Reverential mirth

Tonight at sundown, Jews around the world will mark the first of seven days of Pesach, celebrating the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. Families and friends will gather around tables, eat foods free from any leaven and repeat questions and answers that have been said for millennia.

So our poem for National Poetry Month today is by Israel Zangwill, born in London in 1864 of Latvian and Polish immigrants. Zangwill was active in the Zionist movement, although he was not wedded to the notion of Palestine as the only destination for Jews fleeing pogroms in Europe. He was actually instrumental in bringing 10,000 Jews to Texas around the turn of the Twentieth Century.

In addition to poetry, Zangwill wrote plays, including one called The Melting Pot, about the promise of the United States. Teddy Roosevelt was a big fan of this one.

Our poem is “Seder Night”, and it is as true today as it was in every year since Moses led the Children across the Red Sea.

“Seder Night”

Prosaic miles of streets stretch all round,
    Astir with restless, hurried life and spanned
By arches that with thund’rous trains resound,
    And throbbing wires that galvanize the land;
    Gin-palaces in tawdry splendor stand;
The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found;
    The last burlesque is playing in the Strand—
In modern prose all poetry seems drowned.
Yet in ten thousand homes this April night
    An ancient People celebrates its birth
    To Freedom, with a reverential mirth,
With customs quaint and many a hoary rite,
Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright,
    Its God shall be the God of all the earth.

 

 

Keith is a giant crab

We’re going to take a bit of a diversion today for National Poetry Month. No famous poet or poem, but more of an illustration of how poetry is deeply integrated with other branches of the arts.

Here we have a performance of several British actors demonstrating the verbal versions of various schools of pictorial art. Each one is spot on.

You’re welcome.

 

 

 

Rings of being

As you know, I’m struggling with a lot of emotions related to my work situation; viz: I’m going to be laid off mid-May. Since I was given the six-month fixed-term offer back in November, I was knocked out for a month by surgery/recovery, and my company as well as every other one in tech has downsized by thousands, so there’s a lot to worry about.

Which is something I’m good at.

So for today’s National Poetry Month and Gratitude Monday entry, I’m going to try to draw strength from gratitude and share something by the Thirteenth-Century Persian Sufi mystic, Rumi.

“Be empty of worrying”

Be empty of worrying
Think of who created thought
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open
Move outside the tangle of fear thinking
Live in silence
Flow down and down
Into always widening
Rings of being

I do confess it’s hard for me to let go of the fear, to look through the wide-open door; especially now. OTOH, I have done that in the past, and the result was what I refer to as playing to win. In recent months, I’ve drifted into playing not to lose, and it’s difficult to correct course, especially when you’re full of worrying.

Well—here’s a first step: I’ve scheduled total knee replacement surgery on my left knee for 1 June. There’s so little I feel I can control about my life right now, but I can get this taken care of. It’ll be after I’m separated from my employer, but I’ll take COBRA coverage, so in terms of the physical, emotional and insurance components, I have a good idea what to expect.

I’m marshalling my support system, getting my posse to help me through What Comes Next. To the extent possible, I’m choosing joy over fear thinking and gratitude for what I have over worry about what may or may not come.

 

 

 

Two festering sores

Every sentient person in the country—well, in the world, TBH—knows that there are two justice systems in the United States; one for the (White, Christian) rich and one for everyone who doesn’t fit into that category. If you’re White enough, you may not even need to be rich or particularly Christian; cf. Rittenhouse. You can look at news reports, statistics, academic papers, cartoons—every possible perspective gives you the same result.

That’s one of the reasons why a career criminal like Donald Trump has skated for decades and even got elected to the highest office in the land, on which he shat every waking hour. Every time in his life he crossed a legal, ethical or moral line without (negative) consequences just emboldened him to push the envelope farther the next time he wanted instant gratification. In the White House, that translated to wielding the Executive Branch to funnel money into his business purse; swanning around the international stage like a puffed-up popinjay in badly-tailored suits; waving his willie and pissing on our policies and allies with smug disdain; encouraging violent racism, misogyny and antisemitism in his followers; violating the Hatch Act; installing his spawn and other grossly-unqualified toadies in high government positions where they enriched themselves; killing hundreds of thousands of Americans by his disregard of a global pandemic; bullying foreign and domestic governments to further his political career; mishandling and stealing classified materials; and—eventually—inciting a violent coup to retain power.

