Ah Portland!

Late Autumn in Portland, Oregon

Now, what does that sign say?

As we know, all too well,
"Life is a constant battle
between the heart and the brain.
But guess who wins . . ."

Ah Portland! Ah humanity!
The pervasive homelessness that we saw while walking around Portland was very sad; it was painful to witness such evident despair. We did not see this problem when visiting Switzerland in September or Prague in October. On the other hand, those two places were plagued by relentless graffiti -- and not the artistic kind! Everywhere you looked, there was scribbling and defacement, even on centuries - old buildings. A shameful sight!

Lausanne, Switzerland

Prague, Czech Republic

Still, despite the urban issues, I would always choose to visit the city over the country.

One Portland friend responds: "I agree with you about the homeless in Portland and hear it debated frequently on OPB news shows. There is a general problem in Portland of new wealth and developers constantly removing affordable housing (as has occurred in many other cities). Even if agreements and plans are eventually reached, it will take years to carry them out (also true of the bridges and light-rail crossings between Vancouver [WA] and Portland; I now assume that won't change until they collapse after earthquakes). Every city has its problems but, like you, I prefer big cities as a tourist and like being within close range of a city, even a medium-sized city like Portland."

Dining With Dear Friends
The Zeus Cafe at the Crystal Hotel, Portland

All Saints: Atwood & Auntie Wickie

Pop - Up Shadow Card from Auntie Wickie

True Stories #ii

The true story was lost
on the way down to the beach, it's something

I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light

my blurred footprints
filling with salt

water, this handful
of tiny bones, this owl's kill;

a moon, crumpled papers, a coin,
the glint of an old picnic,

the hollows made by lovers
in a sand a hundred

years ago: no clue.

**********

" . . . something
I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light . . ."

"I can fly. I wish I could believe it."

**********

Also, including this one here;
can't wait for the December!

Small Poems for the Winter Solstice #10

Of course I'm a teller
of mundane lines, such as: I'll try
never to lie to you. Such as:
the day after today the earth will
tilt on its axis towards the sun
again, the light will turn stronger,
it will be spring and you'll
be happy. Such as:
I can fly. I wish I could believe
it. Instead I'm stuck
here, in this waste of particulars,
truths, fact. Teeth, gloves & socks.
I don't trust love
because it's no shape or colour.

both poems by Margaret Atwood
from True Stories

Snowy Halloween ~ Sunny All Saints


And a closing quote for Auntie Wickie:
"Oh Lord [Oh Goddess]!
Into what an age have you caused me to be born!"
from Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

May Basket Day

A May Basket for All Seasons:
Reese’s Peanut Butter Christmas Lights
~ substituting as Candy Eggs ~
served in an Easter Basket for dessert on May Day!

Wishing a Very Happy May Day
to all who still celebrate and observe
the waning days of this nostalgic tradition!

Earlier today, my siblings and I were reminiscing
about the May Day's of our childhood in Southern Missouri:

Peg: Do you remember that we used to make May Baskets for our neighbors in Neosho?

Kit: That is one of my best memories of Neosho, along with playing "Statue" and finding Treasure Hunt Clues all over the place! I loved the way we did our May Baskets -- like our paper dolls --"from scratch," coming up with all of our own designs and then combining our homemade paper flowers along with real ones. Those were the days! I hope our elderly neighbors appreciated our handi-work!

Boo: There was a vacant lot across the street -- I think there might have been an old foundation on it. There were some flowers there -- I'm thinking daffodils, maybe some irises, also a lilac bush. I remember going over there and getting flowers on May Day.

Di: I do remember! And in later years, one of our neighbors in New Melle left us a May basket with candy!

Di's reference to candy gave me
the idea to re-purpose the leftover
Easter Basket Candy as May Day Candy!

How we loved surprising our parents, neighbors and school teachers! A few years ago, NPR really captured the spirit of the occasion, right down to calling this special day not merely May Day, but May Basket Day!

The History Channel explains the more serious side of May Day as an International Workers Day, observed in many countries with protests, marches, and parades of solidarity.

The Farmers Almanac explains the significance of May Day as the halfway point between the Spring / Vernal Equinox (21 March) and the Summer Solstice (21 June), a cross - quarter highlight in the annual circle dance of the calendar year.

