Forgetting, or not remembering

On Tuesday I came to work without my phone, on Wednesday I left my iPod at home, and this morning I went into the IGA on the way to work to get something for lunch, got to the check-out and realised I didn't have my wallet. I feel like I am on the cusp of becoming a list person!

Poetry Day - The Lanyard

Today I have another poem by Billy Collins, called The Lanyard. And if you enjoyed last week's youtube of him reading Litany (I fail to see how anybody wouldn't! - though pardon the element of Schadenfreude involved) you might like to listen to him read this one also.

The Lanyard - Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Wisps of fog

For want of anything better, some spacfiller:

1) It's now officially babysitting season - that time of year when parents have to go off to a plethora of Christmas parties and events. What this means is that I catch up on some of the kids movies I have been missing. Lately I have seen Hollywood Chihauhau (in the beginning this was excruciating, but it started to improve when the Alsatian who used to police dog came on the scene), Snow White (I think we all have a handle on that story) and Robots. There are definite recurring themes in kids movies. There's the don't-judge-people-by-their-social-status theme featured in just about every high school movie and there in Hollywood Chihauhau as the little princess learns to see the good in the back-yard dog types (running a nice parallel as the prissy human niece falls for the landscaper), then there's the believe-in-yourself-and-you-can-be-anything theme in Robots, oh and there's always the reasonably obvious goodies and baddies ...

2) I am on standby this week incase things come unstuck for my sweet cousin who is on schoolies week in Sydney. Schoolies week seems like some kind of necessary misdemeanor to me, but perhaps I am getting old. I often look back on my teenage and youth group days and am a little awe-struck, with hindsight, at the amount of effort our youth group leaders must have put in to pull off such fun. And you know what I did for schoolies? One of our youth-group leaders and his wife took me and my friend away for a few days. Is that not amazing?

3) There are strange people in this world, and amongst the strangest are barristers. Yesterday I got the oddest email from a senior member of the Bar. And it wasn't odd because it was full of high-faluting legal terminology that I just didn't understand. Oh no. What was odd about it was that it was in large pink font, on a pale yellow wallpaper, complete with music and a continually blossoming and sparkling pink rose. It began with the words "your wish is our command", with the "our" referring to this (male) barrister and his cat. There was even an animated cat waving it's tail. Between the blossoming rose and the tail-waving cat was further oddness. I think I have met a crazy cat gentleman.

The art and study of poetry

I have been trying to find a course to do in writing poetry at the moment. Most of what I can find is workshops. You go along with poems you've already written, and people listen and offer some critique. And of course it's bound to be rather limited critique too, because everyone is politely encouraging. (I have sat in a writing workshop myself once and wanted to respond to someone's work with something like "I think you should throw that away and never do it again" - well actually, at the time I was blank in my disbelief - but of course I didn't, and they are probably still working on their awful book.)

Is this some kind of reflection on the state of modern education? If so, it is a crying shame. I mean, of course a good many people sit down and write good poems, in total ignorance. But couldn't they write better poems if they knew at least some of the "rules for the dance" (as Mary Oliver calls them)? And where is a place where people actually teach and practice these?

Head down

It's gone quiet around here lately, sorry.

There is something a little frustrating that happens at the end of every year where I work, which is this: they realise that some products aren't going to meet target, so they look around to see how they can make up the downfall, and because my product is a reasonably reliable cash-cow they start putting the pressure on me to get more out. I won't bother listing all the points of frustration involved in this.

This year I had to get out another four parts of a report series for December (that is a lot). And if you've been reading along you'd know that I had a week off in October, two days away at a first-aid course, and there is another confounding factor in that my external editor went away for two weeks. But, I have tried to restrain voicing my frustrations, have done what I was told, and today is the final press date for the year and I am nearly there.

I think it calls for fireworks, or maybe just a little chocolate ...

Poetry Day - Litany

This is a treat – a cross between a Poetry Friday and a Friday Funny (it might be my only Friday Funny). Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate, reads a poem. He wrote it by stealing the first two lines of a magazine love poem and continuing. Just keep listening (skip to about 1:40 for the actual poem).



(You can read the poem here.)

Bright Stars

Sophie is dying to see the film Bright Star, the story of poet John Keats and Fanny Brown, as am I. And that posts reminds me to tell you all that Last Ride (a film I have already told you about), also stunningly filmed by Greig Fraser, is now out on DVD. You can read Glendyn's post about the DVD package here.

(And since I am linking and talking movies, go and check out the, um, curious movie I found about the life of Ben.)