz's slow crawl to get back to it. But even with my eyes closed, the effect was ruined by the sounds of traffic and the voice of the luau host booming over the microphone. There was no native ritual calling me to lose myself in the primitive. Instead, I went to sleep high above the beach, tucked into a comfy bed, my dreams undisturbed by any sinister late night occurences.
Sep 29, 2005 | Uncategorized
Cribbed from Mark's blog:
http://www.hsus.org/
The website of the Humane Society. Help animals displaced by the hurricanes, and send your Congressperson a letter (on the website so all you gotta do is click it through) asking them to support the PETS Act, which would help keep people together with their pets during evacuations. Many of the people who did not evacuate stayed because they didn't want to leave their pets behind. As a pet owner, I understand this feeling. They aren't just dogs or cats or whatever, they're family. I've had Thumper for 15 years. Miss Kitty was with me for 18 years of her 19 1/2. I couldn't leave them behind. No one should have to make that choice.
Sep 28, 2005 | Uncategorized
“AUTHORS struggle, mostly in vain, against their fated obscurity. According to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks sales from major booksellers, only 2 percent of the 1.2 million unique titles sold in 2004 had sales of more than 5,000 copies. Against this backdrop, the recent Authors Guild suit against the Google Library Project is poignantly wrongheaded.”
See the rest of the op-ed here. Killer first sentence, eh? Makes you wonder why we write. Not sure I completely agree with the argument, but it's an interesting perspective and one worth considering.
And, just when you were thinking about getting discouraged, read this article about 21-yr-old Christopher Paolini, best-selling author of Eragon and Eldest. I haven't read the books, but I salute the kid for his success and his maturity in the face of it.
