In My Bookbag

Catching up after
summer break . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The family, that dear octopus
from whose tentacles we never quite escape,
nor in our innermost hearts, ever quite wish to.
~ Dodie Smith ~
From her play Dear Octopus

Also lovely: her novel / movie: I Capture the Castle

Above:
New Octopus Bookbag
Thanks Beata!

Below:
Recent Book Blogs:

July ~ With Liberty and Justice for All

August ~ Land Value Tax

September ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Facebook Photo

Beautifully Brewed

Victorian Advertising Art
So lovely, yet, sadly, unattributed.
Who is the artist? Who is the model?
Both, lost to time . . .

Goodbye January!

Hello February!

Looking forward to all of these titles
by Sophie Blackall

These two poems are perfect for a chilly day,
when what you need most is a hot cup of tea!

Winter Love
I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.

by Linda Gregg (1942 - 2019)
American poet and teacher

&

Now
Now is like a cup of hot tea.
Drink it down and all of a sudden
you feel warm inside.

Many people I know
seem to be waiting
for their cups of hot tea
to get hotter or sweeter.

Inadvertently they don't get
anything but cold.

Hold your life close in your hands
and be close to these
beautifully brewed days.

by Naomi Shihab Nye (b 1952)
Contemporary Palestinian / American Poet
A few more long - time favorites

New Year's Resolution

It's never too late for a party . . .

But only if you want to go!

Thanks to poet Naomi Shihab Nye
for sharing her poem "Disappearing."

Soul Searching

The Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool ~ Ken Storey

I spent several weeks over the summer composing the following unholy trinity of somewhat skeptical, somewhat irreverent, somewhat rambling religious reflections:
@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

1. July 14 ~ Born Only Once ~ Langston Hughes
Frank O'Connor, Czeslaw Milosz

2. July 28 ~ O Ya - Ya of Little Faith ~ Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets,
Little Altars, Thirtysomething

3. August 14 ~ None Forbidden, None Compelled ~ Hector Abad

Speaking of spiritual quest and literary connections,
you may recall, if you go the right - hand column >>>
and scroll down, the following from Naomi Shihab Nye:

SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
"Where are you on
your spiritual journey?"
you ask, your sharp eyes
thumbtacking the question
on my heart.

What can I say?
I am somewhere beyond "go"
I have not stopped.

Years have shown me
the idea of travelling
is a game we play with ourselves
to pretend we're not home.

Naomi Shihab Nye
(b 1952)
Palestinian / American Poet

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

Additional Summer Posts
that you may have missed over the break:

June 14 ~ Always June ~ Australia, Autumn, George Eliot

June 28 ~ Yellow Wallpaper ~ Australia,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Terri Kapsalis

August 28 ~ Sing A Song About Singing ~ Abba,
Barry Manilow, The Carpenters, The Statler Brothers

The Musicians, 1979 ~ Ferdinand Botero

Post Mother's Day

Some New Love at Lovely Things

Posted previously, but nice to be reminded:

I wish for for you
some new love
at lovely things,
some new forgetfulness
at teasing things,
some higher pride
in the praising things,
some sweeter peace
from the hurrying things,
and some closer fence
from the worrying things."

~ John Ruskin ~

Along with this past Sunday's post "Picture of Home" (scroll down or click)
please enjoy additional selected readings in keeping with Mother's Day
from Billy Collins, Tina Fey, Naomi Shihab Nye,
and others on my

CURRENT FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST:
~ Post Mother's Day ~

Thanks for reading
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

O Christmas Tree O Lantern

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE!

"Look around you, look up here
Take time to make time, make time to be there
Look around, be a part
Feel for the winter, but don't have a cold heart"
lyrics from "Lady"
by The Little River Band*

We observed the Solstice by laying our three large outside pumpkins to rest on the compost heap. They had graced the back doorway since Halloween but, having lasted handsomely through the long season, were at last falling in on themselves after several freeze / thaw cycles! Still, we had three more inside that had escaped Halloween carving and Thanksgiving pie - baking. We broke one down for pie puree and seed roasting, carved the second into the Christmas Tree O' Lantern that you see above, and, hopefully, will create a Happy New Year O'Lantern with the one remaining. (Not forgetting Superbowl - o - Lantern!)

