Books and Coffee and Nalewki

Nalewki i Inne
Notice the glasses are empty . . . oh, and so is the bottle . . .
somehow or other it just tends to evaporate
in the heat of a late summer afternoon!

Thanks to Beata for sharing
books, coffee, and nalewki!

"World problems? What world problems?"
[Thanks to Sir-Igor Steinman for the caption!]

Just missing the third member of our
Triumvirate: Happy Birthday Katie!

Here are a few things we've been reading lately:

September ~ Cate: Books & Cats

August ~ HBJ

July ~ Like a Sentence Deep Within a Book

June ~ The World is a Beautiful Book

Posted Over the Summer
@Kitti's Book List

Triumvirate

Beata ~ Katie ~ Kitti
Precisely a year ago, as Daylight Saving Time began, I took the opportunity to thank my friend Beata for her consistent inspiration and contributions to my blogs. So it seems only fitting that this year, I pay tribute to our mutual friend Katie who never fails to send me just the right poem, cartoon, or article at just the right time, and to keep us all abreast of local literary and cultural events that we might otherwise overlook.

September Birthday Girls: Beata & Katie

Thanks to Katie
for this inspiring collection of connections:

In Art As It Is In Heaven

Wintry Synchronicity

Partridge Poems for the Twelve Days

Halloween Favorites

Summer Books: I Did It

Summer Books: The Beach

Döstädning: Long Live the Swedish Death Cleanse!

Evening ~ Timing ~ Floating: Poetry by Leonard Orr

"Sometimes a girl just needs to read a good book!"

****************

Don't Dishearten

Snowcat

Celine & Florine

Cyber Monday

Books and Coffee and Nalewki

Always June

Dark Days

A Good Day to Be a Cat

Mere PhD

Fairy Tale

Waiting for the Full Moon

Godspeed October

What Makes Life So Sweet

Alas, Poor Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern! We Knew Them!

Macabre Matryoshka

January 2017 ~ Surviving the Midwinter Blues

". . . If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. . . . "

~ from "A Brief for the Defense" by Jack Gilbert

Dark Days

Geisha, Nutcracker, Court Jester, Mary Queen of Scots
So who out there has untrimmed the tree and put all the decorations away? ​I still haven't started -- I need all the Christmas lights I can get on these dark days and have sworn not to put one thing away until the end of January (as recommended, even in non - inaugural years, by Stephen Fry)!

Christmas 2015 ~ January 2016
Gerry and I put the ornaments away last week
but kept the lights on for awhile longer.
On the floor, along with the reflection of the tree lights,
see the tiny round reflection of last week's full moon?
Shining in through the livingroom window! (to the left)
~ See also 2025 ~

This month has just been too dark in every way -- weather, politics, all the griefs of the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. is dead; the arc of history does not tend toward justice; Jesus is never coming back; there will never be peace on earth. While we, personally, may not be skewered, greed takes the day, and our happiness is forever tainted by the dark undertoad of the haves vs the have nots and the few hurting the many.

If this isn't the bleak midwinter, then I don't know what is!

I still see so much normalizing going on, even among staunch Trump Objectors. How do they do it? I'm pretty sure that disgust has been written all over my face during some uncomfortable conversations where I was trying my best to maintain a "no comment" stance. But the dismay just leaks out. Disgust, dismay, despair, hate, sadness -- all the aforementioned emotions combined. Thus, Let the Record Show. All the cynical cartoons speak to my heart. I know it seems wrong to hate, but even worse is the sadness. Every day feels like somebody's funeral. A dreadful week.

Too many things that used to be funny just seem sad now, but thanks to comedian Lily Tomlin, I haven't completely lost my sense of humor. I had to laugh when I heard her parting words to President Obama: "Too bad aliens didn't come during your Presidency. We would have been so proud to take them to our leader!"

But then I almost cried.

