Fragile Industries

Poetry Corner: Maya Angelou

This poem just makes me glad to be a woman.  "...diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs..."  And the hope to carry it off with a fraction of Dr. Angelou's dignity.  Oh yeah.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. Maya Angelou

On My Birthday, Gifts Remembered, Gifts Unexpected

"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together..."

"Yes," I said.  "isn't it pretty to think so?"

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun also Rises, last lines

WAIT

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven't they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal events will become interesting again.

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out of season will become interesting.

Second hand gloves will become lovely again;

their memories are what give them

the need for other hands.  The desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness

carved out of such tiny beings as we are

asked to be filled;

the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.

Don't go too early.

You're tired.  But everyon's tired.

But no one is tired enough.

Only wait a little and listen:

music of hair

music of pain,

music of looms weaving our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

most of all to hear your whole existence

rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Galway Kinnell, Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, 1980

Fragile Industries' Second Favorite Poem By Fragile Industries (And The One That Nearly Killed Me)

Background to Poem:

To left: The Fox Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child (Yoshitoshi, from the "36 Ghosts" series):

One day when he was out walking, Abe no Yasuna saved a fox from hunters. Not long after, he met and married a beautiful girl named Kuzunoha. (Kuzunoha means "kudzu leaf"; the flowering vine appears in the foreground of the print.) She bore him a son and they lived happily together for three years. However, she eventually had to leave him and her son because Yasuna discovered her true nature. She left behind a poem written on a sliding screen: "If you think of me, love, come seek me in the forests of Shinoda, and you will find a kudzu leaf." Kuzunoha's true form appears in the shadow on the sliding screen; it was thought that reflections in water and mirrors, as well as shadows, revealed the true form of supernatural beings who were pretending to be human.

Look closely at the shadow on the screen, and the child clinging to her hem.  It's heartbreaking.

I saw this in an exhibit of Japanese woodcuts in Kansas City.  I was in Kansas City with my father for his mother's funeral, which is a story worth a post all its own.  My dad was many things, but I never thought of him as a connoisseur of art.  Yet he surprised me, sometimes.  He wept like a child at Puccini operas, thrilled to his core.  He was in Japan several times, first when posted there with the army of occupation after WWII, and apparently came to appreciate much of the Japanese culture.  So he was enthusiastic when I suggested going to the exhibit as a break from the Sturm und Drang of Grandma's very Italian (as in The Sopranos-Italian) funeral planning.  We were both struck by this image, as much as my Absolute Favorite, which is listed (plug, plug) in my new list to the left, Shameless Exhibitionism.  I read the story of the woodcut, posted in the gallery more or less as above.

Years passed, and the details of the story became fuzzy, including the spelling of the name Kuzunoha.  I wrote the following, based on my faulty memory.  We should never trust memory to be factual, but it is always interesting how the mind processes and transforms facts into memories, a notion I explore in the poem, as it turns out.  Wouldn't a human-turned-animal now process the human memories in a form accessible to the animal? 

Poem:

KUDUNOHA

In this Japanese folktale, an unfaithful wife and mother turns into a badger after she is evicted from the family home.

A silken kimono rustles down the hall,

then the click of claws on the porch.

Is she cursed with memory?

Kinder if she feels only a moment’s confusion

before she looks for soft earth

to turn up a grub.

But that’s no punishment.

No the moral force of the story requires

penance.  Little fires under her heart,

a burning in eyes that cannot weep.

Badgers carry sadness deep in their wide bodies.

She misses the children, the smell of their necks,

their clumsy fingers like tubers, most of all

the nestling and crooning before naptime.

Mysteries even to her, mysteries from her body.

The enormity of this loss leaves little grief

for her wronged husband.  He’s no marvel.

Under her new and bristling pelt, she thinks of him

rarely, of her lover, not at all.  With her perfect recall,

she still can’t distinguish human men

one from the other or from the violent, snarling tumbles

in the dens.  The white badge on her forehead remains

impassive, like her face

when she wore the good wife’s mask.

Sometimes in sleep her paw flutters

as if waving a fan.

1996

Aftermath of Poem:

I wrote the poem in a rush, a few hours one evening, tinkered a tiny bit the next day, and that was it.  A few months later, I submitted it to a poetry contest run by the SF Guardian.  I ended up winning and being the SF Guardian Poet of the year.  It was initially a hugely giddy process, with interviews, press, much wider publication and publicity for my poetry, and culminated in a huge poetry festival in a SF nightclub attended by Everyone On Earth, or so it seemed, where I read the poem after all the runners up, the top billing. The crowd's reaction was muted, understandably, because it was a young, poetry slam kind of audience.  The thing is, this is not an "out loud" poem.  This is a "read it to yourself, someplace quiet" kind of poem.

