January 27, 2013

Sunday Quote

...A language for the redemption of failsay and tongue-muzzle. Every never-said will come. - Kristen McHenry, The Goatfish Alphabet

January 22, 2013

The former hall bath

It was one of those fifty pink ones...and unlike the woman in this blog asking people to keep their fifties baths, we tore ours down ... ah well. We had our reasons but I do like her passion and her pink poodles.

January 21, 2013

You would be proud, Dr. King...

‎"Find the good and praise it" -Alex Haley...quoted at the inauguration as I watch on TV, as plumbers bang up our hall bathroom, as I wait for the poet, Richard Blanco, as I sit on the couch in my day-off clothes, as James Taylor plays, as my America is finally catching up to her vision of a country for everyone, all colors, genders, beliefs, backgrounds, sexual orientations, ...we,re getting there, people, slowly but surely, we are getting there.

January 20, 2013

Sunday Quote

You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you. ― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life tags: childhood, magic

January 13, 2013

Sunday Quote

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversations as a dog does. - Christopher Morley (I miss my dear Emmy who was a very good listener).

January 6, 2013

Sunday Quote

Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes – the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

January 1, 2013

January anew

Have loved these calendars since childhood with the illustrations by the late great Erik Blegvad. I was thrilled to stumble across this one. I think the quote sets a good tone for the New Year, don't you?