My friend Victoria never fails to share quaint memories as well as current celebratory customs, honoring May Day's sacred role in the natural - cosmic cycle.
Even Christmas Tree Lights
go along with May Day!
Just ask the Bee Gees!

Previous May Day Posts
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2016
2017
2018
2019

Vickie Triumphant

Do what I just did:
read these ~ reviews,
and order an advance copy from amazon!
Congrats Professor Amador!

Victoria & Olivia
Having Champagne & Discussing the Memoirs

Samhain Triumvirate

HALLOWEEN

My 5th Grade Art Project ~ Halloween 1967

"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!"
~ Elizabeth Akers Allen ~
I was so pleased to re - discover this 50 - year - old (!) painting over the summer, rolled up in a closet at my parents' house. My friend Len humorously pointed out that perhaps it survived because "Somehow you knew as a child to always use acid-free archival paper, inks, and glues for all of your projects." On a serious note, my oldest brother Dave pointed out that "Interestingly your only concession to Halloween is the pumpkin in the lower right" and my own children were wondering why on earth their mom used to be such a morbid kid! What about candy, costumes, and jack - o - lanterns? I guess even at age 10, I intuited a sense of foreboding as the year wound itself down.

For a couple of months now, I have been haunted by Len's direful pre - seasonal warning:

"Two days ago I acknowledged the end of summer; Fall, with its ominous name, has been looming and lurking. With our backs turned, with our eyes fixed on new books, in the delusion of days without meetings or grading papers, suddenly the Fall leaps out and can't be shaken off any more. I posted the syllabuses to my course site. The books for my 'Representations of Exile' class are stacked on my desk (this time Conrad, Danticat, Cristina Garcia, Nabokov, Sebald, and Viet Thanh Nguyen). For the rest of the night: free reading."

Len's ode to Fall (ominous yet seductive) reminded me of many a paragraph in The Street of Crocodiles, eerie and lyrical. For example:

"Oh the skies of those days, skies of luminous signals and meteors, covered by the calculations of astronomers, copied a thousand times, numbered, marked with the watermarks of algebra! With faces blue from the glory of those nights, we wandered through space pulsating from the explosions of distant suns, in a sidereal brightness . . . The houses, wide open at night during that time, remained empty in the light of violently flickering lamps. The curtains blew out far into the night and the rows of rooms stood in an all - embracing, incessant draft, which shot through them in violent, relentless alarm." (Bruno Schulz, 155 - 56)

If the approaching autumn season seems too sinister, I find that a little lace -- black or white or some of each -- helps to soften the worrisome edges. For over twenty - years now, a delicate lace ghost has appeared to gently haunt us in honor of the previous residents of our various historical homes. Every year, as the October light works its magic, my mother and my friend Victoria never fail to inquire, "Is the ghost up yet?" My sweet sister Di had some kind words for this year's emanation: "That is the fanciest ghost I have ever seen. When I get home I will dig out my tablecloths and see what I can do!"

ALL SAINTS

ALL SOULS

Black Cat ~ Black Lace

Transylvania

For more October postcards
and wit & wisdom from Victoria Amador
please see my current post

"October Light, October Heavy"

@ Kitti's List

~ 28 October 2002 ~

"Happy Halloween!
Happy Samhain!
Happy All Souls Day!
Happy Dia do los Muertos!
Happy Wiccan New Year!
Have a marvelous & scary time!
Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo!

Well, it wasn't Paris, but I enjoy being back in Romania.
Next year I am doing the Transylvania Tour!
I didn't see any ghosts, but I certainly met a lot of odd people.
It has triggered a renewed interest in ghosts and paranormal activity.
What's your take on the afterlife?
Are there famous haunted sites in Philly?"

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

In Other Halloween News:
Many thanks to our sweet neighbor Tami,
who has kindly made sure that we would not be
without trick - or - treaters this year!

Look who has already been seen on our front porch:
Happy Halloween to this fearsome T - Rex!

~ GET YOUR SCARE ON! ~

Related amusing video: "This is why I don't
let my family pick me up from the bus anymore!"

Goldengrove

Spring and Fall

to a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)

A few years ago, not long after fellow writer Curtis Cottrell and a few other friends had shared commentary on "Spring and Fall," I happened to come across these old headstones, both of which seem to go perfectly with Hopkins' poem (more pics).

