Good Lord, I have in my dotage done it again, been so delighted with my spurious attempts at creativity, I forgot to send the real stuff, namely the Day Book itself.

Thanks, SDR, for making me aware of this.

But, maybe God himself—on this occasion--was watching, He having precious little else to do, for this gives me the opportunity to send the revised—and much better—version of my cat poem. I guess I was just in too much of a rush to share it with you, forgetting—as usual—that any decent poem  needs at least six hours to sit and simmer and gel.

So, okay, once more with feeling!

Wednesday 
3 May 2017

— daffodils passing the baton to the tulips

Good Morning All,

When the kids were here in late March, Holly brought along a welcomed addition for the bathroom in the form of a 6-inch tall plastic reindeer holding a plunger with a candy-cane for a handle; on one antler point was a plastic facsimile of an unraveling toilet paper roll. 
As if this were not enough, this reindeer is voice activated, so that in the morning when I greet it, it shouts with great enthusiasm, “Come on in! I’ve saved you the best seat in the house!” Either that one, or a half dozen other side-splitting location-related comments that get better and better the more thousands of times I hear them.
In the living room, of course, I have Polly, my plastic parakeet, in her plastic cage, merrily tweeting away, until I take pity on myself and switch her off.
And of course I have on the top shelf of the fridge Wilbur, our rubber pig, who oinks accusingly whenever I open the door.
You might think those three conversationalists would be enough—or more than enough—for any self-respecting New Englander, but I must confess I miss my cat.
With Esther’s help, Britta and I got her for the kids Britta’s last Christmas. Since she was a calico,  Holly named her Twyla, her mix of colors blending like those at twilight. 
Twyla died last summer at the age of fifteen. She'd had good innings. She may have been the last cat in Denmark not to have to wear some sort of metal clip or ink-tattooed numbers in her ear. She had the run of the property and the surrounding fields and woods.  In the bottom corner of my office door, she had a functioning cat flap, but she preferred to come to the floor-to-ceiling window opposite my desk, where she would sit on her haunches and bat gently on the window for me to let her in. If I did not respond immediately, she would merely increase and vary the speed, something like a cat’s version of the Chinese water-torture, all the time gazing placidly up at me, until I fulfilled my obligations as her personal valet.
At night, she generally slept on my hip or under my chin, purred me to sleep, and was usually still there in the morning, waiting for a light scratch between the ears.
Besides a dozen different mews and meows, the meanings of which I came to know, she had hundreds of meaningful facial expressions, more than enough for the following modest effort that began arriving around 3:00 this morning: 

Morning Cat Chatter
C. R. Magwaza

My cat, like yours, is remarkably
Communicative in a be-whiskered,
Tail-flicking, velvet pawed, leg
Licking, dilated-eyed fashion.

This dawn, she camps upon my chest
To pat my forehead long enough
For me to crack an eye: May we inquire
What you have in mind for breakfast?

Not much later, once I’ve put down her kibble
And returned from answering the phone:
No, I certainly have not seen the bacon,
Nor have I personally ever seen the bacon.

Later still: I got near the box, didn’t I?
And: For God’s sakes, keep your shirt on.
And: I bring you a fresh mouse, and
That’s all the thanks I get? 

Latish morning: Actions have consequences;
If you didn’t want that eye-sore vase
On the floor, you should not have put it
On my windowsill in the first place.

Half past eleven; : Oh, and you are an expert

On claw sharpening and rounded sofa arms?
And: Oh, yes, just lightly between the ears.
If you please, but only for an hour or so.

At noon: No, I fell off that railing on purpose.
And: Surely, you cannot be serious if you
Think I’m going to fall for that pathetic
Balled-up paper on a string routine.

Now, she gives me her most wide-eyed
Look of shocked surprise as she gazes
Past my shoulder as if the drapes are
a-blaze and/or an ax-murderer approaches.
 

I turn to look, as I invariably do, then
Turn back, my cat now whisker grinning,
Her eyes gleeful: Made you look, made you look!
Stole your mother’s pocketbook!

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Tuesday

2 May 2017

— just because it is so sunny, I put double feed out today.

