Escalators, Grooves

The escalators at Macy's clatter. I have been waiting my whole life for something to clatter--to truly clatter. The escalators at Macy's do. They are wood, and clatter in a way that, even though I have only recently become unafraid of escalators, makes my soul sing.

I am not especially fond of Macy's. It is too large, for one thing, and usually quite crowded. Also, it is a department store. I detest department stores. But now I want to ride those escalators up. I want to ride those escalators down. I want to wear my most teetery heels and risk catching them in the wide, wooden grooves. The escalators at Macy's, they clatter.

{Image, flickr}

Tuesday Poem: Garters, Love

Things are feeling a wee bit archetypal these days. Mythy, even. I blame autumn, the abundance of apples. And everyone I know is in love. This offering, today, from Galway Kinnell. All that's missing is ripe, red fruit.

Everyone Was in Love

One day, when they were little, Maud and Fergus
appeared in the doorway naked and mirthful,
with a dozen long garter snakes draped over
each of them like brand-new clothes.
Snake tails dangled down their backs,
and snake foreparts in various lengths
fell over their fronts with heads raised and swaying,
alert as cobras. They were writhing their dry skins
upon each other, as snakes like doing
in lovemaking, with the added novelty
of caressing soft, smooth, moist human skin.
Maud and Fergus were deliciously pleased with themselves.
The snakes seemed to be tickled, too.
We were enchanted. Everyone was in love.
Then Maud drew down off Fergus's shoulder,
as off a tie rack, a peculiarly
lumpy snake and told me to look inside.
Inside the double-hinged jaw, a frog's green
webbed hind feet were being drawn,
like a diver's, very slowly as if into deepest waters.
Perhaps thinking I might be considering rescue,
Maud said, "Don't. Frog is already elsewhere."

Resolutions, Part Deux: Paris, And

Which is to say, dear reader, that I am going to Paris.
Soon. For awhile.
And also to some places that are not Paris, but which are not quite planned yet.

I am very excited.
And a teeny bit nervous.
And feel a little funny for having waited so long to take steps that, compared to other folks' steps, feel a little small.

But we do the best we can. And we are here now. And it will not do to compare. And some things take time.
So. Paris.

(And some other places that are not Paris, but which are not quite planned yet.)

I'm excited for you to join me.

{Photo, Nichole}

Resolutions, Part I: Wishes, Tend

Those of you who have read this blog for some time know that I make very specific New Year's resolutions for myself. It's a trick I learned from Jordan, and serves as a handy excercise not only in the planning of years, but also in coaxing from one's time the sort of life one wishes to live. I've been a little reticent to return to mine (full list here) this year, for various reasons. But it is autumn. 

Which means it will be winter. 

Which means this year must soon be put to bed. So. A list. 

(Amandas are very good with lists.)

Yet Untended, 2009 Resolutions

1. Run fastly one 10k, maybe a half marathon but that might be pushing it: Ate apple-cider doughnuts instead. Drank a lot of coffee.
2. Make squash risotto: Soon. I have been waiting for fall.
3. Make wishes: Check. Will continue to do so.
4. Interact with chickens: Do the peacocks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine count? Also, I learned how to flip eggs. In a pan. Eggs come from chickens.
5. Buy Uggs: Have decided Uggs are foul and icky.
6. Wallpaper something: This is not the year for wallpapering, it seems.
7. Go places. Do things: 
-------A.) Move to New York.
-------B.) Go to Paris. Eat delicious things.

{Image, me}

Hoard, Keep: Eggshells

I will tell you that I save these for my garden. Dry out, break down, scatter. But I will also tell you, dear reader, that the garden may once have been an excuse. One might say that I started saving eggshells before I started planting seeds. It would be hyperbole. But it would not be far from the truth.

Even here, where it is difficult to keep piles of anything, I keep eggshells. Holding the compact bundles in my hand, spilling their perfect contents into a hot pan of good butter, I wonder at how strong they are, how porous. How smooth, speckled, true. I cannot bear to part with perfect membrane, protein shards. With casing so close to flight.

So we rinse and dry out.
We break down,
scatter.