Thanks to my friend Katie
for offering this antidote to despair:

A Brief For The Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come

by Jack Gilbert, American poet (1925 - 2012)

[see also "Happiness" by Jane Kenyon]

And thanks to friends Cate & Nancy
for reminding me that we are Women Warriors:
Cate: I can only recommend that you back off from your emotional state in reference to the inauguration , etc. You are forcing yourself to carry a hot coal that is only hurting you. Be a warrior. Be of good cheer. Keep on doing what needs to be done. Don't watch TV. Unplug it. Study Dharma. Sweetie, do not look or listen to any news today. Stay off Facebook. Be kind to your self: go shopping, have lunch, get a manicure, dye part of your hair pink! Sending you much love! Peace and love, Cate

Nancy: It has helped me a lot to find a group of like - minded women. My advice is to go to Washington and join the women's March. There is still time. In any case, find something that speaks to your most important issues and volunteer. No time to despair. We must be strong: Warrior Women! Get out of your head and emotions and Act! Righteousness and love have kissed. Hugs from Nancy

P.S. ~ Friday ~ January 20th 2017
"Even the heavens wept." Jesus wept. I wept.

The winner of our election,
standing between two former Presidents.

Mere PhD

J.B. Handelsman ~ New Yorker Cartoonist
On our flight to England last week, the pilot made an announcement over the intercom that up 'til now I have heard only in the movies: "Ladies and gentlemen, if there is a doctor on board, or any other medical personnel who could help, please alert the crew or ring your call button." He spoke in a most reassuring tone, conveying no panic or even urgency. There was no rushing around, just a small cluster of people at the front of the plane tending to the distressed passenger, who was escorted from the plane, upon landing, by a team of EMTs.

As there was no sense of dire emergency, I think it's okay to admit what crossed my mind after the pilot's initial announcement. Gerry and I have a favorite cartoon: one person looking at another's name tag and asking, "Are you the kind of doctor who helps people, or just a mere PhD? Ever since our encounter with that cartoon (similar to the one above), we refer to ourselves as "mere PhDs." On the plane that night, all we could do was glance at each other silently, shake our heads and mouth the words: "Mere PhD."

Awhile back, all in fun, I described the cartoon to a friend who responded kindly, "I'm sure you help people, just not medically." One day on facebook, my niece Anna and I were discussing the fact that there is a National Doctor Day (March 30). Who knew? There are even cards for the occasion! Does it include mere PhDs? I don't think so. Is there a separate holiday for the mere PhDs? I don't think so! (ScienceBlogs and tvtropes take a somewhat more serious look at the distinction.)

Anna recommended the earnestly humorous YouTube video, "So you want a PhD in clinical psychology?" in which the student thinks "it's cool that people will call me doctor." "No," says her advisor, "your patients will call you by your first name and will not even know that you have a PhD . . . they will be confused that you are a doctor who cannot prescribe medication . . . your friends will laugh at you if you ask them to call you doctor . . . your mother will cry and ask you why you did not become a real doctor."

You can go to YouTube and enjoy numerous droll videos in this series. "Clinical psychology" is my favorite thus far, moreso than the one for majoring in English, which didn't strike me as quite as funny, though it too has its moments. For laughs in their area of specialization, Ben and Sam showed me "I want to work at [the] Goldman Sachs".

It's always good to keep one's sense of humor. Anna learned about "So you want a PhD in clinical psychology?" from "one of my favorite professors, who is a clinical psychologist and who shared it with my entire class a year ago!" I always have to laugh when the student in the video tells the professor that she wants to be a clinical psychologist because "my friends say that I give really good advice and I like to help people and tell them what they are doing wrong . . . I really just want to tell people that what they are doing is wrong based upon my gut reaction and because I feel that I have all the right anwers."

This line of reasoning reminds of the time in graduate school when I was supposed to pick a type of a literary criticism to use in a paper and explain why. I chose psychoanalytic (Freud & Lacan). Why? My line of reasoning was that all of the fictional characters were suffering from the Ache of Modernism. My professor expressed skepticism: "Do you think you can diagnose their problems?" "Yes!" "Do you think you can make them better? "Yes!" "Fictional characters?" "Yes!" Why? Because I just want to give them good advice and tell them that what they are doing is wrong based upon my gut reaction!