The totality of all the fuss and furor was that I developed a poetry writer's block that remains to this day.  I continued to write poetry for several years, but in my mind, and in fact, it was inferior work.  So I stopped, and write maybe three poems a year, mostly dreck but just to do it.  That distressed me terribly for years.  I'm OK with it now.  I have other creative outlets.  Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  If it comes back, I'd be delighted, but it's not My Life's Work anymore.

The block is actually common to writers (and other artists) who achieve sudden recognition.  My fervent hope is that my new creative passion does not achieve Fame And Fortune, but that I can poke along having fun, and maybe make a few people happy with what I make.  So even though I'm trying to make The Greatest Art In The World, and The Most Beautiful Website, and achieve Search Engine Optimal Nirvana, please god don't let me win any prizes.

Oh, and what's my favorite, if this is my second favorite?  Wait and see.  It's Houston's favorite, too.

Poetry on Wednesday -- Gus

My new friend Patti is a woman of many talents.  She’s an actress, director, stuffed bunny maker, mom, wife, and earns her living teaching drama and music in local schools.  She recently directed a junior-high production of “Cats” which was a smash – the kids were outstanding and both audience and cast had a great time.  Patti designs the sets, the costumes, scours eBay for props and wardrobe, and is now in rehearsals for a high school production of “Les Miserables.”  I donated a bunch of silk flowers and other craft items for the cause – now they grace ballgowns and chapeaux created specially for the show.  I have to go see “Les Miz” for the floral display alone.  But back to “Cats.”  In the ‘80’s, I had a cassette tape of the musical that I played non-stop in my car and had memorized, singing along with the lyrics in traffic jams, much to the consternation of other drivers when I lifted both hands for a dramatic finale of “Memories.”  I had a particular affection for “Gus, The Theatre Cat” because it reminded me so much of my father, an actor, and all his actor friends as they recounted their stage triumphs.

So sing along:

GUS, THE THEATRE CAT

T.S. Eliot

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats--
But no longer a terror to mice and to rats.
For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;
Though his name was quite famous, he says, in its time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club
(Which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)
He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,
With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.
For he once was a Star of the highest degree--
He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.
And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,
Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.
But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

"I have played," so he says, "every possible part,
And I used to know seventy speeches by heart.
I'd extemporize back-chat, I knew how to gag,
And I knew how to let the cat out of the bag.
I knew how to act with my back and my tail;
With an hour of rehearsal, I never could fail.
I'd a voice that would soften the hardest of hearts,
Whether I took the lead, or in character parts.
I have sat by the bedside of poor Little Nell;
When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell.
In the Pantomime season I never fell flat,
And I once understudied Dick Whittington's Cat.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell."

Then, if someone will give him a toothful of gin,
He will tell how he once played a part in East Lynne.
At a Shakespeare performance he once walked on pat,
When some actor suggested the need for a cat.
He once played a Tiger--could do it again--
Which an Indian Colonel purused down a drain.
And he thinks that he still can, much better than most,
Produce blood-curdling noises to bring on the Ghost.
And he once crossed the stage on a telegraph wire,
To rescue a child when a house was on fire.
And he says: "Now then kittens, they do not get trained
As we did in the days when Victoria reigned.
They never get drilled in a regular troupe,
And they think they are smart, just to jump through a hoop."
And he'll say, as he scratches himself with his claws,
"Well, the Theatre's certainly not what it was.
These modern productions are all very well,
But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,
That moment of mystery
When I made history
As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell."

Friday Poetry Corner: Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

From Twenty Poems of Love, Pablo Neruda.

I can write the saddest lines tonight. Write for example: ‘The night is fractured and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’ The night wind turns in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest lines tonight. I loved her, sometimes she loved me too. On nights like these I held her in my arms. I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes. I can write the saddest lines tonight. To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her. Hear the vast night, vaster without her. Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass. What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her. The night is fractured and she is not with me. That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off, my soul is not content to have lost her. As though to reach her, my sight looks for her. My heart looks for her: she is not with me The same night whitens, in the same branches. We, from that time, we are not the same. I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her. Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses. Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes. I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her. Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long. Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms, my soul is not content to have lost her. Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer, and these are the last lines I will write for her. Pablo Neruda

It's been over three years since the Ex said he wanted a divorce.  That was while the ink on our prenuptual agreement modification in his favor was still wet. I can't summon up a thimble-full of bitterness any more.  In all sincerity, I wish him well.  This poem is a more literate version of my recent theme song, "Since U Been Gone."  It may not have a catchy beat, but I find it even more moving . . .