{Photo, me}

Bookworm: Elephant, Grass

For the last of the autumn bees:


For wintering in Manhattan:


For the train, at the park:

For those who seek:

Tuesday Poem: Paper, Wasp

From Nick Flynn's second collection, Blind Huber, this offering:

Paper Wasp

Because trees grew thick & demon-

full, you felled whole counties,
built walls against the night. Shack

gave way to city, city

to skyscraper, forest to plain. All this time
we've been building beside you,

in the eaves, in the trees your axes missed.
Look at the nest in the rafters,
look closely. Those red

streaks are fragments of your barn, paint
chewed to pulp. Everything

passes through us, transformed.

We chew the words off newspapers,
bodies off billboards,
even your clothespins, look at them closely--

each day thinner.

{Image, flickr}

Weekender: Pockets, Blue

It feels, just feels like a holiday when the air is this warm, crisp, when there are autumn apples and cider doughnuts from a little cobblestone market, and a bounty of pumpkin scones from Alice's Tea Cup all drizzled with sweet. When there is cider and ginger tea, and the light feels this orange, this blue. Acorns have been scattered along the paths for a couple of weeks now, threatening to turn our ankles, threatening to disappear before long if we neglect to scoop up the caps, fill our pockets. The corner stores boast pumpkins, and the last of the bumbling bees mumble along. These last ladies never fail to break my heart a little, diligently gathering as the evenings grow cold. I lean over and thank them for being so clever, worry over their thin wings.

We scoop up what acorns we can find. We empty our pockets of those things it will not do to keep. We prepare, buying pencils and tights, turn our eyes skyward, waiting for showers, leaves.

{Photo by lovely Kristina of Lovely Morning}

Hoard, Keep: Yellow, Blue

Dreams, Bees

I know I have been a crummy poster this week, and all I really want to do is write about the corner-store pumpkins and the last of the bumbling summer bees. But I haven't time time time because of working hard and dreaming big, about which more later. I will be back next week, or tomorrow if time allows. For now, I wish you ginger tea and pumpkin scones and long walks scooping up acorn caps, about which more later as well.

Also, there seem to be more of you these days. From whence you came, I do not know, but I hope you will stay. I think you are very nice.

There will be scones. Pumpkin ones.

Treasures, Wings

Today I'm oh-so excited to be taking part in a postlet about presents for flower gals, ring bearers, and tiny wedding guests over on the utterly fabulous East Side Bride (!!!). There are brave knights. And capes, of course. Go see, go see.

{Photo by pfotos}

Pillow. House.

A pillow house.
A pillow house a pillow house.
Just in case we didn't want to be one of Rubyellen's littles quite enough before.

Tuesday Poem: This Mouth, These Temple Bones

Because it makes me sing, this bit from Galway Kinnell's Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight:

5

If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

Hoard, Keep: Apples, Glass

Sweet, squat Martinelli's apple juice jars, for keeping things inside the things you keep.

It always starts with wanting to remember how cool, gold-filled glass feels in-hand, weights the bottom of a cloth bag. And then there must be smallish blooms for sneaking inside, or folded-up wishes that need a sacred spot.
Some other times I line them up and whisper into them by name.

And one day last week I finally remembered to make a fern and moss house, like these, via even*cleveland, source of all things good.

Tuesday Poem: Hurrahing in Harvest

It's been quite some time since we had a Tuesday poem. It may be Wednesday, but this offering from Gerard Manley Hopkins seems perfect in August's wake:


Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

{Wheat, flickr}

Weekender: Strangers, Hats

Somehow it is Wednesday. I do not know how we got here.

I will keep this weekending bit short, except to say that there was brunch. There was brunch, and there was a boy who wanted a hat that I thought was ridiculous. And the boy who wanted the ridiculous hat dragged me to a table full of ridiculous hats, and the hat purveyor--a serious, white-robed whiskery man--snuck a hat onto my grouchy head and then giggled. And then this magical purveyor of hats pulled my middle to his soft side and gave my cheek the softest, sweetest kiss in the world, and grinned.

Some other things happened too, like mist, and like it getting cool enough to wear jeans, but most of all there were strangers, and there were hats.

{Photo by me}