Poem for Saturday

Affirmation
By Donald Hall

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

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Was discussing Alzheimers with my mother in law (whose own mother died of it). Really too horrifically depressing to think about for too long.

keeps trying to kill me. Today it's Death By Alfonso Cuarón in this audio interview in which the director says, "Even if they're wizards, ultimately their emotions are very human. And from the get-go, we established that relationship with the actors. For instance, Professor Lupin, played by David Thewlis...we said that he's your favorite gay uncle that does smack."

From The Washington Post, "The Sex Scandal From Outer Space". "Two things make this sex scandal breathtakingly unconventional, and it is not the whips and cages: The people in question were married. And: No sex occurred. This may be the first sexless sex scandal to bring down a politician. Ryan is being punished for kinky thoughts he denies thinking." Jack Ryan's behavior sounds obnoxious (though people have been known to exaggerate such bad behavior during custody disputes, and the Ryans' was allegedly very ugly), but this situation irks me as much as Monicagate. So he likes kinky sex, and he and his wife argued about it because she doesn't. The scandal isn't about allegations of abuse; he may be insensitive and ill-mannered but it hardly sounds as if there was a pattern of coercion. The scandal is about the fact that he wanted to go to those clubs in the first place. I have a feeling that if his ex-wife had said that she was an enthusiastic participant, things would be just as bad for Ryan if not worse.

We are going to Huntley Meadows to see the wildlife, even though the beavers have abandoned their dam and moved up the river. Tonight there is a free outdoor production of Comedy of Errors in Gaithersburg at the pavilion outside the town center, but it doesn't start till eight, and our kids have got to get back on a normal sleeping schedule before camp next week, so I think we will probably not go. Ah well.