poem of the moment

I just read a post on my friend Molly's blog.  It got me to thinking that I don't share poems with people as much as I did in the past.  It is also an indication of how little poetry I read these days.

I need to start nourishing my head with a little more verse and a little less internet gossip sites.  My favourite place to go is the Writer's Almanac. I used to listen to it on my way to work when we lived in Indiana and I now podcast it, once in a while, just to hear Garrison Keillor's reassuring voice.

This is from the 29th of June 2005:

Poem: "Visit with the Newlyweds" by Rebecca McClanahan from Mrs. Houdini, Poems of Rebecca McClanahan. (c) University Presses of Florida.

Visit with the Newlyweds

She does not know how white her neck,
or how naked. He cannot pass her
without touching. It is summer,
their cotton clothes soft as gauze.
The relatives have given gifts
they will grow into. China teacups.
Glass birds. A clock with a second hand.
I have brought Sweet Williams.
She is amazed something so pink
can bloom every year without planting.
Yes, I answer. Eleven years for us.
Eleven? she asks and looks at the clock
As if everything were told in hours.
Upstairs by their bed, the wedding pillow.
Every night they marry again.
I want to tell them how crowded
the bed will become, how soon
he will sleep with her mother.
The bride yawns, her eyes
turning back the sheet.
Back home the sheets are thin,
the roses worn smooth
beneath bodies so familiar
we wear our skin like clothes.
You touch me and I move to lower
the straps I pretend are there.
Some nights I forget we are married.
Some nights it is all I know.

ad infinitum

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

dancing free valerie

I put on some music the other morning to accompany me doing the dishes.  Normally, I would go for John Denver, Bob Marley, Neil Diamond or other wholesome work music, but on his particular day I chose ABBA because it was at the top of the play list.  

Honestly, I probably played ABBA because deep down I was yearning for some Swedish pop music.  Ace of Base was a contender but just didn't seem right, The Cardigans aren't loaded on the iPod, and Robyn is not suitable for the kids.

"Dancing Queen" started playing and Cora was singing along before the end of the first chorus.  She requested that I play the song again and for the past two days she has been singing "Dancing free valerie" over and over and over...

In an effort to keep her sanity, Mary offered to teach her the correct words to the song (which is ironically one of Mary's favorite songs) but Cora likes her version and has not yet changed.

In other news, we attended Cora's school fête on Sunday. The universe would have a sense of justice if evil doers were reincarnated as petting zoo chickens. They were chased around, picked up and held awkwardly by children and then dropped, repeatedly.

shhhhhhhhhhh

I enjoy quiet.

Do not misunderstand.  With every passing day I prefer quiet, but that is not my point.  What I mean to say is that I find it pleasant and refreshing.  Quiet was associated with the absence of noise, just like I used to think white is the absence of colour.  Now I find quiet is a collection of small details I didn't take the time to notice in the cacophony of my day.

Colour is starting to look odd without the 'U' in it.  Incremental change is the hardest to resist.  It starts with setting my spell check for the Australian dictionary.  Then I manually go back and change all the words to the American spelling as I type.  Then I change the spell check setting to American, only to realize my clients think I am an idiot who cannot spell simple words like colour, or worse: a foreigner who refuses to assimilate.

In verbal communication, we seem to let a lot of things slide.  Last night, I was listening to a lecture on flood resistant/resilient house design and this well respected and prolific architect's speech was filled with words like buggery, bloody, ratbag and póg mo thóin (Irish Gaelic for 'kiss my ass'); along with the distracting insistence to use the word "me" in place of "my".  The room was filled with engineers and most people considered his vernacular charming.  However if there was one spelling error in the publication he handed out, we would have been on him like jackals.

I see change in me and in the other members of our family and my internal struggle is to accept it and file it under progression.  I don't need to spell the word color (or flavor) with or without the "U".  That does not define me.  Getting hung up on these things is only distracting me from the bigger picture.

The word Aluminum is another matter entirely and I will fervently fight to maintain its independence from an additional "I".

Here are some photos of the family to make this post more palatable.

This does not look comfortable.  But with emergent teeth, the ever increasing need to eat and general growing pains, I do not think Gabe's life at this time is solely based on comfort.

Mar, opened up a box of winter clothes for the kids that she had cached away and the kids have a pile of 'new' (to them anyway) clothes.  Among the gems was this little knitted hat a friend gave to us back when it fit Cole. (Thank you Laura, if you are reading this.)

Cole and Cora can operate my iPhone better than can be expected.  They take photos with it and I have a trove of snapshots (a word appropriately derived from a hunting term to mean: a quick shot taken without deliberate aim).  I will share two of the more manic variety:

Vivid Sydney

We had to fly down to Sydney to get U.S. passports renewed for Cole and Cora.  The original plan was to take a train down, which sounds like fun, but upon doing the math (two nights in a hotel, being trapped in a seat for 12 hours, Cora's constant battle with motion sickness) we decided flying was the better option.

As it turns out, Cora only dealt with the motion sickness on the way there and after she used the bag, she was in a much better mood.  I don't know how that works but I am happy it didn't last the entire flight.

We spent Sunday at the Taronga Zoo and I tried to spend as much time as possible by the giraffe enclosure.  The kids treated the zoo like most other things in their life: bored with what is in front of them and pining for some other animal they haven't seen yet.  There has to be a reason more time at the zoo was spent walking between exhibits than actually observing.

After a full day, the kids were exhausted.  Our original plan was to rest in the afternoon and go back out that night with the family, but after dinner, the Cole and Cora were content to sit on the bed and relax.

Gabe had not slept much during the day and was a tired little pineapple.  Mary took one for the team and stayed home while I went back to Circular Quay to view Vivid Sydney.

I had not heard of the festival before.  One of my clients is a sculptor who creates large public art installations that require structural engineering.  He came up with the concept of suspending a "notebook" off a building and coating it with photoluminescent paint.  He then created a giant pencil with a laser on the end of it and fabricated it in Aluminum (Aluminium for those who refuse to acknowledge Humphry Davy's intentions).  We provided engineering for the base and suspending the canvas from the building.

The festival starts at six o'clock in the evening and lasts until June 13.  Various buildings around town are lit up with special lighting and animated light projections.  Most notably, the Opera House

And my favorite was the Customs House:

The photos are not impressive because they were taken with my iPhone and I didn't take a tripod.  Both the Opera House and Customs House were animated; the images were changing and evolving and the artists were able to change my perception of the building's form.  The Customs House installation succeeded on another level because they were able to tell a story.  They transformed the façade with decorations from several eras and then showed each style forming cracks and crumbling away to reveal the next.

After walking around around in the cold for hours, I was in search of a warm beverage and I came upon GuyLian, a chocolate utopia.

If you find yourself in The Rocks in Sydney, I recommend stopping by.  I enjoyed it so much, I took Mary and the kids there the next day for a waffle.

If you look closely you notice that it is served with a bowl of melted chocolate, whipped cream and praline ice cream.  This was later revealed as a bad decision when we were waiting at the airport for two hours and the kids were yelling and running through the departure lounge like hyenas on crystal meth.

Prior to that, we walked around the Chinese Garden and took the ferry to see the harbour.  It was a successful trip and when our passports arrive in the mail we will be all set for our journey back to Wisconsin in a few months.