Good Morning All,

For the most part, I’m satisfied with the size of the Day Book entry pages, which in real-paper size measure 8” x 10” (20 cm X 25 cm), roughly typewriter paper size.)

But sometimes, I come across a terrific poem that is simply too long to include without reducing the snaps to postage size, and/or having to omit one or another engaging quote.

A couple of days ago, I was doing the Day Book entry for 31 July, which is the birthday of Kim Addonizio, born in 1954 in Bethesda, Maryland, in the same town as Iris Noble, another poet I like, and—as it happens—also my birth town. 

Have I mentioned that a number of years ago I met a man born in the Bethesda hospital the same day as I, and I did not—I am still kicking myself for this!—have the presences of mind to say, “Jolly, you look just like my dad!)

Kim Addonizio went to Georgetown University for a couple of weeks, but then headed for California, the Bay area, where she’s been ever since. In 2000, she was a National Book Award finalist for Tell Me, a collection of her poetry. The Poetry Foundation website says she writes “unflinching poetry”, which to me is high praise, indeed!

Anyway, here’s the poem of hers I’d have put in the Day Book had there been room. 

What Do Women Want?

Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress. 
I want it flimsy and cheap, 
I want it too tight, I want to wear it 
until someone tears it off me. 
I want it sleeveless and backless, 
this dress, so no one has to guess 
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store 
with all those keys glittering in the window, 
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old 
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers 
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, 
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. 
I want to walk like I'm the only 
woman on earth and I can have my pick. 
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm 
your worst fears about me, 
to show you how little I care about you 
or anything except what 
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment 
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body 
to carry me into this world, through 
the birth-cries and the love-cries too, 
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, 
it'll be the goddamned 
dress they bury me in.   

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron 

Monday

1 May 2017

— One may enjoy the maples come what may!

 

Good Morning All,

Yikes, a busy day, historically, and I have left out dozens of other momentous events.

I’d best keep this short.

Two of you, both experts in the music of the past mid-century, have written to inform that The Battle of New Orleans was not written by Willie Horton. One of you, pointed out it was Johnny Horton.

The other of you pointed out it was neither Willie nor Johnny, but some fellow who called himself Jimmy Driftwood (a.k.a. James Corbett Morris), who wrote something like 6,000 folk songs, more that 300 of them actually recorded by various artists.

My man in Florida also inquired how I could have possibly thought the incarcerated Massachusetts murderer who sank Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign could write such a song. Or, he added, perhaps I meant that great Detroit left-fielder Willie Horton who once killed a pigeon with a fly ball at Fenway Park.

I wrote back I’d actually meant Tim Horton, a defenseman in the NHL for 24 years before he opened a restaurant chain in Canada. Either him, I wrote, or the Horton who hatched the egg.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Sunday

30 April 2017

— the quiet, reassuring ticking of Britta’s honorable aunt’s wind-up clock.

Good Morning All,

Anytime after 6:00 and usually before 7:00, once I’ve set the coffee machine perking, been out to check the bird feeders, and—this time of year—to inhale the mixed redolence of the dew and the hyacinths on the morning air, I usually crank up this computer and check my electronic Boston Globe to see how bad things are going back in the old country, around the world, and at assorted sports venues.

With the first cup of coffee, I typically play four games on the AARP website: Pyramid Solitaire (the version with traditional cards), Freecell (traditional cards), Mahjong (Toy Chest), and Spider (Two suits). That’s good for twenty minutes or so, just long enough for my brain to wander into whatever it plans for us to be doing for the day. I keep score and if I accumulate 2,000 or more points, it will be a good day and my chances of getting into heaven have marginally improved.

Next, I send out last year’s quiz-for-the-day to seven of you who are gluttons for punishment. After that, I do the next Day Book page for however far I’ve gotten in the calendar (I finished 2 August about an hour ago.)

A second cup off coffee and two slices of raspberry jam toast, and now it is down to business. I boot up this day's Day Book entry, usually completed a month or more ago, and get to enjoy again the snaps. I nearly always like the poem and prose passage, and I agree with at least some of the quotes. 

There is, though, inevitably some tidying up to do, dates not boldfaced, candles forgotten, a little more squeezing here and there, after which I re-save the entry and then re-save the pdf version.