All without so much as a bleat from the Republican party, a query from the IRS or a knock on the door from the Department of Justice.

Just like he did his entire life.

So I admit to schadenfreuding a bit right now that Cadet Bonespurs is finally being indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan in connection with alleged hush money payments to a porn star in 2016 to stop her telling the world about her first-hand (uh) experience with his tiny dick 10 years earlier (while his third wife was recovering from childbirth). I realize this case has issues and may not end up with a conviction (or, even, a court trial). However, there are much stronger criminal cases being developed even as Captain Caps Lock smashes plates of ketchup on the walls of Mar-a-Lago, cases to do with insurrection and the Presidential Records Act on the federal level, as well as a potential prosecution in the Fulton County, Georgia, court for election interference. And this indictment pierces the perceived barrier to criminally charging a former president, therefore removing that obstacle to them.

True to form, he’s inciting his followers to defend him like they did at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Which is to say—show up (somewhere) armed and insane to overturn the rule of law and prove once again that his “justice” does not involve actual legal consequences. We’re in for an interesting time.

Still, there is that other justice system, and the poet Langston Hughes wrote eloquently about it. So that’s today’s National Poetry Month entry.

“Justice”

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes

 

Long and lovely and lush

Hokey smokes—here we are in April. So you know it's time for National Poetry Month! Let’s kick it off with “Spring”, by one of my all-time favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

It’s possible his short life (1844-1889) perhaps contributed to the intensity of his works. He converted to Roman Catholicism while at Oxford and spent his adult years as a Jesuit priest. He wrote some poems while at university, but almost nothing was known of his poetry until after his death. Had he not sent some to his friend Robert Bridges (eventually Poet Laureate of Britain), I shudder to consider what we might have lost.

Hopkins used assonance, onomatopoeia and alliteration as well as rhyme. He had no fears about pushing the limits of form to make his point. His “Pied Beauty” is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard, and I dare you to read it without your face wanting to smile and your heart wanting to lift. It is joy captured like a butterfly resting momentarily in your cupped hands.

Let’s just lean into the month like Hopkins leans into the season.

“Spring”

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

 

 

Baby, I got it

I think we end Women’s History Month with the Queen of Soul singing her anthem “Respect”.

Amen.

 

 

Hauter than thou

One last set of photos from the ElsaSchiaparelli exhibition at le musée des Arts décoratifs last November. These are from the post-Schiap era, designs by the guy running the place these days, Daniel Roseberry.

The thing that struck me was how in tune Roseberry is with the spirit of Schiaparelli. I mean, take a look:

They are every bit as fantastic—as in fantasy-like—as her creations. Things you might have a hard time wearing to the company Christmas do, but in which you just might be able to make it up the staircase at the Met Gala. If you walked very, very carefully.

Also: he designed the frock Lady Gaga wore at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Props, man.

 

Along the way

Well, okay—this is a bit of a change-up. Normally I see abandoned bicycles on my walks.

But the other morning, along the W&OD Trail, this:

I dunno.

 

 

Progress

Guy, guys—

Look at this!!!

 

Gratitude Monday: restarting

During my recovery from total knee replacement surgery, my sourdough starter died.

Well, okay, I killed it. Through neglect. I didn’t feed it for about four weeks because I could barely stand to look in my refrigerator (except to get some sparkling water), and I didn’t seem to have the energy to measure out starter, water and flour, much less to mix them.

So it died.

However—my friend LQ, who gave me my original starter back in 2019, saved the day. Last Friday, after she fed hers, she gave me enough of the discard to get my own going again. It seemed appropriate that I should return to the fount of my sourdough experience and begin again.

Here it is after having been fed and rested.

Pizzas and rolls coming up. And I’m so grateful to know that every time I take a bite, I’m tasting friendship.