P.S. Connections of interest:

From my friend Beata: "Bibliotherapy"

From my friend Joe: "The Science of Storytelling"

From my friend Katie: "Can Reading Make You Happier?"

Waiting for the Full Moon

An Advent Moon
And a poem for Advent:

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

~ by Galway Kinnell (1927 - 2014)

****************

Thanks to my literary friend Katie Field
for sending me this poem from the Writer's Almanac

***************

Click here to read some
previously posted poems
with a similar message.

And the coming New Year . . .

****************

Seems like we've been waiting all year,
but in no time it will feel late instead of early!

"How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
Dr. Seuss

Godspeed October

Wabash Landing: Ginkgoes, Green to Gold
Way back -- or was that just the other day? -- on the first day of October, my facebook friend Robert Kurtz posted: "Considering how quickly September came and went, I think I'll just wish everyone a happy November." Now, here it is -- the last day already. Can we hold on to October for a few more days? No, we cannot. In a few short hours November begins. Robert was right!

I've been repeating his words all month long to various people, for I knew exactly how he felt (see Out of Reach & Fast Away & Time Flies). Godspeed October! Hail November!

Out at the Little Cemetery by Menards on 52
No matter how lovely each September is, it's nearly always a sure thing that October will be even moreso! Although the transition might happen upon us more quickly than we expect, we never feel too sorry to see September give way to October. However, it seems that everyone would like to live in October just a bit longer if we could. I guess that's why I'm so enchanted by the way that the following two writers have both captured the sense that October is not so much a month as it is a place. I couldn't agree more!

I had seen the photos . . .
always with autumn colors in the background,
as if the school were based not in a town
but in a month, October (81).

from Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn

************
October Country . . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.

from the introduction to The October Country
by Ray Bradbury*

Alongside Our Driveway

*Thanks to my literary friend Katie Field
for the Bradbury quotation!

P.S. HAPPY HALLOWEEN
See also my Fortnightly post: "Let Them All In"

What Makes Life So Sweet

That it will never come again . . .

That it will never come again
is what makes life so sweet.
Emily Dickinson

Loving one another . . .

"From now on, Eliza, I don't figure there's a thing
asked of me but to love my fellow men . . as far as I can see,
there's not another thing asked of me, from this day forward" (214).

from The Friendly Persuasion
by Jessamyn West

Including Scarecrows . . . Friend? Stranger? Today?

Render Unto Caesar
What do you have that belongs to another?
Tribute? Custom? Honor? Fear?

Whose image and name is on that thing?
Friend? Stranger? Leader? Brother?

Where is the due that you should bring?
Near? Afar? Hoarded? Covered?

When will you owe only love for another?
Today? Tomorrow? There? or Here?
Leon Stacey

Thanks to my sweet friends Beata and Katie
for a Sunday afternoon visit to Prophetstown, Indiana
to walk the Trail of Scarecrows!

And thanks to
Chapel of the Good Shepherd / Purdue Episcopal Campus Ministry
for the Leon Stacey reference

Along the Wabash Bike Trail

As George Herbert says,
"Take the gentle path."

Alas, Poor Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern! We Knew Them!

A couple of weeks ago, my friends Beata and Katie, and I attended a mini - theater festival at Purdue: Hamlet on the first night; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on Sunday afternoon. On Saturday, it seemed par for the course that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were dead at the end, along with everyone else in Hamlet. But the next day, I felt so let down by the conclusion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, even though Stoppard's play is jollier than Shakespeare's. Somehow it seemed that the final result for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after two hours of consternation and consciousness - raising, should be an awareness that would somehow save their lives, but no. Still dead.

