tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72246527309192072762024-03-18T19:43:24.083-07:00Norm's Normsnormsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.comBlogger1262125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-10880020597411607272024-03-18T12:56:00.000-07:002024-03-18T12:58:13.998-07:00Spring Song <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">Spring is like a perhaps hand,</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"> wrote e.e. cummings, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">arranging, rearranging…without breaking
anything</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">light and dark in vernal equipoise</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">yet unstill in the commotion of spring,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">with all its myths rising from winter
bondage</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">like soufflés released as in held breath</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">while the world teeters in a fool’s
hands,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">narcissus bulbs loud with blather foul
the air</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">from high in the tower the potentate
gloats</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">while those</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">with illegal hands stoop below,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">Truth shredded as confetti</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">to be dropped on 5</span><sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"> Avenue snowing us</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">even as we are seeded then sprung</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">like those wild new-born poppies
splattering</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">the desert floor of Anza-Borrego.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">Fauvists at their outrageous easel</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">signify what Cummings called</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">the<i> great illimitable earth.</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">There is a<i> </i>Yes</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">after the final No,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">an urgency that persists, a pod</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">opening here and there,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">March madness.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">The number of red lanterns on the coral
tree,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">has doubled overnight to six,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">startled this morning by the juicy pear</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">under the bruised green skin,</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 115%;">a cycle saving me from ever ending.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><br /></p>
normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-88829537232991422882024-03-15T11:41:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:52:33.171-07:00Silence <p><i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Hearts, they shrink</span></b></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Pockets swell<o:p></o:p></span></b></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Everybody know. <o:p></o:p></span></b></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Nobody tell.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Buffy St. Marie <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Bad enough the noise. Incoherent blather.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Worse still, the loud silence<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">from those who know better but dare not utter.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">One Repub. said he’d rather lunch with Hannibal Lecter<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">than attend the party retreat.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">But still, but still, sealed lips in the chambers.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Congressional multitudes gone mute.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">A high decibel hush can be heard.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Spines wither in silence.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">American silence, same as German silence<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">of ninety years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Poets, too, are silent, aghast,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">having emptied their store of words.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Hoarse from pleas, obliquities on deaf ears.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I turn to the silence of fierce gusts,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">to the wrath of a Biblical sky<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">and finally, to the silent spring<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">ready to burst on the desert dance floor.</span></b><o:p></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-85168909557340920342024-03-11T09:21:00.000-07:002024-03-11T09:21:33.772-07:00Lincoln Boulevard<p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">You are the north and south of us, </span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">the missionary's road, before colonized by cars,</span></b></p><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">old sins paved over for new ones,</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Ugly as a mirror image, </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">beautiful as a Rauschenberg collage.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Lincoln, the emancipated street conceived in liberty </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">and dedicated to vehicles.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Showrooms, Sig Alerts and junkyards,</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Motors are revved and the yogurt is frozen.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Quick Lube, fast food, strip malls are naked,</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">palmists, paychecks cashed and graffiti.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">This is Americana where nobody walks. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Is that you, Walt Whitman listening hard </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">for bumper stickers singing? </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">O Captain, my Captain, turn away; </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">sprigs of lilac no longer bloom. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">We’ve emptied the wetlands in your name </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">and filled the open road with bumpers of chrome. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Lincoln, you are a gasoline alley </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">and your thick air is exhausted,</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">part funeral procession. part parade.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Yet, some still lean and loaf at their ease. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Surfers and surgeons mingle at the Cock & Bull saloon. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">A Suit stops a street vendor for a bouquet of roses. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Uber driver keeps a screenplay under his seat.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(Construction ahead- one lane)</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Where the created equal eat </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">sushi and salsa, </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">pad thai and pastrami. </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Here is our bo</span></b><b><span style="font-size: medium;">dy electric, </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">neon diners and </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">all-night laundromats, </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Pollock’s drip and </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Ginsburg’s <i>Howl</i>, </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">clear as a dusted frappuccino.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">We're here at LAX, </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">to disappear</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">into thin air.</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">We've made good time </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">on our way to elsewhere.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></b></div>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-73647542205461352362024-03-08T09:17:00.000-08:002024-03-08T09:17:30.319-08:00Imagined Places<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">My brother was an only child till I ruined everything. He
never quite forgave me for having been born. I'm told he had an imaginary friend he called
Borneo. I’m not sure if Borneo was a stuffed animal or a place to hide in which
case Arthur was way ahead of his time.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">He was born two months before the market crashed in 1929. Maybe
he got blamed for that. The Depression became his depression, whereas I swam
into this world two weeks after FDR was inaugurated and got credited for that.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">When war broke out, he was already at war with himself, defenseless
against the artillery of life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grew up driving Nazis from Stalingrad and
the Allied forces advancing across the front page of the New York Times.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">When I was about thirteen, plus or minus, my friend Stanley
and I invented a country we called Abaldabia. It was our Borneo. We picked an island, from the spinning globe, off the Siberian coast. What where we thinking? That’s
where dissidents were sent to disappear yet we probably imagined some Gulf Stream current
to make it tropical.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">By that time Arthur was stationed in Korea. Not so far from
Borneo. He returned still feeling ill-equipped. Suddenly I became four years his
elder. Perhaps I could impersonate an adult better than him. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Abaldabia is now my secret room, my sanctuary. From a spot on the map I brought it to my inscape. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">I've become fluent in the lost
language of imagined places. My passport to poetry, not for hiding but for launching.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Arthur was never at home in this world. Did he see Borneo when he drove his car into the side of a