Processing homegrown pumpkins,
roasting seeds, making pies from scratch,
and baking pumpkin bread with chocolate chips:
Sam and Ben have been doing it since childhood!
Here they are in our big kitchen on 48th Street
Philadelphia ~ 1997

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*See also my previous references to this romantic, wintry tune:
"Cold Morning Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye"
& "Don't Have a Cold Heart"

And To Think We Felt Alone

Currently featured on
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:

"Cold Morning Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye"
Here's an old favorite:

It is a new day, chill and icy like a cold, sharp, knife.
It is a new day in a long line of new days in a life.

OH! OH! OH!

I walk in wonder to watch
The bundled people in the early light returning with nods
A morning hello

And to think we felt alone all night.


Now, I think I might read this second poem somewhat differently than I did back in highschool when I was first such a fan of Naomi Shihab's youthful poetry. More often than not, the "bundled people" do not respond with a nod or a morning hello. No acknowledgement whatsoever of your shared humanity on this planet. Life can seem so harsh, making it through the maze of obligations and errands, dealing with this conflict or that, so many daily unpleasantries. Then, as evening falls, home at last to the inner sanctum of family, friends, and loved ones. Such security!

And to think we felt alone all day!
Home Sweet Home

NEW FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST
Coming on Monday, 28 February 2010
"Indiana Gothic"

Don't Have A Cold Heart

"Look around you, look up here
Take time to make time, make time to be there
Look around, be a part
Feel for the winter, but don't have a cold heart"

lyrics from "Lady"
by The Little River Band

**************************************
Snow
Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth
I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill
and did not know where I was going except to the top of it.
In those days we went out like that.
Even children went out like that. . . .

And it was a big one. It would come down and down
for days. . . .

That was the deepest
I ever went into the snow. . . .

from the poem Snow
by Naomi Shihab Nye (b 1952)
Contemporary Palestinian / American Poet
found in her book Fuel

For more Cold Morning Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye
see The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
Latest Blog Post: February 14, 2011

Icy Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day:
"Come and Sit By My Side if You Love Me"
A wintry love poem by Naomi Shihab Nye:

I would be no one.
I would have no head, no hair, no comb.

I would be the thin mist in the air of a cold morning;
I would rise and disappear early, before the sun
and the noisy streets and everyone moving.

I would hum and greet you when you awaken,
with no words, no face, no promise but my love,
like a river.

I would be here, be here, be here invisible, forever --
when all the braver ones have gone to hide --
when all these tears have years and years been dried.

For more Cold Morning Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye
see The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
New Blog Post: February 14, 2011

Ordinary Objects, Ordinary Time

Clay Sculpture
featured in the
St. Louis Post Dispatch, mid - 1970's

Back in highschool, maybe even junior high, I cut this clipping of a crayon sculpture out the "everyday" section of the Post - Dispatch. I kept it safely in a folder of "favorites" until about halfway through college when I took it out and glued it onto the cover of one of my notebooks -- as seen above.

I have treasured it all these years without even knowing the name of the artist or the exhibit / museum it was in. I guess I should have saved the article that went with the picture!

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I've always liked the way that this little patch of the year between Christmas and Lent is called Ordinary Time. One ordinary day after the next descends upon us, as the fun times recede first into the recent, then into the distant past. We mark the time. The light changes. What will happen next?

My most recent Fortnightly Blog, January: Forward Vision, Backward Glance is about our ever - changing perspective of what is ordinary, as is the featured blog of my friend Ann de Forest -- the timely and time - conscious Obsolescing: watching technologies as they wane.

