Wednesday, July 4, 2012

ch.12, v.31-50 (power outage)



Alas, my fair city, your lot was cast into calamity,
And conflagration did beset your highways and pathways,
Did envelope in chaos the orderly procession of your nervous system,
Did upset the routes of your messengers and caravans
With a force like unto that of a sirocco of spaniels and terriers, in-bred and trained not well.

What confusion of your own vital spark, this incendiary eruption?
Wherefore the servant Energy became the Tyrant Disruption, all consuming?
Yea, we stood upon the forest hills of the Jamaica plain and did lick our paws in worry
As your citizens wandered aimlessly, hounds with no scent to guide their way,
Or sat still upon their haunches, bereft of your gentle guidance and motivation.

Alas, I know your calamity too well,
For also the conflagration did visit the electrical system of my neurons and synapses,
Did banish the relay of the sight of my eye and the scent of my nose
To the upright and goodly step of my muscled frame.



















Nea, my frame and step were neither upright nor good.
I was as an invertebrate creature of the sea,
Cast from my element and splayed upon the polishedness of these wooden boards,
Perambulating only as my companions did lift me up upon the puppet strings
And did walk me fore and aft, carry me aloft and below,
With this rig of harness and buckles, making their muscle as mine.



Karen demos the new harness contraption for getting Frida up and down stairs post seizure.  I can do this now, too, thanks to the personal trainer at my gym who has been getting me into squats, deadlifts, etc.

Monday, January 16, 2012

ch.14, v.1-26 (winter?)




In that winter that was the winter of certainty,
The raiment of season adorned the earth thickly,
Making upon her soil a coat rich and luminous.

Like palisades of ice upon a frozen coast,
It lighted the way of our perambulation.
It made our path a narrow and a certain path,
And I kept its way closely, straying neither to the left,
Nay, nor wandering either to the right.





Yea, tho' we did burst upon at times the open field,
And I did plunge the whole of my dogness free upon that bright surface,
It did buoy me up as a joyous fowl upon the pond of jamaica
And also on its open page, inscribe the path of my paws for all to read.






This season the earth seems to know not which way is her own way.
This season is a befuddled season, deciding neither
That it shall don its winter raiment, nay, nor the green coat of summer.



Is this the winter of our indirection, my companion?
On this stark and dry hide of the earth,
Bereft alike of her coat of ice and also that of leaf,
Naked as like unto the mutated-ness of the cat,
How can the sight of our eye, or the receptor of our nose,
Find the one path excavated for our perambulation?

Nay, we know not in what manner to prepare ourselves upon each break of the day.
Shall we walk out into a frozen landscape of poopsicles and micicles,
And shall the air of arctica invigorate my limbs with puppiness?
Or shall a sultry air of summer weigh upon my furred hide
And encumber with the heaviness of age
The movements of joints of my quarters both fore and aft?

Sunday, January 15, 2012

ch.13 (my grandhuman, his legacy)




Where he shall pitch his tent it shall be a dwelling of beauty and grace.
And where he shall make for us a denning place it shall be of grace and beauty.
And those who dwell in his structures shall know the goodness of these his creations.


Frida sleeping on the floor of his room, March 1, 2011.
Every day that he was home for hospice, she went right in and stayed there.
On March 2, after his body was removed and she came over, she never entered that room at all.


Yea and even as he does depart from the corporeal dwelling place of his self
Still shall we know in the memory of the one
And also the persistence of this other, his creations,
The grace and beauty and goodness he did bring unto his works and his living.



Don't know what house this is, but 1950s probably.


North Shore Music Theater, first theater in the round, I believe.


Queechee Village, Vermont.


Probably Martha's Vineyard. How we spent our summer vacations.


Home. The Victorian on Montvale Road, Newton Centre.


Master bedroom, where the recovering Catholic meditated and did yoga.


The Dunmere, Oak Bluffs.


Home office in Hull, I believe.


Kitchen/sun room in Hull, with Monty, Frida's big brother, as it were.


Weymouth, with family.