mountain at age thirty-three? Perhaps he was telling us that <i>it was of Eden he was dreaming</i> all along.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-25414618216773256862024-03-04T08:35:00.000-08:002024-03-04T08:35:45.708-08:00Richard the Third <p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Having just watched the movie <i>The Lost King,</i> I was reminded of this blog I wrote in 2013. The film depicts the heroic work of a woman who had reason to believe Richard was buried under a parking area in Leicester, U.K. and, when shown to be correct, how the academics and politicians took all the credit. The King's remains proved he was maligned by Shakespeare reminding us that the Bard wrote at the pleasure of the Tudor Queen Elizabeth. </span>Art is not to be taken as history. </span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Speaking for Richard..........</span></b></p><p><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-weight: bold; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Better potter’s field than these five centuries under a parking lot. Ignominy was my lot in life and death. But now my bones are free for all to see. No twisted, withered arm, my back less hunched or <em>humped into a mountain</em> as Will Shakespeare had it, no unequal, limping legs, just a curved spine and shoulders asymmetric. Bad ink has maligned me and stained my fate on folio pages.</span></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Elizabeth</span></strong></st1:place></st1:city><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> called me that <em>foule hunch-backt toade</em> so her father’s thirst for severed heads would not suffer by comparison. As if my misshapen form had misshaped my deeds. They did worse than erase my name. One had me retained in the womb for two years. Another born too soon, unfinished, sent into this breathing world, scarce half made up… to disproportion me in every part. In death from <st1:place w:st="on">Bosworth Field</st1:place> they stripped my body and dragged me to display. In the history books it is written that my body was <em>despoyled to the skyne, and nothynge left above, not so muche as a clowte to cover hys pryve members </em>. . . <em>trussed . . . lyke a hogge or calfe</em>.</span></strong><b><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">But did I not hear the peasants jeer at their cursed act? I tell you I was loved in the forests and the fields, everywhere outside the court. Yes, yes I clawed my way to the throne. Treachery was in the air. But did I not ride to battle with the crown on my head? In my bones, from under cars and concrete I have been a student of the kings. Take note: I was the last monarch to die alongside his men. No Tudor lackey can re-write my bravery and the kingdom which but for a horse was mine. Nor can the chronicle deny I initiated bail to those accused, a beneficence which lives on forevermore. Is this the act of a usurper? Remember, history is merely the victor’s version.</span></strong><b><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Let this be <em>their</em> winter of discontent, while my grievances against the Bard’s mighty pen are redressed. If my visage seemed fierce and I chewed my lower lip, as reported, it may have been in compensation for my shortened frame. Yet it did not diminish the rage required to orate my call for peace between England and the Scots.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Let it be known that my first act as king was to ensure that the law of the land be administered fairly to all regardless of property or means. I allowed for petitions of the poor and set up legal aid for them in a Court of Requests, later abolished by my successor, Henry VII. Furthermore, during my mere two-year reign, I protected our merchants by prohibiting the importation of goods from abroad, exempting books which I encouraged for my people. Laws, henceforth, would be written in the common tongue, by my decree. During my reign sufficient benefits accrued to the populace, to generate an industry of defamation to my name by the opposition.</span></strong><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">From inside my subterranean tomb I have heard spoken scurrilous attacks that besmirch public servants even in this enlightened age. Deceit got ennobled in a master’s hand during my day. Today it just requires repetition.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hear my pleas. Yet shall my good name be restored. I feel it in my bones.</span></strong><b><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div><strong><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></strong></div>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-41938321717934532222024-02-29T15:45:00.000-08:002024-03-01T15:32:32.843-08:00About Dry Grasses<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Six of us went to see the latest film by the preeminent Turkish
filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The movie is called <i>About Dry Grasses</i>. The
grass doesn’t show itself till about the three-hour mark in this three-hour
seventeen-minute narrative. Until then snow covers the screen and also swallows
some of the subtitles. But I am not complaining.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">All six of us were enthralled by the stark landscape against
which the main character was shown to be sweet, artistic, mean-spirited and
duplicitous, by turns. Just when you might feel for him, he would betray your
trust and then you might get a glimpse of another dimension in his character.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">He is a modern-day Ulysses, pragmatic, amoral yet achieving
a certain humanity as he struggles for transcendence. He perseveres like my
orchid which has died three times and is now fighting for another rebirth. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Like Ulysses, he is a man of many turnings. I came away
thinking he is a self-deprecating version of the director / writer himself. At several
points we see the still photography of the protagonist which is clearly the artwork
of Ceylan. He is telling us not to demand purity. The multitudes within are
struggling to survive. As Tarzan said to Jane, <i>It’s a jungle out there.</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">My orchid has a tongue. It speaks fluent orchid. I see it
wagging, reminding me about her three weekly ice cubes to quench the parched roots.
The dry grass speaks to us of Nature’s cycles. Petals drop or get buried under
permafrost but thaw and regenerate like the human spirit. At one point we too might seem desiccated with despair,
then buds appear. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Over enchiladas, guacamole and strip steak we six agreed with ourselves, far from the Anatolian winter. Conversation flowed from the spring we contain wetting our meadow of dry grass.</span></b></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-21364373441643486542024-02-26T10:09:00.000-08:002024-02-26T10:11:46.314-08:00Norman Conquest <p><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;"><b>In the year 2066, a mere 42 years from now while most of us are enjoying our next </b><b>incarnation as butterfly, butter lettuce or butter pecan ice cream, it will be the 1000<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Norman Conquest. I intend to celebrate the occasion regardless of what shape I’m in. As invasions go, this one was momentous and not altogether destructive. I’m particularly pleased about that since they did it in my name. </b></span></p><div class="adn ads" data-legacy-message-id="18dddbe3650d2830" data-message-id="#msg-a:r-934680256855087939" style="border-left: none; color: #222222; display: flex; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding: 0px;"><div class="gs" style="margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; width: initial;"><div><div class="ii gt" id=":17o" jslog="20277; u014N:xr6bB; 1:WyIjdGhyZWFkLWE6ci0xMjU5NDIxODIxODQxODY2OHxtc2ctYTpyLTkzNDY4MDI1Njg1NTA4NzkzOSJd; 4:WyIjbXNnLWE6ci05MzQ2ODAyNTY4NTUwODc5MzkiXQ.." style="direction: ltr; margin: 8px 0px 0px; overflow-x: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="a3s aiL" id=":17n" style="direction: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 1.5; overflow: auto hidden; position: relative;"><div dir="ltr"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;">150 years before that, the French were ruled by Charles the Simple, who evidently earned his title. He accepted a horde of Vikings to occupy and protect a section of northern <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">France</span> which came to be known as <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Normandy</span> (Norse Men). Thus was Norman born. I just took a bow.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;">It was on an October Thursday. William, not yet the Conqueror set sail from northern France with a gaggle of wine-soaked men to defeat the more pixelated forces of Harold at the Battle of Hastings. This is where Michael Kitchen presides as <em style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspector Foyle</em>. He might have sniffed out the plot and defended the sacred shores but, like most European wars, this was simply a family squabble, not to be denied.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;">Normandy Bill, with some familial ties, was promised the crown by Ed the Confessor of England, who inconveniently died and Harold, his brother-in-law would have nothing of it. His throne was also being challenged from the north by the ruler of Norway. These were the days when <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Europe</span>’s monarchs were at each other’s throats, unlike today when everyone loves everyone else, except for you-know-who. </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;">It might also have been a food-fight in which French toast got the better of English muffins and the result was eggs Benedict. The <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Normans</span> had made better dishes to set before the king and so they did. Thousands came over to occupy British soil. They not only brought their latest recipes for technology in the form of weaponry; they also brought new notions of society, government and their mellifluous tongues. Mingling took place with the romance language of the <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Normans</span> marrying the more guttural Anglo-Saxon speech of the Brits. The result was a most profound effect in the evolution of language, with the eventual meshing of Latinate and Germanic we now call English and speak, for better or worse. </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;">At first only the court, administration and elite spoke French while peasants stayed with their old Saxon words. Over time the one trickled down and the other met it and merged. The word, <i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">government,</i> itself, traveled the channel in the period known as Middle English.<br /></b></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;">After a three-hundred-year orgy the new vocabulary became the common tongue. The old Brit words tend to be truncated and hard-edged while the French were often polysyllabic and lyrical. Those four-legged creatures in the pasture, sheep and cow, became French on the plate, mouton and chateaubriand or filet mignon. It is estimated that 10,000 French words have been folded into the English language. 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overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: auto; user-select: none;">Add reaction</div></span></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-1061582151649861752024-02-22T10:08:00.000-08:002024-02-22T10:08:41.730-08:00Bequeathed<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">I never knew my grandfathers and I presume they didn’t know
me. I didn’t know me either. However,
over time I’ve gotten to make my acquaintance. It may have helped if I had the
benefit of spending some time with my father’s father. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Therefore, I have had to invent him and imagine how my dad carried
himself with such an aura of equanimity, unruffled temperament and full presence
after a childhood of near destitution. He earned money selling newspapers on
street corners and was a runner, dashing from the single phone in the candy
store to summon a tenant in a four-story walk-up. He made Oliver Twist seem
real and never even asked for<i> more.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t think he ever read a book. Dyslexic perhaps. I say
this because we had no books in the house. Newspapers and magazines were
stacked up, scrupulously unread by him. Yet he managed to get licensed after two
years at Columbia College of Pharmacy, tutored all the way by my mother.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">In the 1920s, drugstores thrived largely due to Prohibition.
