Watermark

Winter Branches

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

Santa Cats

Flickr provided the hats for my kitties; a little holiday treat. Just add a note (ho ho ho hat) to your flickr photo, and up pops a Santa hat! They have beards, too (ho ho ho beard) but my cats look odd with beards.

Boo looks sweet, as usual; but Spike makes a rather grumpy Santa, don't you think?

A quick search of the Holiday World Wide Web unearths quite a lot of Santa Cats. We have this one, which outdoes Spike in grumpiness -- a must-see. Flickr, of course, has page after page of Santa Cats, all (well, most all) cuteness sweet as Christmas cookies. Then we have:

www.flickr.com More photos in Holiday Cats

Here are lots of Christmas Cat links at From the Heart PostCards, and more from noelnoelnoel.com. The Cat Gallery offers free online greeting cards, and fluffytails offers Tree Decorating 101, by two fluffytailed sisters.

Had enough? No?

Heavens to kittens! OK, try:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless
Weekend Cat Blogging
Weekend Dog Blogging 
LisaViolet's Tummy Tuesday
Kitty Movie Monday at YouTube

Not enough to do this weekend? Come Introduce Yourself!
   

Poetry Thursday

I've been thinking, again, of you
and others. How something we don't
understand binds this universe
together. That the dark

matter of our brains may be what
makes us who we are. How instinct,
genetics, and experience weave
together in a rope

we may use to climb or tie or hang
ourselves. Or others. How my brother,
finally, released my hand, and died.
This snow will, soon,

release itself into air. I am thinking,
again, of hearts: their dumb stamina,
their unseen flaws and missed beats.
That we can test only

that which we can see. Or that which
leaves a mark, some evidence of its
existence, if only for a nanosecond,
if only on a graph.

Are we constructs? Is there a formula
which expresses you, which expresses
me? How our blunt hands hold on.
How they let go.

 

This one's for Mary. It was written the night before she left a comment, which is one of those synchronicities that are baffling, and wondrous.

Santa Lucia Day

I meet this winter without celebration,
as the man who was dying, but now lives,
greets the ants that pass through his kitchen
in narrow, undisturbed rows.

When the child with her crown of candles
comes to my door in her white dress, singing,
I watch the delicate notes disperse in pale
cold light, like snow.

 

St. Lucia Day @ Wikipedia
"Santa Lucia" in Sweden @ Holidays & Festivals Around the World

Illness is a kind of winter...

Illness is a kind of winter. It strips the green, leaving only the bare, peeling branches of your life; but it opens the sky. The view widens. It is a new season, only that. You know it will get colder. You know ice is coming. You retreat indoors; inside.

Reading MFK Fisher, I see that I know nothing, really, of pain; and less of those who live with -- who love -- the person in pain.

I am in a between place. I feel change coming -- which, I suppose, is appropriate to the season. I sit on the deck, alone, late in the night, smoking in the snow.

I shall accept T.'s offer of a tree, cut from his property in advance of the power company saws. We will put it on the deck, and decorate it with icicle lights and the Buddhist prayer flags K. gave me for my birthday. I will welcome this solstice and whatever darkness and light it brings.

I don't know who I am. I am no-one. I am a dark vessel, waiting.

 

MFK FISHER on not writing

"I think that many people want to write, but of them few have the will to. I write more than half the things I do or say or think. I can see the words on the sheet of paper and see the pen writing them. And in my head a voice, a kind of silent reading voice, reads them not from but to the paper. Often what is read is good. There is a quick sureness about some phrases. At times they come too patly, with a smart-aleck tone. But I don't write. I write a few letters, which grow less interesting as I age. But that is all. It is because I am lazy, and that is true of most of the people who think in prose. Laziness and a vague fear."

    MFK Fisher    Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: journals and stories 1933-1941

Holidailies Squirrel

I can't believe I signed up for yet another one-post-a-day-for-a-month project. But since I did, here's a squirrel for you:

 

Baby, It's COLD Outside!

Cousin Sue sent new photos of her little sweetheart, the cutest cat ever, Bibs:

Photos by Sue Pinkerton ~ click to embiggen

Bibs clearly knows that winter has arrived, and she's not certain she approves. Actually, I bet she has just as much fun in the snow; she seems to be that kind of cat.

