Saturday, September 14, 2013

Poem for Saturday and Washingtonian Entertainments

Room in Antwerp
By Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Dust covers the window, but light slips through--
it always does--through dust or cracks or under doors.

Every day at dusk, the sun, through branches,
hits a river's bend & sends silver slivers to the walls.

                        No one's there to see this. No one.
But it dances there anyway, that light,

        & when the wind weaves waves into the water
it's as if lit syllables quivered on the bricks.

        Then the sun sinks, swallowed by the dark. In that dark
more dust, always more dust
                        settles--sighs over everything.

There is no silence there, something always stirs
not far away. Small rags of noise.

Rilke said most people will know only a small corner of their room.

I read this long ago & still don't know how to understand
that word only, do you?

                        Where are you? I think of you so often  
and search for you in every face that comes between me & dust,

me & dusk--first love, torn corner from this life.

--------

We have had magnificent weather all day Friday, low 70s and breezy -- the sort where you never want to close the windows and you do want to take several walks. I had a bunch of work that had to get done, but there were birds on the feeder keeping me company and cats glaring from the window nearest the feeder keeping them company, and though I only saw one bunny, I got to try to have a conversation with a toddler and her grandmother who spoke only Chinese about it.

I posted a review of Deep Space Nine's quite dreadful "The Assignment", talked to Adam about his college application essays, had dinner with my parents who were off to Kol Nidre services, and went to College Park to pick up Daniel who is coming with us tomorrow to break the fast (well, to see family friends there). So not a bad Friday the 13th (not that I'm superstitious) and a fine Breakaway Day with Space: 1999 pilot viewing in the evening. Have a good fast if you're fasting! Some Washingtonian Lake pics:

















TheFridayFive: Computer Firsts!
1. When did your family get your first computer? 1983.
2. What type of computer was it? A Coleco Adam. Yes really.
3. What were your favorite things to do on your first computer? It was the first word processor I'd ever used, having always used a typewriter. I loved the ease of corrections.
4. When did you/your family first connect to the Internet? Some time in the late 1980s when America Online rose to prominence among Mac users. (I had some kind of UUCP account before that, but I signed on so rarely I can't even remember the name.)
5. How did you spend time online when you first connected? Reading AOL message boards and Usenet, mostly fannish stuff.

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