Four ounces of ethyl alcohol was dispensed for medical purposes, of course. I
was born when breadlines were the headlines but there was no dust in my bowl of
Wheaties.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">My father emanated an equipoise. It was as if any piece of
menacing news was balanced on his inner torsion scale with slivers of goodness.
If I found myself overmatched by the mean streets, he pacified my world.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">My grandfather, Louis, must have fled the pogrom singing
folk songs or, at least, humming them as he hid under a pile of potatoes. As he
made his way onto steerage, did he remember fiddling on the roof and imagining
himself a rich man? When the ship pulled into New York harbor maybe he saw pages of
Torah in the sky while others saw seagulls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Louis passed my father along to be raised by his
sister-in-law after my grandmother died. My father was three years-old but he had
the DNA to feel comfortable in his skin. He later played the mandolin in a
small band, a resource of music and the sun brought from the shtetl.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>My daughter Lauren just suggested to me that I may have this all wrong. It could have been my grandmother Annie whose extraordinary genes of centeredness and nurturing survived another day in my father. </b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-29872912839847214822024-02-18T11:26:00.000-08:002024-02-18T11:26:38.474-08:00Routines<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Ain't misbehaving this morning. I rubbed the anti-inflammatory Diclofenac gel into my bad knee, cycled for fifteen minutes on the stationary bike and
then did floor exercises to build up the musculature below and above the arthritic
knee. Yes, I’m advertising myself as a model nonagenarian. But don’t get the wrong idea.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">This is rare. I am usually loath to disturb my routine of
creative lassitude. I think about going on the bike but I’m told that doesn’t count. And
the thought of enduring exercise with short term pain and no immediate benefit
never had much allure.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The key word is routine. I can’t think of any ritualized
behavior I have adapted since I started brushing my teeth. The well-ordered
life is a transient state. Bring me a modicum of disarray. Something unexpected
is likely to emerge. I might even return to my bike.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Habit is the thief of meaning, so said some sage. The
sameness of daily activities in the same sequence robs one of creative vitality.
First this and then that feels prescribed to me. I want the next act to grow
organically out of the small chaos called life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I gladly make room for digressions. On my way to the kitchen I
spotted a pair of scissors which reminded me of cut flowers and how they sprung to life
listening to the music of Dave Brubeck and his signature song, <i>Take Five</i>,
written<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by Paul Desmond. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Constancy, it seems to me, is an illusion and tradition the illusion of permanence. To be alive is to be in the act
of. And that includes ample time for in-dwelling. As Wendell Berry
reminds us it is when the stream is impeded that the real work begins. It is in this
debris of life we live and we make something of it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I am aware that some of my favorite people cherish their rituals. I respect their discipline and honor the meaning it has for them. I almost envy them. Yet at the same time I know it is not my path up the mountain. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Am I going through life winging it? I like the idea of having wings but I don't think so. I sense an inner order with its own clock, values, resistance, creative bursts and baggage along with my heart's chamber music. And all of it, I would like to think, is ever evolving,</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Let it be known I left this page after the fourth paragraph
and pedaled from Patagonia to Prudhoe Bay on my stationary bike. It only took me 15 minutes.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-23133365773467262512024-02-15T09:10:00.000-08:002024-02-15T09:10:57.754-08:00How Tru, How Tru<p> <b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Too bad Harry isn’t around to speak to Donald. One was a …man, the other an…mp. A Tru-MAN, the other a Tru-(I)MP.</span></b></p><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Yes, I do love words. To stretch, pulverize and then dissect them to see what may be hiding inside. So here is the Imp writ-large, a demon or goblin noted for wild and uncontrollable behavior. He doesn’t qualify to be an ump. That would entail fairness and mediation between factions but he is already a faction, the guy who has moved the goalposts.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Both the 33rd and 45<sup>th</sup> president assumed the office at momentous times. The former presided over the beginning of post-war America. By any measure it was a new epoch. Our 45<sup>th</sup> POTUS seems to be ending that seventy-year period of America as a beacon, a defender of Europe through alliances and a promoter of free-trade agreements.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">To the admiration of their constituencies, both men were elected because they <i>said it as it is</i>. Harry spoke in short, clipped phrases. He was a citizen of the heartland, a plain-spoken man without rhetorical flourishes. The buck stopped with him. When his time was up in the oval office he simply got on a train at Union Station and rode, by himself, back home to Missouri. What you saw was what you got. Unlike the Imp.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Donald ventriloquized disgruntled Americans, particularly from the Rust Belt, orated in conversational style with locker-room vulgarities, schoolyard slander and a vocabulary of a twelve-year old. He stoked fear and long-simmering hatreds while all the time gloating as a celebrity. Truman lived with his famously insufferable mother-in-law in a small town. Trump lived on top of his tower in Big Town.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">HST was a quick learner. He had to be after being sent into the next room by FDR which rendered him out of the loop regarding the Manhattan A-bomb Project and all matters pertaining to meetings with heads-of-state at Yalta and other summits. His load was the heaviest of any president. Twenty-five days after taking office Germany surrendered ending the war in Europe. Two months after that he met at Potsdam with Atlee and Stalin and weeks later made the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Pacific.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">I cannot imagine our Imp presiding over the carnage and restoration of order in the world, with millions of refugees and displaced persons seeking asylum, returning G.Is looking to the government for educational opportunities along with labor unrest, segregated armed forces and the transition to a peacetime economy.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">When I was fifteen the 1948 election campaign was underway. I<i> w</i>as a staunch supporter of Henry Wallace, the Progressive party candidate. Unlike other kids doing normal things like stealing candy from Woolworths or sniffing airplane glue I was scurrying from floor to floor in every apartment building for blocks at-a-time distributing political material attacking both Truman and Dewey. Forgive me, I was living in an idealized world built on peace and justice. We had Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger to sing ourselves to an imagined place. Truman, of course, prevailed beating Dewey and also trouncing all that truth I had slipped under doors which went unheeded.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Looking back I have a greater admiration for Truman. He had to emerge from Roosevelt’s long shadow and he did, steering the nation through a troubling period. There are several areas where he fell short but compared to our new president he shines with a bright and true light.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">One TRU stood for truth and trust and the other for trumpery and truancy, truculent...and the waste of a trumpet.