Friday Poetry Corner - "The Big D, And I Don't Mean Dallas"

It's been a week since the divorce was final.  Last Friday , I felt pure relief.  I had a dream the night before that was rich with symbolism.  I said goodbye to old relationships, personified by My First Love, who appears in my dreams as an icon of love.  He gave me a handcrafted bed as a parting gift.  Then I gave birth to a son, and I knew my life had changed forever -- overwhelmed by love and a blessed responsibility.  The bed morphed into a beautiful cottage in the country.  I wanted to do nothing but sleep and eat and feed that baby.  I told a friend, "His mother is bright and beautiful, and his father has more money than God."  (We're still in Dreamland, OK?  There's a certain amount of wish fulfillment allowed.)  His father was indeed infinitely providing, a vague figure full of love and safety.  My new life was vulnerable, needed my care before it was ready for the big world, but I could do this, wanted it desperately.  A dream full of emotion and promise.

I'm so moving on.

This poem started in 1993 as an exercise in prepositions.  I wanted to play with the idea of them, and remembered a grammar school teacher's introduction of this form of speech.  She told us "A preposition is anything you can do to a cloud."  I wrote it in the context of where I was then -- putting away the last remnants of my first marriage.  For those hard of hearing, this is not about the most recent ex, it describes a different person.  Still, I find it relevant again.

A HEATED FLUID WILL EXPAND

While the years emptied gravid bottles for my thirst,

you touched me everywhere and shaped my edges with you.

You did and did: around under above in and out.

While my breasts fell and the smooth

creased and the mercury in me rolled this way and that

girls boys boys girls

a wavy flicker ruled by the moon

you were constant: there and here and resting hard

around my liquids until you were ready again to mold

that quicksilver.

Alembic and vessel, you heated me and held

about my steam in your form.

steam builds pressure.  I pushed

but I never thought you could break.  You did, in time:

over and through.

I am mist.  I expand like crazy knitting.

A painful release held back too long.

I surge out my windows and flow up Twin Peaks,

curl down goddamn 24th street, pass through

chrome spokes of the bike, of the baby carriage

all those cycles we abandoned,

seep over every cat until they all seem gray,

yours mine hers.

Even so,

this vapor persists, more invulnerable than granite.

Thrust, if you can, if I didn’t break that too,

in and out and over and through.  Only the wind

wounds me now.  Tell me,

what can you do to a cloud?

Poetry Corner

ILLUSIONS OF SUPPORT

Daring aerialists work without a net.

They go it alone on the wire

wearing skin-tight leotards

suggesting nudity, exaggerating

how vulnerable bodies in motion seek balance,

the hands of a partner in the sky

at the precise second of need

when the trapeze swings away.

The crowd gasps, appalled

cymbals crash

disaster imagined, averted.

Can you imagine working without a wire?

Or flying without the hanging swing

for propulsion or destination?

This is the real circus.  This is the center ring.

You are your only audience in the endless moment.

Is courage a form of madness, or is madness a form of courage?

Weave your net, your wire, your trapeze,

the saving hands in the sky

and hold them dear within you.

You will fly.  You will fly.

11/14/05

Thursday's Poetry -- Oscar Wilde: Panthea

Not his best work -- but it has resonance for me.  Read it at a leisurely pace, and roll with all that ornate Victorian verbiage. The love that dare not speak its name, or any other, for that matter, is alive here.

Panthea

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
  From passionate pain to deadlier delight,-
I am too young to live without desire,
  Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For sweet, to feel is better than to know,
  And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse of passion-youth's first fiery glow,-
  Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,
Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see!

Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale
   Like water bubbling from a silver jar,
So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
  That high in heaven she hung so far
She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,-
Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and laboring moon.

White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,
   The fallen snow of petals where the breeze
Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam
   Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour
Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?
Alas! the Gods will give naught else from their eternal store.

For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown
   Of boyish limbs in water,- are not these
For wasted days of youth to make atone
   By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,
Hearken they now to either good or ill,
But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,
   Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,
They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees
   Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,
Mourning the old glad days before they knew
What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

And far beneath the brazen floor, they see
   Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,
The bustle of small lives, then wearily
   Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again
Kissing each other's mouths, and mix more deep
The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

There all day long the golden-vestured sun,
   Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch a-blaze,
And when the gaudy web of noon is spun
   By its twelve maidens through the crimson haze
Fresh from Endymion's arms comes forth the moon,
And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead,
   Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust
Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede
   Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,
His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare
The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

There in the green heart of some garden close
   Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,
Her warm soft body like the brier rose
   Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,
Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis
Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

There never does that dreary northwind blow
   Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,
Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,
   Nor doth the red-toothed lightning ever dare
To wake them in the silver-fretted night
When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

Alas! they know the far Lethaean spring,
   The violet-hidden waters well they know,
Where one whose feet with tired wandering
   Are faint and broken may take heart and go,
And from those dark depths cool and crystalline
Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

But we oppress our natures, God or Fate
   Is our enemy, we starve and feed
On vain repentance- O we are born too late!
   What balm for us in bruised poppy seed
Who crowd into one finite pulse of time
The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,
   Wearied of pleasures paramour despair,
Wearied of every temple we have built,
   Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,
For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:
One fiery-colored moment: one great love: and lo! we die.

