Desires
By Constantine Cavafy
Translated by Rae Dalven
Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown old
when they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
that is how desires look that have passed
without fulfillment; without one of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.
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I believe I have found a dress for the Bar Mitzvah! Rather by accident, as it happens: I was meeting
And learned that my husband's grandmother, his father's mother whose 90th birthday party we attended in Seattle last summer, is dying. They're holding out some hope that she may rally, but she has a pretty bad infection that apparently isn't responding to antibiotics and everything else is slowly shutting down under the painkillers that make it tolerable.
Watched the penultimate episode of Brideshead Revisited. Howled when Julia explained that her father knew Charles was visiting because Charles seemed to have a passion for his children. Though I disliked Charles' shallow, appearance-based judgment of Cordelia, who serves mostly as a plot device in this bit to remind him that Sebastian, not Julia, was his original obsession (he says himself that he has Sebastian with him always now in Julia, though maybe it's the other way around and he had Julia always with him in Sebastian). Cordelia is the one of the four children who is actually doing something useful to others with her life, rather than living high as Bridey does, living in sin as Julia does or living on the verge of a nervous breakdown as Sebastian does...I really don't like these characters too terribly much when I think about it at all.
This snake was in the grass not five feet from the demonstration of Colonial weaponry.
Where there are oaks and other trees with acorns and nuts, there are always squirrels.
People ride horses in the park.
And, of course, there are commemorative horses like this one.
Tomorrow we're going (with my mother) to meet with the DJ to discuss what music son wants played at the Bar Mitzvah and what the order of events at the reception will be. Am hoping this will be relatively easy, as we have a rehearsal at the temple with the rabbi immediately afterward.
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