</span></b></div><br />normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-64087770715436805072024-02-11T16:41:00.000-08:002024-02-12T11:51:41.064-08:00Joy in the Shadows <p><b><span style="font-size: large;">How to walk the valley of shadows,</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">air thick with maladies<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">and still feel the joy.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I’m far too old to die young<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">but too young at heart<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">to ignore the getting up morning,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">sunrise on schedule, marmalade sky.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">sun in the cantaloupe, a slurp of juice, <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">the miracle of unburnt toast.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Music of the sphere drowns the dirge.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Glenn Gould on Alexa, hands flying.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Blooms are actual, doom merely an attitude.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Petals over nettles in the bowl.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Seeds triumph over weeds. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">What falls feeds the soil. Seeds will sprout.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The weeds of words<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">limp from the lies they carried,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">limp from Valentine's Day verses.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Yet we need to shout our love for this life,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">for this breath, this </span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">irrational exuberance</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">particularly now against the miasma<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">as if our furniture were not just furniture<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">but the bent wood of artisans<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">and fabric, woven with devotion.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The random scatter of papers,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">remotes and books on the coffee table<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">is a still-life of exotic flowers to Dutch masters.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The messiness of a lived life, the art of it all.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-52544957830228872602024-02-07T12:29:00.000-08:002024-02-07T13:29:49.811-08:00Blank<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Peggy had a thing for small notebooks. She always had one or
two in her purse; tiny pages for big thoughts. When she died about 2 ½ years ago I found over a dozen of
them in drawers and pockets. Most had phrases she had read, observations or
fragments of overheard conversations but they filled only a few pages. The rest
of the pads were empty.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I wonder about those blanks. They too were a presence; a
white space for contemplation. The interval that made the music. The 4 minutes,
33 seconds of silence John Cage dared to present to make the audience create
its own music. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">A writer writes as a way of not speaking. (Marguerite Duras). There is a pregnant
hush out of which an inner voice is sometimes made audible and shared. The extroversion
of the spoken word is born and borne from a well of introversion. Peggy’s poems
were the small exudate or nectar which the vast silence within her flower yielded.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">In a comedy routine, when confronted in a hold-up with the demand,<i>
Your money or your life,</i> Jack Benny famously answered,<i> I’m thinking, I’m
thinking,</i> after 17 seconds of silence<i>. </i>That silence got one of the
longest laughs ever noted in radio history. Humor aside, he was confronting an
existential moment. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Nature abhors a vacuum and noise abhors silence. Noise is on
the menu at every restaurant. If it's not chatter, it's loud music to show it is a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>happening place. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Our heads are filled with
the cacophony of our times and at high decibels as if to disallow conversation
or, God forbid, introspection. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">Nobody can listen in to the imagination, the quiet night of the soul from where subversive ideas might spring.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">War is failed diplomacy. The sentences that filled the sheet of paper were insufficient so barbed words became shrapnel and bodies blown to smithereens. War is hard noise until it raises a white flag surrendering to kinship.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The blank slate is how we come into this world. We scribble our
improvised lives and gradually learn the margins, then risk overthrowing them. The
white space gets ignored yet it is always there, like sky, a white canvas, an inscape where we
meet ourselves. </span></b></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-60212855722636453992024-02-05T11:09:00.000-08:002024-02-05T11:09:33.253-08:00Weather and Climate <p><b><span style="font-size: large;">The difference between weather and climate is that nobody is
a weather-denier. Weather has become poetic. Who can resist the plume of moisture
stretching from Hawaii as a pineapple express becomes an atmospheric river? Suddenly
I am sailing downstream with Huck Finn and Jim or on the high seas with Ishmael and Queegueg and no
Ahab in sight.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Weather is in our face. Flood and mud. Water table rising. Power
lines down. The havoc among trees. Cars half under. Weather is a grounded
poem.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Weather is what we almost never have here in this collection
of outskirts called Los Angeles. It is so ho-hum. 72 and sunny, no relief in sight………until now,
all of a sudden we have returned to the elements. What next, seasons? A time to sow,
a time to reap. Could be an alignment with the grand cycle. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">L.A. County is so vast parts get pummeled while other areas remain parched. We are 800 sq. miles larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Is that possible? So says Google. Flowers with their throats open for a drizzle on one end while cascading debris causes evacuations on the other. </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Weather is the offspring of climate. Abuse the air and the
forecast gets super-charged. It used to be, It's ra<i>ining, it's pouring / the old
man is snoring. </i>If he slept for centuries, he is now awake. We have messed
with Father Time and Mother Nature and we’ve gotten hundred-year storms and droughts
every few years. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Glaciers calving, sea-levels rising, islands sinking, crops
failing, millions migrating. Have a nice day. We now know why there <i>ain’t no
sun up in that sky / Stormy Weather.<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">There was a time when plant-life overran the planet. They
inhaled all that carbon dioxide, stored it and exhaled oxygen. As flora decayed
it became coal and oil. Temperatures sank in what is now known as the Ice Age. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">We are now reversing Earth’s respiration and choking on CO2. Bring back the
forest, the greenery and halt the mining and drilling. For a favorable weather
report scrub the sky and let sun and wind power us to ever after.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-87953409963603864692024-02-01T13:45:00.000-08:002024-02-01T13:45:55.201-08:00Finding My Balance<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">I’m tilting this way and that. It happens. Life has narrowed
so I get to feel the walls allowing my fingers to touch the margins. What
margins? I swing from silly to serious, still evolving in soft clay. The mudpuddle
of words. The blurt of my heart. From the contrarian No and Nor in my name to
the OM. The long stare, the blank ahead and faded album I clutch. What if I
fall? Let it be like petals of the orchid which regenerate. What if I lift?
