There are so many things I’ve been meaning to write about lately, but just haven’t been able to find the right words. I wanted to describe how much I loved Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — to talk about what qualities of the story enchanted me. I intended to top that off with a description of my mad dash across eight long city blocks to a book store where I could pick up copies of the two Harry Potter books I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading. I wanted to gossip about an attorney from my old firm whom I ran into at a deli on the way back. I was shocked to learn he had also moved on to a new firm. He had always seemed like such a fixture there. Last but not least, I wanted to talk about a movie Robert and I watched last night, dogma. It was somewhat amusing–and definitely irreverent. But what about it most interested me was the character named Serendipity. She made Robert finally fess up and admit that he didn’t know what the word meant. I made him look it up in the dictionary and here’s what he found:

serendipity n. [coined (c. 1754) by Horace Walpole after The Three Princes of Serendip i.e. Sri Lanka, a Pers fairy tale in which the princes make such discoveries] an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally.

I must hurry and catch the bus…more later.

The phone rang at 10 a.m. Robert stumbled out of bed to answer it. Some man with an annoyingly strained voice identified himself as Horgwarth Humpledinger. Robert was especially confused when Horgwarth Humpledinger didn’t want to speak with him, he wanted to speak with ME! It turned out that it was my father–what a funny man! He didn’t want Robert to recognize him because he was trying to set up a surprise for his birthday. I never would have guessed that using such an outlandishly stupid name and using such a ridiculous voice would fool anyone. But hey, let it be said in Robert’s defense that he had had a late night and answered the phone just after getting out of bed. Since Robert is reading this over my shoulder, I can’t go into details about what the surprise actually is. However, I can say that it’s going to be wonderful. I promise full coverage after the event on June 14th.

My homepage is coming along ok. I’ll probably redo the whole thing in a month *lol* I encourage you to check out what I’ve done so far and to let me know what you think. (Ignore the main links page…it’s still in r&d.)

I was surprised and delighted to discover that Kat & Laura a.k.a Elfgirl have stumbled onto my humble little blog. How much fun this is turning out to be! I learned that Kat has a Felix the Cat fixation. I wonder if she has one of those funny FTC clocks where eyes move back and forth with each tick and tock and the tail swings like a pendulum. I’ve always wanted one of those. And Laura, the lucky woman, is going on a shopping spree at the Gap. How jealous I am!

Lark, my evil twin, liked my idea of presenting a poem in my blog. Here’s a very moving selection from Walt Whitman:

Stop this day a night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun–there are millions of suns left,

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look throught the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

I used to claim I didn’t like Whitman’s writing. But that was before one of my college professors made me look at it with fresh eyes–or should I say open ears? He read Whitman’s elegy for Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,” and made most of the students teary-eyed. It was astounding. It’s rare that a group of people get together and share poetry like that. Ever since then, I’ve had a soft spot for the great American writer.

Today I’d like to share some pieces by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. Her writing has a meditative quality about it…like prayer…and attempts to decipher messages present in the natural world. A solitary, beautiful flower, a hummingbird paused in its flight, the change of seasons. Her poetry achieves a meaningfulness that so much recent nature poetry lacks. It veers away from gushing over beautiful scenes. She presents pictures of the natural world in a simple, respectful, considering manner and asks, “what can this tell us?” In “The Summer Day,” Oliver asks a series of questions about creation:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?

(These questions are reminiscent of Wm. Blake’s: Tiger tiger burning bright, / In the forests of the night: / what immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?) She continues with a description of all of the fantastic details present in a particular grasshopper which suggests a creator of stupendous power. But instead of simply declaring that God exists and showering him with praise, Oliver claims she doesn’t know what a prayer is. She says:

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed…

In the end, she turns to the reader and asks, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and beautiful life?” I’m going to consider that question throughout the day.

Here’s another lovely poem:

Morning

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.