Now I open an e-mail and get to the prefatory stuff, including the listing of historical events, during which I remind myself not to goof around too much because I have history-major friends who—probably rightly—get annoyed. As you have likely noticed, I do not always succeed in not goofing around.

There follows then my usual natter on some topic or other. Roughly half the time, I have no idea what is going to sally forth, such as this morning. Whatever materialises, I usually go on too long. 

After adding the two attachments, I boot up the Day Book e-mail from the previous day, highlight in blue the address list and drag it into the BCC address slot and push the send button.

That brings up the spell check, where I average three or four legitimate misspellings, a whole bunch of illegitimate ones (my spell checker is British), and a half dozen or so not on the list (Britta and Johs, e.g.), for which I hit the ignore option.

Once I get to Bhekaron and hit ignore, off—with Apple’s whoosh sound--it goes! That is always a good feeling.

Now on a roll, I’ll do one more Day Book entry (today it will be 3 August), and after that give over what remains of the morning (between on 1 and 2 hours) to fiddling around with my own poetic attempts or some work of fiction in progress.

I mention all this simply by way of saying thank you for the considerable enjoyment I get from these morning activities, these morning devotions, orisons, and my best hopes for you all to 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Saturday
29 April 2017

— nascent green leaves in the early morning light

Good Morning All,

I remember as a kid one of my uncles using the phrase hoisted on his own petard, but I was too shy to ask what it meant, and then--the next couple of times I heard it—something weird happened: I became in some weird way uneasy around it, as if because I’d not asked my uncle when I’d had the chance I’d somehow squandered my right to get to know what it meant. So I avoided it. Or, when I did hear it again, I’d look out the window and shift my thoughts to whatever was out there, birds, crickets, the turning of poplar leaves in the breeze, whatever.
Whether other people have these specific word-phobias, I hesitate to ask. I have several, including—for no reason apparent to me—Welsh rarebit. Maybe it is because if I ever try to say it aloud I know damn well I’m going to refer to the leporidae in Dylan Thomas territory.

Anyway, good old Hamlet, who created the idiom, bailed me out when I began reading him with the students in 1984. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: 

"In the following passage, the letters refer to instructions written by Hamlet's uncle Claudius, the King of Denmark, to be carried sealed to the King of England by Hamlet and his schoolfellows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  The letters, as Hamlet suspects, contain a death warrant for Hamlet, who later opens and modifies them to refer to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Enginer refers to a military engineer, a bomb maker;  the spelling reflects Elizabethan stress. 

'There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar'; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.’”

As you may recall, Hamlet just happens to be wearing his dad’s royal signet ring, so he can fake the redone wax seal, and by another happy chance gets a lift back to Denmark with Danish pirates to whom he promises amnesty. 

So, the bomber blows himself up with his own bomb. Which certainly applies to the Dickster.

And one more neat little bit: Shakespeare writes petar’ not petard, the former being at that time a slang word for fart.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Friday

28 April 2017

— wet and soggy, but I need go nowhere!

Good Morning All,

Some morning along into eleventh grade, usually early in the second semester, as the students came in and took their usual sits, I would pass out photocopies of the italicized words below. After the usual settling in—hats and gloves and iPhones stowed, a little last-minute nattering, a few kids would start reading what was on the sheet. Then a few more. And within five minutes, there was solid silence:

The Colonel

Carolyn Forché

(Written in May 1978)

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. 

By the middle of 11th grade, I’d disembowelled enough poems and crucified enough works of fiction so that the kids were getting familiar with how literature worked. 

When they began talking again, usually to each other, and for the most part about what they’d read, I would inquire if they'd just read a prose passage or a poem.

With most classes, that was good for twenty minutes when I could just shut-up and listen. The class was normally pretty evenly divided. Sooner or later—and usually with no help from me--someone would say, “Does it make any difference?”

“Not to me,” I’d reply and then add they could find it on page 845 in the poetry book. Those who’d argued for poetry would slap hands, and the prose fans would tell them they could go do what the colonel had suggested.

I mention all this only because today is Carolyn Forché’s birthday, and she has a poem in the Day Book. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Yes, incidentally, fuck was actually there in the book, Perrine’s Literature,  published in 1998, during a brief lull in the attention span of the censorship mavens.