If you are in that part of the world that is getting colder, you might want to stay indoors with your computer for awhile. You might take a few minutes to Introduce Yourself!, or you might visit:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless
Weekend Cat Blogging
Weekend Dog Blogging 
LisaViolet's Tummy Tuesday
Kitty Movie Monday at YouTube

Stay warm!

Poetry Thursday|Cam's Poetry Meme

  This week's prompt was Cam's poetry meme:

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was ...

"Jabberwocky" is a poem (of nonsense verse) written by Lewis Carroll, and found as a part of his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). It is generally considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe ...

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought ...

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and …

I don't remember being forced to memorize any poems.

I do remember being encouraged to memorize Bible verses, which no doubt contributed to my love for the rythms of language. It would have been the King James Version of the Bible.

I did memorize Jabberwocky, above, and didn't have to look that up before I typed it.

3. I read/don’t read poetry because …

I read poetry because it keeps me alive, awake, paying attention. It reminds me who I am; who I am not; who I want to be.

4. A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is …

I have a lot of favorite poems, I think; too many to list here. That one up there is certainly still one of them. I tend to respond to questions like this by thinking about a poet the questioners might like, and directing them there.

I have too many favorite poets, too.

My favorite just now is Jack Gilbert, because that's who I am reading.

5. I write/don’t write poetry, but …

I write poems, but don't actually expect anyone to read them. I'm surprised when they do, and even more surprised when they like them.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature …

... in that poems seem much more personal to me; they elicit my own emotion in a more sudden, intense way; seemingly bypassing my rational, thinking self.

7. I find poetry …

... in surprising places. Under stones and pepples. In the river. On my dinner plate. In the newspaper; on a neighbor's roof. On the side of a bus. In the trucks changing gears on the bridge.

8. The last time I heard poetry …

I listen to poetry a fair amount, online and on the radio (Garrison Keillor) -- but the last time (InRealLife) I heard a good poet, who is a good reader, do a reading was several years ago, when Pattiann Rogers was here. Now, there's a poet who brings you out of your chair. She's also a great teacher.

I've noticed that many poets are not the best readers of their work. Perhaps it's because so many of us are actually introverts. We're meant to be sitting alone by some deeply seductive body of water. Reading someone else's poems.

9. I think poetry is like …

Nothing else. It's closest to music, perhaps; or stories told to children, generation after generation, until they acquire the depth and wisdom and patina of great age, and become something new again.

I feel that I want to say something more about this. I've been involved in several discussions elsewhere about poetry as craft; poetry as talent; poetry as personal expression; poetry as spiritual practice. I think, for the practicioner, it can be any or all of these things.

But to make a poem, a good poem, that is a skillful thing. Just as making a table, or a house, or a concerto, is a skillful thing. Anyone can take some boards and a hammer and some nails and make a doghouse -- but if they haven't learned, if they haven't studied doghouses, or wood, or carpentry, or tools -- then that doghouse is likely to fall down. Now matter how 'talented' they may be with spatial imagination.

I am often surprised to meet people who want to write poetry --  but never read poems.  Or people who want to be a writer -- but never write -- or read -- anything other than tabloids. They are eager to talk about tools -- which computer, which software, which expensive fountain pen, which leather-bound journal (and I can talk about all this, myself, quite happily) --  but ...

If you want to write (not be a writer; not be a poet) -- this is what you need:  paper; a pen or pencil; the determination to make time and pay attention; and lots of  books. Library books are fine. Second-hand books are fine. Just be sure they are good books, of the sort you would like to write -- and then read them. Read some more of them. Read them again.

Read some books about writing by writers you admire. Try out their suggestions. Write, write, write some more. Remember that growth requires compost: write shit. Write some more shit. Let it ferment awhile, while you write some more.

Do that for a long time. Find out who you are. Write some more.

Now you have begun.

Have I forgotten anything?

[Please come by and Introduce Yourself!]

 

Aubade for Pris & Baylus

Baylus turns and says
look! Sky is separating
from land, you can see
the line of the mountains.

Pris says, have some tea,
have a cookie, comfort
Teddy. That line is still
hazy and dim, don't go.

Baylus drinks the air.
Baylus rocks a bear.
Baylus pulls his boy-
sword, and vows

to stay the grownups.
Pris makes a nest
of blankets, pillows
and plush elephants.

Baylus says, it's time
now, it's time for you
to fly. I fade now. I
fade.

Last month, Didi at cafe' cafe' invited us to write about our muse, and then challenged us to write an aubade for one of our peers and his/her muse. This was mine, for Pris.