Carried away by a poem in my folder marked <i>Poem by Others.</i> Extend my
reach? The whole ball of wax. It’s a new ball game. <i>I don’t care if I never
come back.</i> Only for an hour or two like one of those paddles with a red
ball attached. Now there is Donald, the enormous dartboard in my head I cannot
stop targeting. Yes, you can. No, I can’t. He has helped me define whom I hope
I have never been. Thank you for that Donald, now please leave. I need a deep draft
of good air. There is wind in the word window visible now in the sway of trees.
In my next incarnation I want to know the names of trees. Not for mastery; only
as a salutation. Early on they were called 2<sup>nd</sup> base or the goal line.
Now I can commune with the folds of eucalyptus bark or the reptilian roots of
old-growth ficus slithering. In summer months friend Dean and I get carried
away in conversation under the umbrella of an ash tree with its winged yellow leaves.
The hardwood is used to make baseball bats and guitars. I find a balance
between these two.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 266.35pt;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><o:p></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-1766634027546720142024-01-29T10:19:00.000-08:002024-01-29T10:19:16.356-08:00Where The Grapes Of Wrath Are Stored <p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Both my teams lost in the runner-up to the Super Bowl which
proves I looked into my crystal ball through a glass darkly. It’s safe to say
that folks could become very wealthy if they followed my picks and bet on exactly
the opposite outcome.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t always so. In 1949 I became the headline on the
back page of a New York City paper for picking seventeen winners out of twenty
college football games in a week of many upsets. The newspaper happened to be
the Daily Worker and I expect that notoriety rewarded me with a file in J. Edgar
Hoover’s office. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Worse still, I believe my prognostications became the breadcrumbs
which brought two F.B.I. agents to our front door. When my father stood his ground
and would not give names of others to the men in suits, he was summarily fired
from his job the following day. His silence was his spine.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">As a measure of how far we have come as a country, The F.B.I.
have become the good guys protecting our democratic institutions from
barbarians at the gate. Hoover has been hoovered out of our collective memory.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Football has become the national pastime edging out baseball
which belonged to a more pastoral era when a slower pace was our rhythm. It is
basically a board game on grass. Hitting a projectile with a piece of wood must go back to cavemen swatting at tse-tse flies. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Football is territorial, as befits colonialism. It is trench warfare battling over yards
as if their lives depended on it. To reduce the carnage of war to an entertainment of contained violence is both a way of expiating hostilility and legitimizing it. In yesterday’s game the Lions lost which
means the opposing gladiators won. It wasn’t always thus. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The United States currently has over two million servicemen and
women stationed in bases all over the globe. A staggering number yet a small fraction of
the 117 million expected to watch the Stupor, I mean Super Bowl game in two
weeks. One hopes we can sublimate our aggression through this most American high holiday which rearranges the great divide for a few hours.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-80243491491111937412024-01-26T15:41:00.000-08:002024-01-27T09:25:44.732-08:00Merging<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">I’m for it. The way column A drifts over to column B. Sweet
and sour, hot and pungent. How Oppenheimer
is both a big movie and a small one. And American Fiction is a serious spoof. If
you think you know me, you don’t know the half. </span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Wouldja-couldja. Couldja-wouldja. Apple-pears and fusion foodja. Hybrid gender. Hybrid cars. Quantum particles Quantum waves. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Watching the ice-skating championships, I was transfixed by
the artistry, the precision of the couples, the lifts and the landings. Awe describes
my state of mind yet it is also a sport with triple Lutz and toe loops. The
commentators talk about a wobble and bobble. All I see is the sublime.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For the unknowing eye baseball is boring; football, brutal
and basketball is swagger. For those of us with arrested development like
myself, basketball is balletic, football is chess with stretchers and baseball, life itself. I am now rounding third on my way home; with no clock to be
seen this could take years.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">When Donald first reared his artificial head I saw Bozo the
Clown, P.T. Barnum, then Adolph and Benito, Jim Jones, Richard III and finally Vladimir Putin The question still remains: handcuffs or straight jacket or both? His mouth is a weapon of mass destruction. The calculating manipulator and mindless sociopath have merged.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">In the literary world a memoir is likely to have as much fiction as a novel and a book of historic fiction sprinkled with provocative ideas. Some narrative poetry reads like an anecdote.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I started writing poetry about fifty years ago in between
labels as a pharmacist. After my work found its way into literary journals, I
began to question what made this a poem and not a paragraph. There began the
merging. Some words sing; some need line breaks but others shed the stanza and
were comfortable as prose </span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">or blogs. There may be poetry hiding in the sentences.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">My first book is entitled <i>The Marriage of Everything</i>. I see
life as a web of connective tissue. The rose with its scent; the rose with its
thorns. Petals as life ephemeral; thorns as death daring. The two in a melodic
dirge. The streets of Laredo. Mack the Knife. Donald testing the fiber of
democracy. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe, just maybe, we needed this historical moment to pause
and value what we have achieved and the fragility of its tremble. From the merging comes something emergent. </span></b></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-77088684521804064012024-01-22T08:36:00.000-08:002024-01-22T08:36:41.899-08:00Incapable Words<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The separation between</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>squiggles on the page and the actual.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Between the word and the sword.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>How one letter turns it to blade,<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>severed flesh, blood, anguish.</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>How to write of rage, of parched throats.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Incapable words, incapable rockets and bombs.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Words scattered<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>like limbs under rubble. <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I could talk of weeds sprouting<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>to flowers, how they bend <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>toward the sun as do humans<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>in a kind of tropism of our own<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>but that is nowhere in evidence.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Unlike heads of state <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>and as yet non-states,<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>a poem must not lie.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>There can be no poetry, nothing <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>that hasn’t already been said<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>in curses, screams and prayers.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Each day, unspeakable.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-74263270736747182362024-01-19T09:22:00.000-08:002024-02-09T22:29:33.576-08:00The Movie Version<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps it has always been thus. The mass audience which got
through the Depression on the choreography of bar-room brawls and Busby
Berkeley dancing their way out of the dark through the Dust Bowl and unemployment
lines.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Didn’t everyone wear tuxedos and sing in the rain? Crooked
