| . |
|
|
Everybody comes dancing in to see what Br. Tom did today, as if this mattered as much as Washington news, European news, Asian news. Well, I'm sure you're not everybody. And I'm sure that if you're here it's because you care about me and miss me a little. So I appreciate your presence and your interest. You really do care that I hung some pictures, failed to locate Lazy-Boy, got my new school calendar, listened to Jay's copy of Adams' "I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky," read a good chunk of Koch's "Making Your Own Days," had a tasty turkey dinner, ran my regular route, and sit here spinning it all out again. The pictures: My wonderful 3-D geophysical map of Death Valley hangs right over this desk. The old 1860 map of Illinois is by the CD player. Cheap cute poster of "Claude," the cat in the bag, is off to my right. All my little free-standing frames are up atop the bookshelves. Haven't completely decided what's going into the bedroom, other than the Flower Fairies - yes, the Flower Fairies, shut up. There's room for some new stuff eventually. Lazy-Boy: I'm in the market for a reading chair. The store out 45 shut down, and Dom heard that they'd moved to the old Builders Square on 21. But they hadn't. Lazy-Boy is lost in space. In the meantime I've rigged a pretty comfortable floor spot for reading. The new school calendar and student handbook: Dom dropped it off and I skimmed through it , finding familiar things and strange things all jumbled together as in a dream. The Adams opera: It's really a song-cycle with characters and some plot. The libretto by poet June Jordan is angry, smart, funny, and beautiful. The music is recognizably Adams, not too many clunky "operatic" moments. Worth a second hearing. Kenneth Koch is one of our under-appreciated national treasures. If he had only written these lively, lovely poems, his place in the culture would be certain; but he has also spent much of the past thirty years writing and teaching about poetry, opening doors for each of our own inner poets. Today he said, "The 'person' the poet is telling secrets to may be everybody and nobody. One expects to be forgiven for what one tells if it's a good poem." I depend on that. Turkey dinner: Some people here have expressed concern over my eating habits. I'm not a vegetarian. I do enjoy the occasional meal of feathers or fins. I just prefer not to eat mammals. So when mammal meat shows up I simply avoid it and feast upon whatever else is available. This seems to make some folks uncomfortable. I try to assure them that I'm not going hungry, am feeling fine (because it's the truth), but they don't seem convinced. I've been eating like this for ten years. So we had turkey tonight; I gobbled up a bunch of it, and everybody's happy. The jogging: These past few nights have been gorgeously cool. Tonight what looks like the cross-country team was also out on the track...just to keep me from getting too cocky, I suspect. I'm enjoying my anonymity while it lasts. To these kids, I'm just some old creep crowding up the track. Little do they suspect. Which brings me to this moment, a shimmery silent gift from the maker of us all. |
|
|
| . |
Francis Bacon |