The stone says that Margaret was the "Consort of" Lewis Davisson.
Did they live at the edge? Drink life to the lees?
(Thanks to "Tombstone Tourist @ A Grave Interest"
for additional information on how to read old gravestones.)

Both tombstones are located
a few miles from my house in West Lafayette, Indiana
in nearly forgotten Burton Cemetery ~ Tippecanoe County

This once rural graveyard
now stands on the corner of a busy highway,
adjacent to the parking lot of a Menards DIY;
probably not the final resting place that Margaret & Lewis
envisioned for themselves at the time . . . kind of sad.

It is Margaret we mourn for.

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

Here is my friend Victoria in 1978 at another,
as yet unidentified Indiana cemetery.
We are on a quest to find this long lost grave.
Any leads for us?
"Everretta T. Parsons ~ AD 1815"

Is it Everretta that Victoria mourns for?
Or is it Victoria?

Dreamscape

"It is almost impossible
to watch a sunset and not dream."
Bern Williams

Photograph by Marguerite Chapman:
Sunset over Tulsa Mosque
November 7, 2014

"All that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream."
Edgar Allan Poe
These dreamy sunset thoughts bring to mind an essay that I taught years ago, entitled "Language and Thought," by Susanne K. Langer. Langer distinguishes between symbol and sign, and identifies dreaming as "a basic function of human brains," drawing the conclusion that what sets humans apart as a species is our inexhaustible, involuntary dreamscape. An intriguing concept!

As highly intelligent animals, we can scan the sky for signs. For example, the color of the sunset may foretell the coming weather or a turning point in the year. As a signifier of "presence . . . being, condition," a vividly colored or pastel sky can be useful, even beautiful. But we want the sunset to mean something more "glorious" than that! We want not merely the object at hand but the "kaleidoscope of ideas" and the "stream of thought" that the symbol brings to mind:

"We want to go places and do things, own all sorts of gadgets that we do not absolutely need, and when we sit down to take it easy we want to talk. Rights and property, social position, special talents and virtues, and above all our ideas, are what we live for. We have gone off on a tangent that takes us far away from the mere biological cycle that animal generations accomplish; and that is because we can use not only signs but symbols. . . . The difference between a sign and a symbol is, in brief, that a sign causes us to think or act in the face of the thing signified, whereas a symbol causes us to think about the thing symbolized. Therein lies the great importance of symbolism for human life, its power to make this life so different . . .

"The process of transforming all direct experience into imagery . . . has so completely taken possession of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need. All our sense impressions leave their traces in our memory not only as signs . . . but also as symbols, images representing our ideas of things . . . It seems to be what our brain most naturally and spontaneously does. Therefore our primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming our desires." [from paragraphs 5, 7, 8]

Dreaming our desires!
Isn't that what these sunsets symbolize?

Photograph by Nancy Allen:
"I just never get tired of these sunsets -- feeling thankful!"
October 23, 2014
Also by Nancy: Late Summer Sunset & Groundhog Fog
Thanks to Sara Carriker & Victoria Amador for the dreamy quotations!

Purdue Snazzy

Photo by Shelley Sacia Ayres ~ Thanks Shelley!
A few years ago, on the invitation for a campus reception, down in the corner where it would usually say something like "Black Tie," it said "Suggested Dress: Purdue Snazzy." I just loved that! Now, whenever we have to get dressed up for a Purdue event, we always say, Purdue Snazzy!

Hail Purdue!
[more fight songs with lyrics!]

To your call once more we rally,
Alma Mater, hear our praise;
Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise.
From the skies in swelling echoes
Come the cheers that tell the tale
Of your vic'tries and your heroes,
Hail Purdue! We sing all hail!

Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!
All hail to our old gold and black!
Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!
Our friendship may she never lack,
Ever grateful, ever true,
Thus we raise our song anew,
Of the days we've spent with you
All hail our own Purdue.

When in after years we're turning,
Alma Mater, back to you,
May our hearts with love be yearning,
For the scenes of old Purdue.
Back among your pathways winding,
Let us seek what lies before,
Fondest hopes and aim e'er finding,
While we sing of days of yore.

The Purdue Fight Song, Copyrighted 1913
Music by E. J. Wotowa, Class of 1912
Lyrics by J. Morrison, Class of 1915

P.S.
Purdue's very own Compliment Guys
who rose to national fame back in 2009:

More Compliment Guys ~ National Tour ~ New York Times

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

My Friend Victoria Amador . . .