If you haven't had a chance yet, why not take a moment now to check out Ann's January response and to look at one of my favorite essays from the "Obsolescing" archives, The Kindly Mirrors of Future Times, which includes this passage from Vladimir Nabokov, so applicable to the goal of my Quotidian blogposts:

"I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade."

[Vladimir Nabokov, “A Guide to Berlin”
(first published, in Russian, in 1925;
later translated by Nabokov and his son Dimitri
and included in the 1976 collection,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories.]
I particularly like Ann's concluding observation: "As a writer, I’m particularly intrigued by what Nabokov seems to be asserting about the writer’s (or any artist’s) task – to be present and alert to the current commonplace, to record it in specific detail, and thus preserve it for a future audience’s enraptured rediscovery."

Her response to Nabokov speaks to my heart as a beautifully succinct summation of the quotations (up above & to the right -> -> ->) that I have chosen to govern the Quotidian Kit:

realizing every minute (Wilder)
spreading the big ideas over the daily bread (Duval)
looking for the beautiful in the small (Kant)
finding significance in the commonplace (Woolf).

NEW FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST TOMORROW!
~ VALENTINE'S DAY ~
"Cold Morning Poems by Naomi Shihab"

Quotidian Cat

Beautiful Princess Beaumont
I first discovered the poems of Naomi Shihab back in 1975, in a pubication called Power: Personal Reflections by Youth for Youth. My friends and I enjoyed subscribing to this little St. Louis - based poetry magazine and ordering gift subscriptions for each other every Christmas. Although Naomi didn't know it, I was her groupie in those days and copied all of her work into a notebook that I kept in highschool and college. Here are a couple more of my favorites:

My Cat

My cat is sitting on the floor
in the middle of the kitchen
during rush hour.

He is sitting directly between
the refrigerator and the sink.

In mean moments I kick him gently
and tell him to hit the road.

In other moments he acts as a kind
of reminder. I stop.

Why are you sitting there? I ask him.
He smiles.

He is sitting on the floor
in the center of everything
being peaceful.

Because I have forgotten something,
he gets in my way.


Feeding the Cat

Once I woke up early
and contemplated a coffee bean
in all its potent, brown mystery
and that was the day
nothing was empty,
the day a simple act
like feeding the cat
was reason enough
to be alive.

both poems by Naomi Shihab Nye (b 1952)
Contemporary Palestinian / American Poet

Our Tigress Pine at the Window

Intellectual Cup of Lyrics

The card above was designed and sent to me by my friend Cate (Remember: A Yarn Over* The Falls Knitting Blog). Can you read what she has written: "Put a handle on that heart and drink up!" What a treat to get such a card in the mail -- so cleverly assembled and captioned, not to mention hand - made just for me. Thank you Cate!

And speaking of drinking tea out of a heart, how about this heart - warming compliment that I received from another wonderful friend after I posted some favorite song lyrics (Jacques Brel's "Les Vieux") a few months back:

"When I read your blog I suddenly had this nice, warm flow of feelings, that you have -- imagine the moment -- when you finally take a seat on the sunny porch, tired after completing boring house chores, and at last you play some soft music, prepare a cup of fragrant tea for yourself, and immerse yourself in the beautiful meaning of a song. Thanks for sharing your intellectual cup of lyrics."

Now, that touched my heart. Thank you Beata!

*Cate explains: A "yarn over" is a term in knitting, meaning to add a hole or what gives lace its laciness!

I know what gives life it's laciness: friends, music, tea, and poetry! Here's a poem that I've been hanging onto for thirty -five years, written by one of my long - time favorite poets who is better than any other writer I know when it comes to capturing the quotidian:

Now

Now is like a cup of hot tea.
Drink it down and all of a sudden
you feel warm inside.

Many people I know
seem to be waiting
for their cups of hot tea
to get hotter or sweeter.

Inadvertently they don't get
anything but cold.

Hold your life close in your hands
and be close to these
beautifully brewed days.

by Naomi Shihab Nye (b 1952)
Contemporary Palestinian / American Poet