Poem for Wednesday

Rain
By Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

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Poem snicked from because it's so beautiful, though rather darker than I'm feeling at the moment. It does want to give me a fic bunny, which I am for the moment resisting.

So Tuesday night's Veronica Mars really pissed me off. That whole "let's frame the abusive boyfriend as a faggot and get him kicked out of the Navy in revenge" rubbed me SO the wrong way...I was hoping that the girlfriend would want to go ahead and send the manipulated gay site and Veronica would talk her out of it, citing among other things the fact that such blackmail is a felony since the site was forged and she could have gone to jail (along with her friend who helped create it). But no -- the girlfriend decided to do the decent thing while Veronica was pushing for criminal revenge. Okay, the boyfriend was a major asshole but it's not like he threatened the girl's life in present series time, and outing someone in certain communuties can get them killed or locked up by their parents. If she wanted to bust his ass for having slipped a date rape drug and taken the quasi-porny footage and then tried to use that to blackmail her, great -- surely that could have gotten him kicked out of the Navy -- so why didn't she do that instead of a crime for a crime?

For the past two weeks I have been positive Logan killed Lily; the closer he and Veronica got, the more it made sense dramatically as well as logically. Sure, Duncan could have done it during some kind of fit, but there's not a lot of emotional payoff in that revelation, it just closes a book Veronica's been trying to shut all year anyway. And it makes the most sense, given the Kane family's hatred of Keith and meddling -- I think there are Lily secrets that Veronica doesn't know yet -- but it's just not as interesting as if Logan did it, because he knew Lily was cheating and she didn't love him, and he's obviously quite messed up under the surface and his whole family is falling apart (and everything about him rubs me the wrong way, I have no problem believing he'd slip her a date rape drug and then decide he wants to date her and never tell her a thing). I am not sure whether I want to be right about this, so next season she could have all the angst connected with that and no Logan, or if I want some twist I can't see coming even if it means that Logan sticks around as the BF.

I did see some local animal news that made me smile: a baby porcupine was born at the National Zoo (and has no spines yet, just red fur) and an expectant duck who made her nest in front of the Treasury Department has Secret Service protection for her eggs. Okay, it would be nice if the people living in the district got as much protection as the animals, but it's nice to hear happy animal news anyway.

Had lunch today with my mother, who is going to Florida with my father for a week (someone please remind me to pick up their newspaper in a comment tomorrow around lunchtime). Mailed a bunch of packages that have been sitting for weeks waiting for me to get the rest in order and get them out..., your book is on the way, and , all the stuff is coming! You know, if I have promised you stuff that I have not sent, please nag me, because odds are good that I just forgot or got busy and need to be nagged so that on a day when I am NOT busy, I can get it done...if I have lost whatever it was that I said I'd send, don't worry, I'll tell you. Older son had Hebrew school, so did some carpool schlepping, and wrote a couple of articles including a fun one on Berman and Braga saying no, really, the Enterprise finale doesn't suck honest. The site owner was just back from London with photos of the Admiral's House in Hampstead (from Mary Poppins) which apparently Russell Crowe just bought. Ridley Scott lives next door. I had no idea that there were walking tours with this kind of information in that neighborhood when I was there!

It was a gorgeous day today so I took some spring photos. Here are a couple.


The trees across the street from the boy with whom we carpool to and from our older son's bus stop.


Tulips and a little beetle. I realize that many people will consider the beetle unsightly, ruining both the photos and the flower, but I liked it.


This is a mediocre, blurry photo, but it's the best I could do trying to get our neighbor's tree and the multitude of bees flying around its flowers -- the breeze was blowing and everything was in motion, and I was rushing out to pick up Son #1.


The pink azaleas are in bloom, and one or two red azaleas like this just-opened red one, and about half the purple ones, but the white ones are not open at all.