. . . knows a thing or two about Purdue Snazzy!

**********

Vickie as a Boilermaker, back in the day!

At Pere Lachaise

Read more about Paris & Pere Lachaise on my
latest Fortnightly blog post,
one of several Summer Travelogues . . .

At Pere Lachaise ~ Steven, Victoria, Kitti, Gerry

Click to see more photos from Steven's album:
Paris Graves

Oscar Wilde's Grave
Thanks to Victoria Amador for Parisian travel tips!

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

Two Poems by Jim Barnes
from his book ParisVandals

Sitting beside Wilde's
solid block of sandy stone,
I recall two things:

he was earnest and Gide would
not stay where he once had stood.

Flowers at the tomb
are never fresh: today there's
graffiti I see

the first time in all the years
that I have been coming here.

Down and to the right, there Gertrude and Alice lie,
a date and place cut

wrong, another graffitied stone,
and I recall other wrongs

too many artists,
dead, still suffer from; the words
that fools have sprayed on

stone not so much as the words
from the learned living dead.

***********

Finding Oscar Wilde

After the riot in Pére Lachaise, streams
of teenage tourists flood the gates. Shadows
of the plane trees gray their faces. It seems
as if they want to mourn but cannot go
beyond the nervous laughter of rock dreams
and Coca-Cola days. Few drink Nouveau
Beaujolais now: it's just not chic enough.
Two green-haired girls smoke Gitanes and act tough.
We see two others writing Morrison
lives beneath Balzac, in chalk. Our map takes
us past more famous lines and past the sun,
where we pause to grab our breath and then shake
the summer sweat from our hair. Somewhere down
the hill, Abélard and Héloïse wake
again to try to free themselves from the stone
bed they have lain in centuries too long.

All Paris is stone, and there are those graves
everywhere as lonely as Oscar Wilde's
broad tomb. Rioting Morrison fans behaved
as a herd behaves, coming in droves to mill
round redundancy. No solitaire to save
the senseless crowd the agony of hell
showed up. There will never be a crowd round
the other slab where Oscar Wilde kneels down,

the tall wings booked by his writing hand.
Nor need there be. The legend of his life
is not his work. The work, the art, remains.
We lean relaxed upon his stone. At five
we hear the whistles blow for our return,
a prelude to the closing gates and evening
song of sparrows. Leaving we touch a fast
farewell to his high brow and what may last.

You can find more poems of Paris on my post:
"Paris: Ferlinghetti, Fenton & Forche"

And more poems by Jim Barnes on these previous posts:
Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy,
Missouri Poets, Parallax, No One With a Nose
Penelope, Shakespeare & Co.

May Day Birthday

Happy May Day to All!

Peonies, 1887
Charles Edward Perugini, 1839 - 1918
[Previous Peony Post]

&

Happy Birthday to Etta!

For my Christmas present this past December, my dear,
life - long friend Marietta gave me a big shopping bag
full of my old letters to her, thinking that I could use
them for my memoirs, and even better -- for blogging!
Thanks Et!

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

Thanks to my friend Mitzi
for sharing this photo from the Woodland Trust

Ah listen, for silence is not lonely!
Imitate the magnificent trees
That speak no word of their rapture, but only
Breathe largely the luminous breeze.

from the poem -- about the painter -- "Corot"
by D. H. Lawrence
Burnetta writes: "Oh what scene, from my childhood in west Kentucky! I have to share this. I just makes me long for the "olden days" at least in landscape.

Indeed! My friend Vickie Amador and I often reminisce about wandering down a lovely path such as this, gathering wildflowers in a basket as a May Day surprise for our elders!

Time Flies

A Postcard from Vickie

Les Biches [meaning "The Does"]
by French artist Marie Laurencin (1883 - 1956)

A few years back, in answer to a quiz question, I observed that for whatever reason -- the new millennium; global warming -- the world seems to be spinning faster with every passing year.

"What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you were younger? That "TIME FLIES" is not a mere cliche; that "A year is but a day" applies not only to the mind of God but to us humans as well! How can it be that events from ten, fifteen years ago seem like just the other day? Is the world spinning faster and faster each year? Somehow I thought it would slow down, but no! "

Over the summer, my friend Vickie Amador sent me a postcard from Povence, posing a similar question about the passing passage of time: "Do the days go fast as one's time grows shorter? Unfair -- so much to see, do, learn, enjoy! It's been a hot summer, and too, too fast."

