Luci Shaw, "December"

December

A forty-eight hour fall with more to come.
Our life suspended. The flakes, heavy and

discrete, grow on roof and rail to loaves of snow.
The generous sky meeting with ground’s gratitude

breeds a pearly light with no shadow. We up the heat
against the forecast’s drop. Voices on the phone agree,

it’s beautifully dangerous. Stay close to home.
Somewhere the repeated, muted sound—a shovel

shifting its soft, square load from a sidewalk—
each scrape a single word in a white poem.

Luci Shaw
12-21-08

Brian Doyle, "Some Thorny Questions About The Resurrection"

And I don't mean theological or ontological or scriptural or hermeneutical questions, I mean real questions, like did He have to pee like a racehorse after three long days? And what's the first thing He said when He woke up, did He say where's my wallet? Or did He say sweet mother of the Lord, that is absolutely the last time I drink wine? Or where is my posse? or who are these two men in white at my head and at my feet, Are they hospital orderlies or nurses from the nuthouse or navy midshipmen or what? And when Mary of Magdala didn't recognize Him, and thought He was the gardener, Did He want to say, my God, Mary, the gardener, do I look like a shaggy botanist? And did He think, boy, I would give my left arm for some fresh grilled fish and bread, Or man, when a guy gets wrapped for the tomb do they use enough linen and spices? And between you and me I am sure that there are also many other things Jesus thought The which if they should be written every one I suppose that even the wild world itself Could not contain the books that should be written. Like where did He get a decent cup Of coffee that morning? And who paid for it? And why was He razzing Peter so much? And when He saith unto Mary, woman, touch me not, was that a personal space issue? Or was she one of those people who when they touch you it tickles even if they do not Try to tickle you? You know what I mean? And when He appeared along the lakeshore, And on the road to Emmaus, had He, you know, borrowed a shirt and a pair of pants? Of all the hints and suggestions in the Gospels that Jesus may have had a few brothers, That's the tiny hint that seems revealing to me, don't you think He might've swung by His brothers' apartment and nicked a shirt and left a note: dude, I'll make it up to you... 

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine

Tim Anderson, "Skipping Stones"

Yesterday I taught my daughters
To skip stones
At a place where they were heaped up
Smooth and flat.

We sent them spinning onto the water
Each one telling the same little life story
The first explosive contact
And in success, a second, then a third

Footprints in the wavelets
Describe a tightening
arc as the steps slow to a shuffle
Some go on and on and fade like it’s on purpose
Some make it fast with a plop
But it’s all the same sad comedy
Of resistance


Today the smooth ones are harder to find.
My twelve year old finds
A rock that marks the others
And scratches her name on a skipping stone

Will this one skip?
Oh, yes

She scribes my name on a stone
Presents it to me
and it moves me – seeing my name in her hand
The letters definite and jaunty
Like tiny bones of the self

Inspired now
She kneels by the water
Scribing the names of each of us

Skip us she says
Make us skip
And hesitant at the omen

One by one I turn these tiny children over in my hand
Send my beloved over the waves
hurl my stone self in this little proxied life

How we move!
We dodge the wavelets
Spank the water with a sunny grin

But the same story forms with every skipping beat
The shortened step

The direct purpose becomes a convex decay

And our skittering lives slide
Until, still spinning
We sink back to the formless deep
Soundless beneath the unfeeling wind

And we are only a name etched upon a stone
A life written in water

She kneels there, watching the place
Where our destiny quietly swallowed us
where we lie silent
And the wind rustles the fine hairs
At the nape of her neck

I want to tell her
She is something holy
Someone beautiful
But my tongue suffers under its own weight
My language cannot stay straight

In a task where the essence
Is to be light as light
I must fail, like stones

Only this heap of heavy words remains
A marker of what I knew just then

Hilton Als, "Less An Actor Than A Monologuist"