politicians and con men were dead giveaways by their mustache alone or their corpulence
or the fake watches up their sleeves.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">If I told you that a scene in the <i>Grapes of Wrath</i> was filmed
at the intersection of Sawtelle and National Boulevards or that Atlanta was
burned down in <i>Gone with the Wind</i> on the NW corner of Culver and Overland, you
wouldn’t want to know. We love our illusions.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">It’s not a bad thing. Movies were our <i>letters of transit</i>. Our imaginations got fed and prepared
us for the narrative poem we were to live. Our epic lives have made room for
many stanzas. Somehow, most of us figured out what was actual from what was just
satisfactually part of the myth. Dorothy knew she was not in Kansas anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">We lived through our Iliad called Vietnam. Ulysses came
marching home and ten years later was homeless with a <i>hole in his arm where
all the money goes.</i> (John Prine song, <i>Sam Stone</i>). The working class had the best songs
but lost their way down <i>Mean Streets</i> to the slogans of the movie star in the Oval and the red tie
with the bogus hair in the tent playing Elmer Gantry. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">We left Atticus Finch behind for Tony Soprano and Vito Corleone’s <i>Godfather</i> made Gary Copper's sheriff<i> </i>in<i> High Noon an offer he couldn't refuse.</i> Power is the operative word. Where is Frank Capra to grab
the MAGA minions by the collar and remind them why we fought WWII?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><o:p></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-8326303471850289892024-01-16T09:26:00.000-08:002024-01-16T09:26:58.614-08:00William Trevor <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Raise your hand if you have never heard of him. That’s what
I thought. Yet he should be a household name among the literati along with
Hemingway and Faulkner. Trevor has been cited by the New Yorker magazine as the greatest writer of short
stories in the English language, the equal of Chekhov.</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Trevor died about eight years ago. He was born in Ireland
but lived his writing life in the U.K. He was a frequent contributor to the New
Yorker magazine yet never quite became celebrated in this country perhaps
because he didn’t tour the U.S.; at least he never knocked on my door to
autograph the twenty-one books of his on my shelf.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Two of Trevor’s many novels were made into movies. But I would
say it is his twenty-two books of short fiction that will be long remembered.
He started out as a sculptor and his stories have the feel of having been
carved from a larger mass with only this shaped block of clay remaining. The
narratives are of a piece, scrupulously chiseled yet effortlessly rendered. A
back story is presumed but not stated. It is as if we have entered in the middle
of a chronicle and what’s to come is only to be surmised. Demands are made upon
the reader, an enriching journey.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>His people range from the privileged to the impoverished. He seems to inhabit all of them including a homeless man I wouldn't want my sister to marry... though I've never had one. </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>My friend Adele and I have started to read his stories aloud taking
turns, over the phone. Great fun. We discover the characters as we go along. Trevor
is a masterful noticer. He picks up on overlooked or casual details which move a
person to new consciousness. His genius is the way the insight slides in without calling
attention to itself. Sometimes just through his pitch perfect dialog or a layer
revealed between the words.<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Here is a poem I wrote after we read his short story
<i>Cheating At Canasta.</i><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-size: large;"><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-size: large;"><i>How he returned to Harry’s Bar as promised</i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>remembering those final days <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>in her slow decline when, <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>with a sleight of hand, he cheated at Canasta <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>to let her win, eliciting a faint smile<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>the way waiters changed the tablecloth<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>with a certain panache<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>to the delight of those at the next table.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Something overheard, or a glance<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>becoming an avalanche.</i><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Trevor’s characters most often carry predicaments. They may
be troubled or lonely and who isn’t. This is something I wrote after a Trevor
story which seemed to merge with a documentary I was watching on Edward Hopper.
The painter’s wife was his only model. She was an accomplished artist herself
who subordinated her work to her husband’s domination. <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The
solitary woman in the automat<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>could be
a wife betrayed <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>in a
suffocated life <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>as
someone crushing saltines<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>into a
bowl of <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: black;">consommé.</span><span style="background: white; color: #4d5156;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><i>Her lover was the catalyst <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><i>between the lines<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><i>who allowed her to see <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><i>beyond her marriage<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><i>even as Hopper’s wife <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Black",sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><i>was slowly dying under his paint.</i></span><o:p style="background-color: white;"></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b> </b></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b> </b></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b><o:p></o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-71758101075954374572024-01-12T19:37:00.000-08:002024-01-15T17:02:32.060-08:00Inalienable Right <p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Among the inalienable rights Thomas Jefferson enumerated in his self-evident truths I contend that a good night’s sleep should have been at the top of the list. Maybe that is included in the pursuit of happiness or maybe T.J. fell asleep while writing the Declaration of Independence. I doubt his slaves ever slept very well.</span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Thomas, my good man, how am I to attain life and liberty without a good night’s sleep, I ask you. And how else to dream the American dream without quality shut-eye? After all we spent a third of our lives with our head on a pillow. That adds up to about thirty years for me. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here I am at midnight thinking about virulent mutant strains but enough about Trump. I know there are some people who fall asleep as soon as they go horizontal. This is a talent for which I would gladly trade my skill-set except I have nothing much to barter. I can't surf, ski, sky dive or slam dunk and I've never been submerged into a shark tank. If I hadn't slept so many years maybe I could have mastered one or two. The list of non-achievements is enough to keep me up another hour.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">The older I get the harder it is. At least I have no memory of fitful sleep as an infant unless an errant diaper pin was sticking into me. And then there was the dreaded colic. No, not colic, please. (Eight decades later that morphed into GERD). </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">I logged in my eight hours all throughout high school. In college I had a few nights when I forced myself to stay up cramming for some exam which tested our rote learning. Over the next sixty years I drifted off with all my synapses and neurotransmitters seemingly in sync. And then they weren’t. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">As if in compensation for diminished cognition my brain asserts itself around midnight. I start thinking great thoughts. I know they are great because I can’t remember any insights the next morning. Big ideas call for big erasures. Great thoughts get mixed up with the mundane and shards all of which make for sludge; the kind of sludge that sticks in my craw, wherever that may be.