Poem for Friday

Meditation
By Roberta Spear

I could sit in this hot bath for hours
both ends disappearing at once
old skin sloughed and lacy
as bits of lichen
until only my navel
a stone cast
leaves rings on the surface
and over the water closes over it.

I am the reed
you peeled back and snapped
off your bare shoulder
a slow spear
that landed ever so lightly
on the glassy lake
and stayed afloat.

My arms
even my chin
are weightless . . .
and I could almost go under
without a breath --
the water like a mother
with her gloves and small parcel
saying I brought you here
and I can take you back.

--------

Oh I'm glad this week is almost over. Thursday was one of those days where nothing really bad happened, but literally a hundred small annoyances and petty things occurred, and I spent much of it feeling cranky and tired and also ungrateful, considering that there are so many people who have genuine crises going on instead of this bullshit. I blame my mood in general on the inauguration, which I ignored entirely, having left my television off all day, and on the idiocy of the Montgomery County Public School System, which had sent out e-mail last night saying that if school was delayed this morning (as it was for two hours), the math midterms scheduled for today would all be delayed till Friday.

This morning at 8 -- AFTER all the kids from our side of the county in the magnet program were already in transit, and they spent two hours on the bus yesterday due to traffic problems from the snow -- they sent another e-mail saying that the exams would be given on schedule today. How fair is this to the kids? I sent e-mail to the principal, called the school, apparently we were not alone because the principal later sent out another rather pissy e-mail noting that the initial delay was for the convenience of the teachers, not the students, and the teachers had assured her that the students were ready so the parents should chill. Does this woman know what middle school students are like when you change their routine? We told ours to study for his social studies test in the morning because he wasn't going to have the math test...this is not a kid who deals well with changes of routine in general, let alone for his first middle school midterms. I was delighted to hear so many other parents had complained!

And then, because I was not stressing enough about the schools, we got e-mail from our younger son's school that their power was off! They managed to get it back on, but not before I had cancelled out on lunch with in case they closed the building and asked us to pick up our kids. This after he didn't leave the house till nearly eleven because of the delay, so I had pretty much no time to myself all day. On top of that I didn't get a package I expected and needed, my father is home feeling crappy and may need a stent after all, I didn't get to the store and get stuff we needed and...well, George Bush is president of the United States again. Yeah. How come I did not know about 10,000 Jesuses before today?

After the usual insanity of carpool-in-snow and getting one child to Hebrew school, the other to violin, my evening brain-clearing activity was watching Wimbledon with the commentary on. Why did no one here mention to me that Paul Bettany as well as director Richard Loncraine did the commentary track? It didn't even say so on the DVD case! When Paul's character says, "There's something I haven't told you," meaning to reveal to Kirsten Dunst's character that he's planning to retire from tennis, Paul interrupts himself onscreen to say, "I'm massively gay." Then while the director is trying to talk about the use of music in the scene, Paul insists on sticking to this theme, going on about how that would have made it a different movie if he was gay and how they could always reshoot the film again.

The big bummer (so to speak) of the commentary track is Loncraine announcing that they had to digitize out part of Paul's anatomy when he flips on his back to pull on his pants because Sam Neill is coming to kill him. They joke about how big it was and how much it cost. During the scene when Paul has to climb over Jon Favreau to get out of bed after his character has acupuncture, Jon moans, "Jennifer," which cracked Paul up and apparently nearly ruined the shot. Paul calls Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays his character's practice partner -- the one whose weakness is men in leather shorts -- "too good-looking to live." But my very favorite moment is when he and Loncraine are both praising the teenage ball boy and Paul claims that the boy is really Russell Crowe, who is such a great actor that he can actually make himself smaller, and the director adds that he completely loses the Aussie accent, too. Paul just can't resist talking about Russell, can he?

While I'm borderline RPSing, Ted on the Golden Globe parties: "Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were hubba he-man supreme, huddled away together at Miramax. Yes, they wanted to talk about the chicks, but, look, they did it in that totally too funny Hobbit-holding kinda way: all touchy-feely, girlish gossiping. Kate, did you teach Mr. B. such silliness?" This makes me giggle, particularly coming from Ted. (Sorry, , I can't resist Orlando sometimes!) And on this cheerful note I am going to bed.


Looking up from the deck yesterday, the snow coming down and obscuring the trees.