Ah! but no ferry-man with laboring pole
   Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,
No little coin of bronze can bring the soul
   Over Death's river to the sunless land,
Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,
The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

We are resolved into the supreme air,
   We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
   With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
   One grand great light throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
   From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

From lower cells of waking life we pass
   To full perfection; thus the world grows old:
We who are godlike now were once a mass
   Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,
Unsentient or of joy or misery,
And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn
   Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,
Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn
   To water-lilies; the brown fields men till
Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,
Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death's despite.

The boy's first kiss, the hyacinth's first bell,
   The man's last passion, and the last red spear
That from the lily leaps, the asphodel
   Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear
Of too much beauty, and the timid shame
Of the young bridegroom at his lover's eyes,- these with the same

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
   Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
   At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.

So when men bury us beneath the yew
   Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be,
And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew,
   And when the white narcissus wantonly
Kisses the wind its playment, some faint joy
Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

And thus without life's conscious torturing pain
   In some sweet flower we will feel the sun,
And from the linnet's throat will sing again,
   And as two gorgeous-mailed snakes will run
Over our graves, or as two tigers creep
Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

And give them battle! How my heart leaps up
   To think of that grand living after death
In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,
   Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,
And with the pale leaves of some autumn day
The soul earth's earliest conqueror becomes earth's last great prey.

O think of it! We shall inform ourselves
   Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun,
The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves
   That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn
Upon the meadows, shall not be more near
Than you and I to nature's mysteries, for we shall hear

The thrush's heart beat, and the daisies grow,
   And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun
On sunless days in winter, we shall know
   By whom the silver gossamer is spun,
Who paints the diapered fritillaries,
On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows
   If yonder daffodil had lured the bee
Into its gilded womb, or any rose
   Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!
Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,
But for the lovers' lips that kiss, the poet's lips that sing.

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
   Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
   With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
   Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
   Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
   Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
   One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

No Brag, Just Fact

One of my favorite poetry collections came to hand the other day and fell open to this.  Its message is as apt now as it was in Elizabethan times: sometimes the direct approach is best.

A LOVER OUT OF FASHION

Faith, wench, I cannot court thy sprightly eyes

With the base viol placed between my thighs;

I cannot lisp, not some fiddle sing,

Nor run upon a high stretched minikin.*

I cannot whine in puling elegies

Entombing Cupid with sad obsequies

I am not fashioned for these amorous times

To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes

I cannot dally, caper, dance and sing,

Oiling my saint with supple sonnetting.

I cannot cross my arms, or sigh, "Ah, me --

Ah, me, forlorn!" -- egregious foppery.

I cannot buss thy fist, ply with thy hair,

Swearing by Jove thou art most debonair.

Not I, by cock; but shall I tell thee roundly,

Hark in thine ear: zounds, I can swive thee soundly.

Sir John Davies (1569-1626), Erotic Poetry

*minikin is defined as " a very small delicate creature," gibberish here.  Any archaic linguists out there?

She's Ba-a-a-a-ack . . .

Blame Houston.  He said something to me while I was in San Francisco that stuck with me:  "Writing-wise, blogging is empty calories."  Now that wasn't intended to make me stop blogging entirely, but rather was said to encourage me in other projects.  He succeeded, more than he expected, I venture.  The net effect was such that if I could even stomach sitting in front of the computer, I spent my writing energy elsewhere.

All that creative ferment is very well, but it is bad manners, and if all 3 of my loyal following ever check back, I apologize.  I will try to check in with whatever it is I do here a little more regularly, if not as frequently as I used to.   Life is good here at Fragile Industries, the cats are happy and well, the condo is even presentable, and when it slows down a tad, I'll have a lot to say.  As usual.

For what should be Tuesday's Recipe Corner, I again disappoint -- I'm on a cruel diet and even talking about food may break my will.  Instead, I offer a fragment of a poem, another from Galway Kinnell, shown here in an older photo.  I've had this poem above my desk for a while.  It speaks exactly to where I find myself at this odd intersection of mid-life crisis and joyous insight.

WAIT

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours.  Haven't they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal events will become interesting again.

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out season will become interesting.

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;

their memories are what give them

the need for other hands.

Galway Kinnell, Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, 1980