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">I lay there reviewing my life, parts of which should be boring enough to put me to sleep. At least they would put anyone else to sleep. Eventually, just as I’m about to nod off I think I may have to pee. Better get up. No, don’t miss the chance to drift away. No, get up you fool! So, I do and now must start all over again. I could try my old mantra:<i> Beaujolais. Beaujolais.</i> Yes, I feel it working. It is an intoxicating potion. If I wake up drunk I’ll know it worked.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "a mere slip of a serif"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, what works on Monday no longer works by Wednesday. My sleep apparatus is like the coronavirus. It creates variants or more accurately, tolerance. Yesterday’s soporific brew is tomorrow's ho-hum. The subject has me flummoxed. I'm thinking about those rights endowed by my creator. My lids are getting heavy. Don’t speak. I’m off. </span></span></p><div class="nH aHU" style="color: #202124; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; position: relative;"><div class="nH hx" style="color: #222222; min-width: 502px; padding: 0px;"><div class="nH" jslog="20686; u014N:xr6bB" role="list"><div aria-expanded="true" class="h7 ie nH oy8Mbf" role="listitem" style="clear: both; max-width: 100000px; outline: none; padding-bottom: 0px;" tabindex="-1"><div class="Bk" style="border-bottom-color: initial; border-bottom-style: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-radius: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); border-top-style: solid; border-width: 0px; float: left; margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative; width: 516.8px;"><div class="G3 G2" style="border-bottom: 0px rgba(100, 121, 143, 0.12); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-radius: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div id=":yp"><div class="adn ads" data-legacy-message-id="185a3aff0283718d" data-message-id="#msg-f:1754779871747469709" style="border-left: none; display: flex; padding: 0px;"><div class="gs" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; width: 444.8px;"><div class="ii gt" id=":ym" jslog="20277; u014N:xr6bB; 4:W251bGwsbnVsbCxbXV0." style="direction: ltr; margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="a3s aiL" id=":yn" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1.5; overflow: hidden;"><div id="m_-325112371872680031ydp9578fe38yahoo_quoted_4076467384"><div style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div><div id="m_-325112371872680031ydp9578fe38yiv8669634650"><div class="yj6qo"></div><div class="adL"></div></div></div><div class="adL"></div></div><div class="adL"></div></div></div></div><div class="hi" style="background: rgb(242, 242, 242); border-bottom-left-radius: 1px; border-bottom-right-radius: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: auto;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-13002598653364322092024-01-09T15:08:00.000-08:002024-01-10T20:47:20.083-08:00For Crying Out Loud <p><span style="font-size: large;">I<strong> was a cry baby, my mother announced to anyone who would listen above the whines of her cranky baby. That probably caused me to cry even more. I don’t know why I cried so much. Maybe I was feeling the pain of the dust bowl farmers or the rise of Nazism or maybe there was an open pin on my diapers. She also said I had chronic ear aches. That news sort of got me off the hook.</strong></span></p><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The fact is that I was probably late controlling my lachrymal glands. I have memories of tears filling my eyes around age seven when someone would look at me for what seemed to be an elongated moment. It was as if they were seeing into the shambles of my mansion.<br /><br /></span></strong><div><strong><span style="font-size: large;">I also remember crying over certain scenes in movies. Not over dead soldiers but when news reached the family I shared in their grief. Yet my weeping was somewhat selective. I didn't weep over opponents of Joe Lewis when he beat them to a pulp in the first round. Of course, this was conveyed over radio. </span></strong></div><div><strong><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></strong></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><strong><span>At some point I learned to control my tear ducts like the rest of my gender. Boys simply don’t cry; we learn to stifle the flow though I wonder if ingesting all that salt erodes the soul.</span></strong><strong><span><br /><br />I’m sure I must have cried over the decades. There was plenty to shed tears over. The next big cry I had, which stays vivid in my mind, was when my father died in 1976. I literally could not stop. When Peggy died I cried a river. The salinity of those tears was of a greater order than any. <i>Grief is love with nowhere to go.</i><br /></span></strong></span></div><div><strong><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></strong></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><strong><span>It isn’t so much sadness or even distress that prompts my tears these days. It seems to be a sudden, raw burst of empathy or </span></strong><strong><span>spontaneous compassion</span></strong><strong><span> with a person most vulnerable. There is a point in which walking in the other person's shoes may be counter productive and tears become a hinderence to dispensing needed care. But tears issue unbidden. They come not from the bombing of a city but from the helplessness or humiliation of an individual. It is an outpouring; an identification with anyone being caught emotionally naked. </span></strong><strong><span>I can imagine having an emotionally intimate connection with a friend, which touches a nerve provoking tears neither from pain nor sorrow.</span></strong></span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><strong><span><br />Not having access to our tears may prove to be a more serious deficit than going through life as a cry baby. Maybe it takes decades to free our crying self from layers of inbitions. Yet s</span></strong><strong><span>ome of us simply do not get teary and that's alright too. Dry tears may be enough. If we cried for all the suffering in the world we might flood the planet.</span></strong></span></div></div><div><strong><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></strong></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I cry for you Alabama. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>We've seen your lashings. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>We've seen your lynchings. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>You've lost your compass.</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>You broke your promise.</b></span></div>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-42703502637881493012024-01-07T11:10:00.000-08:002024-01-09T15:07:08.243-08:00What In Tarnation<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Early on in my pharmacy days of sorcery and alchemy, I
remember compounding something called ichthyol ointment using a slab and spatula. It was a thick black, gooey substance extracted from
oil shale and used for eczema, psoriasis, acne and other rashes when the dermatologist
had run out of options. At least it made the patient feel as if he were
enduring a burden which just might warrant a miracle healing. Fortunately, it
was water soluble unlike coal tar.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">This came to mind as a roofing company has been at work for
the past month applying this sticky, viscous substance overhead while
saturating the air with noxious fumes. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">At least, with the roof sealed, raindrops won’t keep falling
on my head. In fact, they never did since there is a neighbor above me. The machine
used to heat the tar was placed just outside my window. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Toxic smoke lifted right into the upstairs living room causing
a choking cough and depositing a black film on his table. He even took a photo
of the tar-filled cloud in his apartment.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t dare complain. I’ve been living in this
rent-controlled apartment for thirty-nine years. Black Lung Disease might be the
price I have to pay. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">God and landlords work in mysterious ways. I expect they
are both planning a gala bash when I am carted out, feet first. If it rains
that day like it does in movies, I can be assured no leaks will drip on my long