Mandy Patinkin became something of a star in the early eighties, when the De Niro-Pacino era—ordinary Joe becomes leading man and finds love with Meryl Streep or Michelle Pfeiffer—had already been established, and ethnic-looking leading men were still in fashion. Patinkin, who is Jewish, had an appealing quality on film in those years: sturdy, fighting his way around whatever obstacles society put in his way. But onstage he is odd to watch. In this production, he doesn’t seem to connect with the other actors or with the text; he is isolated in the part. Elisabeth Waterston, for example—she has the kind of fine, melancholy features that Ingres loved to draw—pays close attention to Patinkin as he speaks, but he barely seems to register her. And whenever he has a speech to deliver he bellows and races through it. Prospero is angry about the past, of course, but not all the time. It’s difficult to tell whether this interpretation—which reveals little about Prospero’s progression from spurned nobleman to wise artist—is due to Kulick’s direction or to Patinkin himself, but you can certainly feel that Patinkin is more relaxed when he sings, or stands alone onstage addressing the audience directly, than when he is called upon to respond to the other performers. In short, one suspects that Patinkin is less an actor than a monologuist, interested mostly in his song of the self.

The only actors who seem to connect are Elisabeth Waterston and Stark Sands. In the lovely scene in Act III when Ferdinand professes his love, we’re given a glimmer of what this production might have been had all the actors interacted: a kind of homage to forgiveness.

by Hilton Als
The New Yorker, September 29, 2008
from "Stormy Weather," a review of The Tempest at the Classic Stage Company

C.S. Lewis, "Adjectives"

In writing, don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you’re describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was terrible, describe it so that we’ll feel terrified. Don’t say it was delightful; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read your description. You see, all these words ‘horrifying’, ‘wonderful’, ‘hideous’, ‘exquisite’, are only like saying to your readers, “please, would you do my job for me?”

C.S. Lewis, "Letters To Children"

Shepherd, "Rivers And Tides"

A year ago, beginning to find my way out of a very difficult year and a half, a fresh view of Psalm 23 became very important to me. Sweet, cuddly pastoral images had always come to mind.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

But late in 2007, I wasn't feeling like life was very sweet and cuddly, and mostly I felt like I was left wanting, no still waters to be found.

When I was presented with this psalm, I became curious about the rod and staff, feeling the need of some of that shepherdly comfort. Turns out the rod is a club that the shepherd uses to attack predators; little David beating back wolves with a stick. And the staff a shepherd's crook, but not just meant for decoration alongside a bathrobe in the Sunday School Christmas Pageant, or to prop up kindly, aging sheep herders.

Something hooked up in my memory, and I pulled "Rivers And Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time" from my dvd shelf.

Here's the sequence.


















A fierce comfort, that. As he maketh me down to lie. But there's bloody purpose in it, and, eventually, goodness and mercy.

*

PS Since posting this, I found the following in my journal, from November of 2007. At the risk of over-explaining...

I have been dwelling on the "Do not be afraid" texts. "Do not be alarmed."

This morning I was wondering what the shepherd's rod and staff might be. "I will not be afraid, for Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." Learned that the rod is maybe a club to drive away predators, while the staff is just what we would think, the shepherd's crook. But "comfort" doesn't so much mean "to make us comfortable" as it means... Well, to keep from harm, something like that? Like when the sheep wanders toward a deadly dangerous valley, the shepherd can use the staff to grab the stubborn, stupid little guy and haul him back.

My enemy is more often panic than other sorts of fear: I wind myself up and scramble around.

Thinking on this, I flashed on a scene from RIVERS AND TIDES, which I re-watched the other day preparing for a talk I gave in Langley. A sheep is tearing madly about the stone sheepfold. The shepherd moves in on her resolutely, his staff held out with the business end toward her. (We always think of the picturesque shepherd holding that thing at his side, safely planted on the ground, crook skyward, like a picturesque little boy in his father's bathrobe in the Christmas pageant. We forget that it's not so much a walking stick as a tool.) A sudden grab as she races past, he's latched onto something around her neck, she's jerked to a stop and flung to the ground. And a baby lamb comes out of her. The shepherd lets her up, and she practically tramples her new baby in her scramble to get away from the shepherd. He retreats so she can calm down and tend to her baby.

Needless to say, I saw myself in her, racing around in panic, having to be hauled to the ground so I could get on with the simple, quick, good thing that needed to happen, that would inevitably happen as soon as I calmed down. That's how the shepherd comforts the sheep. This one, anyhow.

Ron

photos | pink girls

pink girls

central park, new york

sep 17 2008

Photos: Shea Stadium

Photos: Wholesale District, Greenwich Village, East Village

Barrett

The Rhodes

Karen

Psychedelic Karen