Context and Life
Mamacita says: I love context. I have a tendency to “take things apart” when it comes to poems, songs, and all kinds of writing. (Everything else, too, but mostly word things.) This is, as Monk would say, a blessing and a curse. Have you ever actually listened to the lyrics of some Christmas songs? Applied schema to them? Because two of my favorites, “We Three Kings,” and “Good King Wenceslaus,” tell us a story, and the story isn’t always bright and holiday-ish. “We Three Kings,” especially, is dark and even scary, full of foreboding and even prophecy. King Wenceslaus is indeed good, taking food and drink and wood to the peasant he caught stealing sticks and branches from his land, but his squire’s fear and cold and extreme unease are easily felt if you listen closely. Sometimes I wish I could just enjoy, but that’s not how my brain is built. I LISTEN, and I have to analyze, and it’s indeed a blessing and a curse.
Things I Have Never Done
Mamacita says: There are, of course, many huge important things I have never done, and there is no way I could possibly list them all. However, there are also many small, minor, unimportant things I have never done, most of which could never be listed, either, but here are some of them.
- I have never had a TV in my bedroom, nor do I want one in there.
- I still have never used an ATM for myself. I have, however, followed directions from a passenger who wished to use one.
- I have never peed in the shower. Because gross.
- I haven’t taken the local newspaper for many years, mostly because most of the local reporters were let go, the building was deserted, and the paper has more news about nearby larger cities and hardly anything that’s actually local. They also fired all the proofreaders years ago and the grammar and spelling in the paper are horrible.
- Grammar and spelling are important to me. Errors blast me in the face and cause me pain. I can’t take a piece of writing that contains grammar and spelling errors seriously.
- The older I get, the less sympathetic I am toward fools, idiots, and #45 supporters. But I guess that’s redundant.
- I firmly believe that a person of whatever age who can’t behave properly in public places should not be taken to public places. People have a right to enjoy a meal or movie or play, etc, without interruption.
- I have no sympathy for people who use their cell phone while driving. A distracted driver is a distracted driver, be the distraction alcohol, drugs, or phones.
- I do not understand people who judge others by the color of their skin. Is it a type of insecurity? Or just a hateful heart making itself known?
- We are all descendants of immigrants, unless we are 100% Native American. I will never understand people who hate immigrants. It’s so hypocritical.
There are more – many more – but I’d better stop before everyone thinks I’m a total loser. A little bit of one, maybe, but not a total one.
Poetry Friday: Emily Dickinson and Katie Rose Belford
Mamacita says: Emily Dickinson knew me, and Katie Rose IS me*; that’s the only explanation.
How else could she have. . . . known?
This first poem helped me understand faith. The second confirmed my belief that Dickinson rocked because Katie Rose Belford and her mother both mentioned it and loved it. And you know something; when one of a junior-high-school girl’s book heroines loved a poem, that was confirmation. Lovesick Katie Rose confides to her mother that Dickinson’s poems help her get through hard emotional times, and Katie Rose’s mother, widowed young and left with raising six children, all with big appetites, without her husband’s life insurance because he cashed it in and put it in his just-started bookstore, and supporting them by singing and playing the piano at Guido’s Gay Nineties five nights a week, surprises Katie Rose by confiding to her that Dickinson wrote one for her, too; Mrs. Belford takes comfort in the second poem, which amazed Katie Rose. Whoever expects one’s MOTHER to, well, understand such things? (And oh, calloo, callay, all of the Katie Rose and Beany books have been RE-ISSUED!)
I Never Saw A Moor
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
===========================
You Left Me, Sweet, Two Legacies
You left me, sweet, two legacies,–
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
*YA fans will understand.
Two legacies. Certain of the spot.
No, YOU’RE crying a little.
