So sorry I've been quiet lately, but...aaaaaahhhhhhh...spring break. Two very special and lovely words.
I spent mine doing work my Occ. Health Workshop instructor told me on Friday at 4:50pm he wanted done by this week and sorry that he couldn't help at all, but he would be on vacation. I spent Monday attempting the impossible. Tuesday I worked at the hospital and then I spent three days out of town at a hearing conservation course.
And..., I worked at the hospital some more. Tomorrow's my day of vacation and I won't tell you what my to-do list looks like.
Right now all I want to do is not wake up to an alarm in the morning. And the weather reports of 1-3 inches of snow overnight?? Bring. It. On. More reason not to get off the couch while I listen to my new favorite radio program Lost and Found. "The best music you've never heard."
Lenten Dissent
by Cherie Lashway
There once was a logger, named Paddy O'Connell, Who at lunch during Lent, found himself at McDonalds,
And had just settled down to his Big Mac and fries, When along came his priest, much to both their surprise.
The priest said to Paddy, "Just what are you eating? In this season of Lent, I sure hope you're not cheating."
Paddy said to the Father, "I'll tell you no lies. I'm enjoying a Big Mac, along with some fries."
The priest said to Paddy, "I see no repentance. Because of this sin, you will have to do penance.
"By Friday or sooner, I say that you should, For our fireplace, deliver a cord of chopped wood."
Now our timberman, Paddy, an overworked man, Did think to himself, "I don't think that I can."
But early on Friday, our priest, he heard shoveling, And looked out the window at Paddy not groveling.
And saw with confusion, dismay and disgust, That the wood bin was now almost filled with saw dust.
He called down below, barely hiding his ire: "Hey Paddy, your penance was wood for the fire!"
To which Paddy said, rising up from his work, While wiping his brow and concealing a smirk:
"I've brought you a cord, like you said that I should, But if burger be meat, well then sawdust be wood!"
Once I said I didn't have a spiritual bone in my body and meant by that I didn't want to think of death, as though any bone in us could escape it. Maybe I was afraid of what I couldn't know for certain, a thud like the slamming of a coffin lid, as final and inexplicable as that. What was the soul anyway, I wondered, but a homonym for loneliness? Now, in late middle age, or more, I like to imagine it, the spirit, the soul bone, as though it were hidden somewhere inside my body, white as a tooth that falls from a child's mouth, a dove, the cloud it can fly through. Like bones, it persists. Little knot of self, stubborn as wildflowers in a Chilmark field in autumn, the white ones they call boneset, for healing, or the others, pearly everlasting. The rabbis of the Midrash believed in the bone and called it the luz, just like the Spanish word for light, the size of a chickpea or an almond, depending on which rabbi was telling the story, found, they said, at the top of the spine or the base, depending. No one's ever seen it, of course, but sometimes at night I imagine I can feel it, shining its light through my body, the bone luminous, glowing in the dark. Sometimes, if you listen, you might even hear that light deep inside me, humming its brave little song.
It's a wild March morning in Chicago, the wind dragging its nets through the streets. Trawling for its usual and plentiful treasures:
crushed styrofoam cups, torn newspapers, lost gloves, a blizzard of fast food napkins. I take my eight-year-old Toyota
through the car wash. Idling in neutral, I ease past the powerful, shaggy brushes, the nozzles spraying limp foam onto the hood,
and remember the sick excitement I felt when my father took my sisters and me through, all the windows of our '67 baby blue Valiant
tightly cranked, the antenna pushed into its sleeve, our doors locked against who-knows-what, the three of us with our identical haircuts
buckled into the back seat, our identical shoes drumming the vinyl. I was sure those huge blue brushes would crash
right through the windshield and pin us to our seats. At eight, a child sure of impending danger this was about all the thrill I could handle.
I pull out of the car wash into the tangle of traffic, past the bars that open at nine in the morning and stay open, past the disheveled and pacing junkies,
past the crumbling theater draped in shadow and disrepair, and make slow headway against the wind that gathers the stray grocery bags all over the city,
whipping them against the masts of budding hawthorns, silver maples, bald cypress, green ash, green ash.
May they never be lonely at parties Or wait for mail from people they haven't written Or still in middle age ask God for favors Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.
May hatred be like a habit they never developed And can't see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking. If they forget themselves, may it be in music Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.
May they enter the coming century Like swans under a bridge into enchantment And take with them enough of this century To assure their grandchildren it really happened.
May they find a place to love, without nostalgia For some place else that they can never go back to. And may they find themselves, as we have found them, Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.
May they be themselves, long after we've stopped watching. May they return from every kind of suffering (Except the last, which doesn't bear repeating) And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.