I saw / read this play once years ago and have always remembered it as funny; but this time it made me sad. I was still dwelling on the gloomy after - effects a couple of days later and discussing them with Beata, when my friend Ann posted an article which seemed to totally explain our deflated mood:

Do You Owe The Reader A Happy Ending?
by Celest Ng
Ng points out that it's the sad stories that seem to stay with us not only the next day, but sometimes for years afterward:

Maybe that’s the best argument for allowing yourself to write an “unhappy” ending where justice is not done, for why it’s okay sometimes to leave readers dissatisfied, or yes, even to break their hearts. “Unhappy” endings—that irritate, that rankle, that perturb—keep the reader thinking about them long after the last page. Like a grain of sand against the skin, they rub at the reader’s sense of injustice, asking them to reflect and question. It’s okay to leave the reader satisfied, with a contented sigh, but you don’t have to. It’s okay to leave the reader provoked, too.

Examples from Ng's personal experience include, Bridge to Terabithia, Tuck Everlasting (both of which I read several years ago at the request of my son Ben) and Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind (a new title for me -- just added to my amazon shopping basket,) which Ng says, "upset me so much that . . . More than two decades later, I’m still thinking about that book."

As for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I'm still thinking about them.

While there is no obvious resurrection
in this play, there are still a lot of
great quotations to think about
over the Easter Weekend:

Favorite Passages

All your life you live so close
to truth, it becomes a permanent
blur in the corner of your eye,
and when something nudges it into
outline it is like being ambushed
by a grotesque.

"Doubt thou, the stars are fire."
"Doubt that the sun doth move,
but never doubt I love."

Happy in that we are not overhappy.

On Fortune's cap we are
not the very button.
Nor the soles of her shoes?
Neither, my lord.
Then you live about her waist,
or in the middIe of her favours?
Faith, her privates we.
In the secret parts of fortune?
O, most true!
She is a strumpet.

Half of what he said meant
something else, and the other
half didn't mean anything at all.

You understand,
we are tied down to a language
which makes up in obscurity
what it lacks in style.
There's a design at work in all
art surely you know that?

Events must play themselves
out to an aesthetic, moral
and logical conclusion.
And what's that in this case?
It never varies.

We aim for
the point where everyone
who is marked for death dies.
Marked?

Generally speaking things have
gone about as far as
they can possibly go
when things have got about as
bad as they can reasonably get.

Who decides?
Decides? It is written.
We're tragedians, you see.
We follow direction there
is no choice involved.
The bad end unhappily,
the good unluckily.
That is what tragedy means.

Dark, isn't it?
Not for night.
No, not for night.
It's dark for day.
Oh, yes, it's dark for day.

Do you think death
could possibly be a boat?

I don't believe in it anyway.
In what?
England.
Just a conspiracy of
cartographers, you mean?
I mean I don't believe it.
England.
England! I don't believe it!
Just a conspiracy
of cartographers you mean.
I mean I don't believe it and even
if it's true what do we say?

Was it all for this? Who are we
that so much should converge
on our little deaths?

You are Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern. That is enough.
No, it is not enough.

To be told so little to
such an end and still, finally,
to be denied an explanation.
In our experience,
almost everything ends in death.
Your experience! Actors!
You die a thousand casual deaths
and come back in a different hat.

But nobody gets up after death...
there's no applause only silence
and some secondhand
clothes, that's death!

If we have a destiny, then so
had he and this is ours,
then that was his
and if there are no explanations
for us, then let there
be none for him.

Oh, come, come gentlemen,
no flattery it was merely competent.
You see, it is the kind
you do believe in,
it's what is expected.
Deaths for all ages and occasions!
Deaths of king and princes
and nobodies...
That's it then, is it?

We've done nothing wrong.
We didn't harm anyone, did we?
I can't remember.
All right, then, I don't care.
I've had enough.
To tell you the truth,
I'm relieved.

There must have been
a moment at the beginning,
where we could have said no.
But somehow we missed it.
Well, we'll know better next time.

Till then.
The sight is dismal.
And our affairs from
England come too late.

The ears are senseless that should
give us hearing. To tell him his
commandment is fulfilled...
that Rosencratz
and Guildenstern are dead.

**************************

Additional Favorites from my friend Kathie:

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. “

“[Y]ou can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen—it's not gasps and blood and falling about—that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all—now you see him, now you don't, that’s the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back—an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.”