As literary coincidence would have it, a day or so after Vickie's postcard, yet another wise friend -- Nancy from Washington State -- sent me a book review, clipped from the The Seattle Times. In this article, poet Richard Wakefield discusses Donna Krolik Hollenberg's biography of Denise Levertov: A Poet's Revolution. Included is Levertov's sage observation that "the discrepantly aging body and mind affect one's sense of time."

Hmmmm. Just as Vickie and I suspected.

Victoria Day

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you"

lyrics from
"Bookends" by Simon & Garfunkel

Kitti, Vickie, Diane ~ Kirksville, Summer 1980

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY AMAZING FRIEND
Dr. Victoria Amador

I was lucky enough to see Vickie just last week . . .

and we discussed the meaning of life:

"It's like a universal radio.
Sometimes I get the message,
but usually it's just snow."

Additional words of wisdom from Victoria:
"Avoid the nettles!"

Preserve Your Memories!
Valentine Collage ~ Old Favorites from Vickie & Diane

Old Friendship

Kitti, Vickie, Steven: Minneapolis, 2013

Old Friendship
Beautiful and rich is an old friendship,
Grateful to the touch as ancient ivory,
Smooth as aged wine, or sheen of tapestry
Where light has lingered, intimate and long.
Full of tears and warm is an old friendship
That asks no longer deeds of gallantry,
Or any deed at all - save that the friend shall be
Alive and breathing somewhere, like a song.

Eunice Tietjens, July 29, 1884 - September 6, 1944
American poet, novelist, journalist, children's author, lecturer, and editor
from the book of poems, Leaves in Windy Weather
Songs shared by

Bruce Carriker: "Old Friends" ~ Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Ray Price

Old friends, pitching pennies in the park
Playing croquet till it's dark, old friends
Old friends, swapping lies of lives and loves
Pitching popcorn to the doves, old friends

Old friends, looking up to watch a bird
Holding arms to climb a curb, old friends, old friends
Old friends, Lord when all my work is done
Bless my life and grant me one, old friend
At least one, old friend

and

Bonnie Gushard: "Old Friends" ~ Simon and Garfunkel

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blowin´ through the grass
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a parkbench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears
P.S.

Steven, Kitti, Vickie: Chicago, 2014
[LaVigne, Carriker, Amador]

Shakespeare & Co.

Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, Paris

I like the that way my friend Victoria is just casually strolling through Paris on a summer day, past one of the world's most legendary bookstores. (photography by Steven La Vigne)
To accompany the ambiance of Steven's photograph is an autumnal poem about the same bookstore, written by my friend Jim Barnes who lived in Paris for awhile:

Shakespeare & Co.

St. Julien le Pauvre stoops in shadows that lean
toward Notre Dame. The park grays in the rainy
twilight. Next door George Whitman's crumbling store

is the color of ashes and carded tomes thumbed
into oblivion. Two pigeons come
to the door, their bookish eyes red and sore

in the November rain. Humble they move aside,
as if we were masters here to provide
their daily bread. George stamps "ground zero"

inside the Gertrude Stein we pay too dearly for
and offers us a room for the night or
the week if we wish it. We do not go

upstairs. The recent fire has left a thin smell of
smoke everywhere. We hear the rattle of
teaspoons and cups. Small talk of poetry

tumbles down the steep stairs and hides under the lower
shelves, duller than ash. Outside the rain pours.
The pigeons trundle dead weight under trees.

It is not the best of times, yet we hold old books
with a joy beyond belief: we will look
through volumes to find what we hold no more.

from Paris ~ Poems by Jim Barnes

You can find more poems of Paris on my recent post:
"Paris: Ferlinghetti, Fenton & Forche"
on the
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A fortnightly [every 14th & 28th]
literary blog of connection & coincidence; custom & ceremony

And more poems by Jim Barnes on these previous posts:
Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy,
Missouri Poets, Parallax, No One With a Nose, and Penelope

P.S. July 2014: At Pere Lachaise

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

These pictures are from my visit to one of the little
Shakespeare & Co. Bookstores in York City
(not affiliated with the Paris store):

137 E. 23rd Street


Storefront renovations in 2007


Bookstore Cat

Check out my Book Blog ~ Kitti's List!