None of this is personal, not the way you'd think. The moon keeps on traveling and I can see it from my balcony each night and each night different but it's not my own, not like we want
things to be our very own. But it sways me nevertheless and stands in for certain losses and gains and for even that much I'm grateful. I stand at the back door and stare.
please note: photo by stephanie anderson ladd from owlandcrow
One thing I love most about Sundays is being able to watch CBS Sunday Morning and getting the thoughtful and humane perspective of the world's events spoken by a quiet man in a bowtie. And, as in life, there's usually a dollop of humor, music, and art thrown in. I haven't been glued to the news trying to follow the tsunami recovery and analysis. It's just too horrific. Interesting, if one can simply think about the science behind earthquakes and what happens to the earth's floor, and interesting to hear the thinking behind salvaging the nuclear reactor and burning oil refinery. But the photos of those cars and boats and planes washed up on real homes that resemble Monopoly game tokens? Horrific beyond my imagination.
I'm on "spring break" for two weeks, which means I'm not squeezing class work into my work and home duties--and home by the way has gotten the short end of that stick. It will take me two weeks to get through the piles of Things To Not Throw Away Until They're Looked Over. Of course, there's a short list of tasks to do for school--follow up with the IRB, write letters to congressmen and senators about NIOSH funding for our program, but I'll try to get that done today and be done with it. Oh, and I keep forgetting--the 3 day hearing conservation classes in the town 45 minutes away from us--non-rush hour traffic, which is the opposite of when we'll be driving. Whoop-ee.
But today, I'm going to pilates, will straighten up the house a bit, cook a little dinner, walk my dog, maybe get to a store to spend the Victoria's Secret gift card from Christmas,catch up on The Good Wife and Parenthood with help from hulu.com and generally lollygag for a day. I wish you all a very restful day of lollygagging.
What Have I Got to Complain About
by David Budbill
We've got enough money now not to worry every minute about where the next dollar is coming from. We even go to the movies once in a while. We've got a nice collection of friends. Our house is sturdy and well built. It keeps us warm and stands well against the storms. The larder is full of rice. There are plenty of potatoes down cellar. The freezer is full of vegetables I grew myself.
In the face of all that, slights to my vanity seem frivolous and nonsensical.
And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, they shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall no break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.
This was the feeling that the dark rain gave on school days when the windows of the bus dimmed with all our breath and we pressed close in jostling slickers, knowing the pleasure of being a body with other bodies, we children a flotilla of little ducks, paddling together on the wet ride to the schoolhouse door. Once there, we peered outside appraisingly, beyond the windows and the balustrades to where the rain came down outrageously and made the trees and signposts and the light at the intersection swoop and toss and fizz with gritty torrents to the curb.
That steamy, tar-damp smell of morning rain, its secret smokiness upon our mouths, surprised us with some sorrow of nostalgia. Our past already had such distances! Already in that fragrance we could sense the end of childhood, where remembrance stands.
And when thunder pummeled the embrittled clouds — concussive ricochets that made the teacher hover with the chalk held in her hand — we saw the lighting lace the school's facade with instantaneous traceries and hairline fires, like a road map glimpsed by flashlight in a car.
"here comes another grey morning, a not so good morning after all, She says, well what am I to do today, with so much time..." The kind of morning when it's probably best to stay curled up in the covers with a big old tom cat at the foot of the bed. But, groceries don't buy themselves and errands must get done. I just hate driving around town when it's rainy and misty and cold.
Yesterday took a bit out of me, mostly because work began calling at 5am to beg anyone and everyone to come in and help--they were two nurses short. I had brain lab though and that was already scheduled. So, I helped out a bit before and about three and a half hours after till things seemed to have righted themselves a bit and Pat was coming in extra for the afternoon shift. HoneyHaired and I wanted desperately to see the Illustionist, but it's at a neighboring theater and we couldn't make it there by 3:00.
As for Brain Lab--it is not for the faint-of-heart. I was told "heads in buckets," so I had steeled myself for that, and actually they are well contained in Tupperware. Disquieting though to see faces on them. Not an image to keep with you on a gloomy, rainy day. Very helpful though to transpose what you know of anatomy from a book and make it three dimensional.
I have two presentations this week--The Near-Miss and Injury Online Survey and Health Hazards at Rumpke Materials Recycling Facility(are you kidding me?? If you can think of a health hazard, they've got it), then I believe school is finished for this quarter. If I can get my PowerPoints edited then I can do something fun. In the cold, grey rain.
On a Cold Day in Late March, Near Easter
by Elizabeth Twiddy
I took the car through turns, down long roads, along wood fences, and saw horses, just two, far off, in a field. One turned its head toward me— the other stood motionless so long I began to wonder whether it was real or a fake put there to keep the other company, until finally it bowed its head earthward. Farther on, I saw a flock of small birds pulsing together as points over the brown grass, like tiny buoys responding to air currents, rising and dipping, the air moving the smallest feathers on their bellies.
Going to "Brain Lab" this morning to learn anatomy the good, old fashioned way. If you never hear from me again you'll know I'm still scrubbing the sights from my eyes...
You are a warm front that moved in from the north, a blind spot bearing beautiful gifts, a garden in the air, a golden filament inscribed with the name of God's hunting dog, a magic heirloom mistaken for a feather duster, a fountain in a cow pasture, an anachronistic anagram annoyed by anonymity, a dollar in the pocket of a winter coat in summer.
