We made cupcakes yesterday, late afternoon. And I was oh so tempted just to eat them as dinner. That's a fun thing to do every blue moon or so, right?
But then my "responsible mother" side got a hold of me, so we had cold cereal first, and then the cupcakes.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
on the precision of language. sort of.
Something about precision of language is so beautiful. I love poems that say succinctly what they want to say. This is a daunting topic to broach, because now, here I am, weighing carefully each word I type and feeling it's lack and it's inability to convey a specific meaning. (That "so" in the first sentence wants to be changed, but to what exactly? At present, I cannot tell.) And while I don't have time this morning to let this post distill into something else possibly more profound, I think that the word resonate may be closest to what I'm attempting to describe.
Think of a single note being played on a cello. A lower note; not too low, but low enough that it reaches your core, your very center. A poem that can resonate inside of us causes either an empathetic or sympathetic response that binds us to those words. And in this case, it may be the sympathetic reaction that is the most powerful, because it allows us to understand something that we have never experienced ourselves.
Someone has decreed it that April is National Poetry Month. And though I came across an essay online decrying this phenomenon because it simply causes us to cater to the most common denominator by providing a collection of watered down poetry for the masses, or something like that, I don't mind it. I'm not out to convince you that poetry, like beets, isn't all that bad, and is in fact, good for you. That said, I like beets and poetry. California Pizza Kitchen has a great salad with beets in it, and you can come here for a few poems and some thoughts on poetry, if you like.
Today I'll share with you a single sentence. A good line in a poem can make me positively giddy, make me laugh out loud with delight, even though the subject matter may be serious. Of course, most good lines require the context of the other good lines that surround it, the whole poem is created for a reason; but this line by the late Leslie Norris says just as much outside of the poem as it does inside the poem it resides in. (From the poem Borders).
Think of a single note being played on a cello. A lower note; not too low, but low enough that it reaches your core, your very center. A poem that can resonate inside of us causes either an empathetic or sympathetic response that binds us to those words. And in this case, it may be the sympathetic reaction that is the most powerful, because it allows us to understand something that we have never experienced ourselves.
Someone has decreed it that April is National Poetry Month. And though I came across an essay online decrying this phenomenon because it simply causes us to cater to the most common denominator by providing a collection of watered down poetry for the masses, or something like that, I don't mind it. I'm not out to convince you that poetry, like beets, isn't all that bad, and is in fact, good for you. That said, I like beets and poetry. California Pizza Kitchen has a great salad with beets in it, and you can come here for a few poems and some thoughts on poetry, if you like.
Today I'll share with you a single sentence. A good line in a poem can make me positively giddy, make me laugh out loud with delight, even though the subject matter may be serious. Of course, most good lines require the context of the other good lines that surround it, the whole poem is created for a reason; but this line by the late Leslie Norris says just as much outside of the poem as it does inside the poem it resides in. (From the poem Borders).
And Sally Taylor, her mother dying in the next room,
heard women's voices, young and laughing,
come in to fetch the old lady.
Monday, April 2, 2007
april fool
Well, just for starters the entire family woke up yesterday with the same cold that only half of the family had been flirting with for a few days. It's the kind of cold that requires umpteen boxes of kleenex for the first 36 hours, the kind that requires you to slather vaseline on your lips and nose because no matter how soft your tissue, your nose is raw because it is a fountain that requires constant attention. This also makes your eyes feel rather weepy; whether that is a symptom of the cold, or the result of feeling miserable, who can say? And your pseudoephedrine apparently isn't doing the trick. Or maybe it is and you should just be grateful. And believe me I'm trying.
We made our own little paper fish for poissons d'avril and stuck them all on Ben. He didn't cry.
And Ben and I spent the morning trying to find his card. You know, the all powerful, as good as cash (except in NYC, where they still like cash better), buy what you need or what you want card? We'd been called by an automated fraud hotline from our bank, although with all those sneaky people phishing for information Ben hung up on them at first. And when the card couldn't be found we checked our account and noticed a discrepancy in the balance and what had been purchased. And so we pulled out all our necessary banking information, and Ben called the bank. And thus we found out that someone else had the card and had gone on a $300 shopping spree Saturday before the bank got suspicious and rejected the card Sunday morning. Surprise!
My reaction consisted mostly of disbelief, albeit mild, that someone would do that. And I felt bad for whomever it is. Really, do people have no conscience? Do they really think, hey! free money for as long as I can get away with this! And I hoped that they were starving in some Jean Valjean sort of way and that they bought groceries and shoes. Ben said realistically, they probably bought a lot of beer.
I'm assuming it was a guy who used the card, because Ben isn't really a gender neutral name, and to him I say: I'm sorry about this whole thing, but I'm glad to be my kind of fool rather than your kind of fool.
We made our own little paper fish for poissons d'avril and stuck them all on Ben. He didn't cry.
And Ben and I spent the morning trying to find his card. You know, the all powerful, as good as cash (except in NYC, where they still like cash better), buy what you need or what you want card? We'd been called by an automated fraud hotline from our bank, although with all those sneaky people phishing for information Ben hung up on them at first. And when the card couldn't be found we checked our account and noticed a discrepancy in the balance and what had been purchased. And so we pulled out all our necessary banking information, and Ben called the bank. And thus we found out that someone else had the card and had gone on a $300 shopping spree Saturday before the bank got suspicious and rejected the card Sunday morning. Surprise!
My reaction consisted mostly of disbelief, albeit mild, that someone would do that. And I felt bad for whomever it is. Really, do people have no conscience? Do they really think, hey! free money for as long as I can get away with this! And I hoped that they were starving in some Jean Valjean sort of way and that they bought groceries and shoes. Ben said realistically, they probably bought a lot of beer.
I'm assuming it was a guy who used the card, because Ben isn't really a gender neutral name, and to him I say: I'm sorry about this whole thing, but I'm glad to be my kind of fool rather than your kind of fool.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)