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this path has a useful solidity
- days made of praying and walking and reading and watering a
moderately pathetic garden. and eating. lunch today with a colleague
and friend. something tomorrow in joliet for the 4th. all sounds
healthy enough. but then there's time spent online pursuing less
than virtuous ends, the acquisition of certain ink-and-paper-based
goods which may not be strictly necessary. i want to want less.
i want to sit less. wanting is not doing.
yesterday jay and i took in a
matinee of speilberg's minority report, which is a beautiful
film i think. a beautiful science fiction action film. and a
beautiful film. i wanted to stop sometimes and just gaze at this
or that frame. it's a movie about the manipulation of images
that originate in the minds of three gifted-cursed humans, the
pre-cogs. something of oedipus in this one. can you outwit your
own fate? it has been seen. it will be. but transparency is all
about light and all about walls and floors and time being less
solid than the foundation, "you can still choose."
huh? even when your destiny has been seen. you can still choose.
and i was taken by the mystery lady - the oracle behind the oracles
- and her garden of botanical animals. beautiful.
today is day three of the road
resurfacing and reconfiguring project back here behind the school
where we live. we needed it. and it is inconvenient. on monday
the machines ripped out the gentle curve of road from the front
of the school back around to our side. put in a perfect 90 degree
intersection where what has been mckinley avenue meets carmel
parkway over by the school entrance at 176. yesterday they prepared
the surfaces around back by our garages. today they spread asphalt.
hottest day of the year maybe. the vibrations of the roller shook
the walls and rumbled the floors and scared the bejeebers out
of the cat. she fled to the back closet and buried herself under
the old blue comforter in the dark. cats don't like loud machines.
for a minute or two i thought the window would rattle from the
wall and the bricks disintegrate to dust. but they haven't yet.
picked up a copy of hirsch's
"how to read a poem" and am taken by it. he's a good
cheerleader. enthusiastic. aphoristic. quotable. which means
he says it the way i wish i had. "I am shocked by what I
see in the poem but also by what the poem finds in me."
"The secular can be made sacred through the body of the
poem." "...the deepest spirit of poetry is awe."
full of strong close readings of particular poems, this would
be a good text for an ap class. some day. maybe.
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