goodbye.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">As for tarnations, the word has nothng to do with tar. It is just a euphemism for damnation which, come to think of it, may be my fate with every inhalation. </span></b></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-79707398101591540172024-01-03T09:32:00.000-08:002024-01-03T09:37:07.033-08:00Joseph Cornell<p><b><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">Joseph Cornell's birthday was a few days ago. (1903-1972) This might be meaningful to only a few of us who share his eccentricities. He was an American original who did surrealist assemblages. </span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">It seems that the older I get life looks more and more like a Cornelian box with disparate objects and ideas either coming together or learning to coexist. Or, better yet, they are clashing in a way that a certain music is being made beyond our hearing. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">In my warped mind I imagine some distant connectivity. It is as if the chaos of imagination is seen in its nakedness with a network still in its nascent form</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> . What we perceive as amorphous may contain a form as yet unrecognizable.</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;">The thing about Cornell that is so appealing is the prominence he gives to his intuition. He throws in a pipe or a toy bird or a pocket watch face or a tiny glass container, all without any rational justification. I love that. Life’s junk, unjunked. The discarded, given another go round and each object decontextualized, seen anew.</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;">My late wife, Peggy created over sixty of these. Each was like a visual poem with images juxtaposed and made concrete.</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;">His constructions were always confined within an area about the size of a cigar box. Each one was its own universe. Not unlike the way we try to create our own small world as we live out each day. If our planet were reduced to rubble his shadow boxes might be among the artifacts uncovered by visiting aliens trying to piece our baffling civilization. </span></b></span><b style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-size: medium;">To further expand on this way of thinking it is a fact that he lived his entire adult life on Utopia Parkway in Queens, NYC. Before I was born my father had a drugstore on Utopia Parkway in Flushing so in my mind, I am imagining that Cornell got some of his little glass vials from my father's store. Why not?</span></b></span></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-13603021829852737102023-12-31T11:53:00.000-08:002023-12-31T11:53:17.053-08:002024<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">It is safe to say everyone will be a year older at this time
next year. That may be the only thing we can all agree upon. </span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">The chasm between the congregation of the lost and those who agree with me is wider than my
eleven and a half triple E shoe size, wider than a pastrami sandwich at Langer’s Deli
and longer than Pinocchio’s lying nose on Donald's face, invisible to MAGA eyes.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">January is well-named with its provenance being the Roman
god, Janus, that two-face figure, looking both back and ahead. It symbolizes
transition as our democracy teeters on the precipice.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">A<i>uld Lang Syne</i> and bring it on. <i>So Long, It’s Been Good to Know
You</i> and what else have you got? <i>I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello. </i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">If you think 2023 was terrifying, wait till 2024 unfolds. It
could be a banner year for the doomsayers. But we must not think like this. I look to the arts as a redress against the tide of unreason flooding the country.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, I know you have paper cuts and an itch on your back in an unreachable place and your catalytic converter is missing but peonies are in bloom. The pears are finally ripe in the fruit bowl and Joan Baez
is singing Finlandia: <span style="color: #1155cc;"><o:p style="background-color: white;"></o:p></span></span></b><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBXy6TIun9k</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Having just watched <i>Maestro</i> and a far better documentary, </span></b></p><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="adL"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DCE5L6CcqMjs%26list%3DPLd1DecRGWbdoePvp1QCzp9b7yvzT10nDy&source=gmail&ust=1704138636959000&usg=AOvVaw0uFzcSFgpoNpLKTJ7WyKMM" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE5L6CcqMjs&list=PLd1DecRGWbdoePvp1QCzp9b7yvzT10nDy" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=CE5L6CcqMjs&list=<wbr></wbr>PLd1DecRGWbdoePvp1QCzp9b7yvzT1<wbr></wbr>0nDy</a><div class="yj6qo"></div><div class="adL"></div><div class="adL"><br /></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I felt some moments of Bernstein’s
ecstasy; his exit from stasis, his transport. In the movie Casablanca, the term <i>Letters of Transit </i>was invented to move Ingrid out of harm's way. Save me a seat on any bus to elsewhere.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe the elephant in the room, mindless America turned into Guyana, will toss their mesmerizing drink and rise from the soporific fog of gullibility, like a murmuration of starlings.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I look for poems to lift me as in Major Jackson’s <i>lXXXi<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Lora; line-height: 107%;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">… Saplings
stand nude as Spartans awaiting orders.<br />
The entire forest is iced-up and glistening.<br />
Sealed in its form, the austere world I've come<br />
to love beckons, earth runnels soon resurrected<br />
into a delirium of streams and wild fields. Till then,<br />
branches like black lines crisscrossing the sub-Arctic.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224652730919207276.post-60910712954499482282023-12-28T09:36:00.000-08:002023-12-28T10:06:48.436-08:00Your Attention, Please<p><b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>How did you know the name of my college friend</i>, she
asked. <i>Because you mentioned her to me a few months ago</i>, I replied.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Of all the things we are asked to do in life, paying attention
is the easiest and possibly the most important. It’s just a matter of being
present and honoring the other person by listening. It is a habit I got into
about eighty-five years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">My father told the story of how, in kindergarten, his teacher
announced to the class they must <i>pay attention.</i> My Dad was raised in
poverty and thought he had heard the teacher say that they must<i> pay a
pencil.</i> He went home crying until a friend assured him there was nothing to be paid. That word <i>pay </i>had distorted his hearing.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">However, the message was etched in his bones. Attention is the
price for learning and relating and it is free. That lesson also became my
words-to-live-by. </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">( I can also claim the legacy of that imaginary pencil. My image of him is with a short stub of a yellow number two resting on his ear. I inherited that pencil and discovered myself along the way).<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The other lesson in listening entered my consciousness by the back door. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">It was clear, by the 7th grade, that I could not carry a
tune from here to there. Even though I sang in the shower to my delight, I was
tone deaf. As such, I was consigned to the last row and designated a Listener.
I excelled in lip-synching and became a world-class listener. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Listening is not just hearing words, it entails what is
unsaid and knowing the difference between what is important from what is more
important. Add to this the full body gestures but that doesn't work too well over the phone. It means being fully present; not rehearsing what you want to say
while half present. Sometimes it means knowing when to shut up. Other times it
calls for reflecting back to the speaker or probing but always in a natural
flow as when attention is being paid and not as a disingenuous formula.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">There is a line in Arthur Miller’s brilliant play <i>Death
Of A Salesman</i> when Willy Loman’s wife scolds her son for disrespecting his
father. <i>Attention must be paid</i>, she shouts. I never forgot that moment
in the tragedy of this beleaguered salesman. All of us are selling ourselves or
better yet, just being and we deserve each other’s attention.</span></b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">It needs to be said that our retentive memory wanes in our dotage. I can almost see yesterday's conversation fading into oblivion. My attention needs tending. Attention must be paid but allowances must also be made. </span></b></p>normsnorms.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12535995898255666585noreply@blogger.com2