Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Poem for Wednesday


From "The Gardener"
By Rabindranath Tagore


Do not keep to yourself the secret of your heart, my friend!
Say it to me, only to me in secret.
You who smile so gently, softly whisper, my heart will hear it, not my ears.

The night is deep, the house is silent, the birds' nests are shrouded with sleep.
Speak to me through hesitating tears, through faltering smiles,
Through sweet shame and pain, the secret of your heart!

Love, my heart longs day and night for the meeting with you --
For the meeting that is all-devouring death.
Sweep me away like a storm; take everything I have;
Break open my sleep and plunder my dreams. Rob me of my world.
In that devastation, in the utter nakedness of spirit, let us become one in beauty.
Alas for my vain desire! Where is this hope for union except in Thee, my God?

--------


I slept strangely last night (kept waking up for no reason, not in anxiety or not feeling well, just being awake) and am now totally fried so shall keep this short. Went with to two local metaphysical stores, Special Treasures and The Walnut Tree, to leave postcards promoting Kris Waldherr's The Lover's Path because I had promised Kris I would, then came home and watched two first-season Smallville episodes while eating 's most excellent couscous. My impression of first-season SV is being borne out as following a pattern where every single episode, Clark falls under the influence of debilitating Kryptonite, discovers a meteor mutant and disappoints Lana, yet I am still enjoying them more than the present season because Lex gets so much screen time, Lionel is genuinely evil and the slash is everywhere! One of the episodes we watched was "Jitters" and I know I saw a totally kick-ass songvid based on it, focusing on how Clark has this supportive loving family and Lex does not -- does anyone know the vid I mean or where I can find it?

In the afternoon I wrote an enormously fun article on how the writers of Free Enterprise 2 want Nimoy to star alongside Shatner: "In the original draft of the script, Nimoy finds Shatner at the top of Masada, in a secret base, studying to be a Rabbi. To get him to come back to the States, the Orthodox Nimoy then goes head to head with Shatner in a battle to see who knows more about Old Testament scripture. If Shatner wins, he'll stay and finish his teachings, hiding forever from the real world. If Nimoy wins, he'll haul Shatner back to Las Vegas to perform Rob's wedding ceremony at the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas." The film would end with the two of them singing a duet of "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof. Why is it that I can excuse the most gross excesses of Shatner's ego projects, yet I find Stewart unbearably snotty when after his plans to overhaul Merchant of Venice he starts bragging that his new ITV series is not sci-fi, oh no, never that, even though it is -- well -- science fiction? And then there's Ron Moore, whom I am tempted to go back to calling MooreRon because his ego is inflated beyond the call as well. At least I don't have to listen to Braga brag about innovating the genre or any of that crap, he knows enough to realize he's a hack sci-fi writer!

After dinner we walked over to younger son's elementary school for the book fair. Bought older son a design-your-own-castle kit that is very cool and a book of Red & Rover comics, bought younger son the Dragonology workbook and something on salamanders (plus an eraser pen that he managed to break before bedtime), bought the classroom wish-list library a book about the Liberty Bell and bought all of us the Wizardology book, which has lovely illustrations. I hope the school gets a big percentage of all these purchases. We all watched Commander in Chief which younger son has been specifically requesting to be allowed to stay up for -- I am sure not going to complain if he wants to watch the show with the woman president when he's not yet showing any interest in The West Wing! Same complaint as always, politics ridiculously glib and superficial, and considering the cast is always babbling about how the country needs to be able to see Allen as something other than a woman, the series hasn't made any effort to get viewers to see Allen as something other than a woman. And I don't seem to be able to care enough for this to ruin my enjoyment because then they go and play "Hail to the Chief" or something and I sit there with a big stupid grin on my face. Of course I also watched Boston Legal since it's right there, and got the unparallelled delight of Shatner playing Kirk-on-acid babbling about the right to bear arms! It was almost as good as the E Plebnista all over again! That is just a feel-good show for me even though it should be offending me in all the ways Ally McBeal did and then some...well, okay, it does not have Calista Flockhart which is a big plus and it does have Candace Bergen and Julie Bowen which are also big pluses. If it turns out that Denny Crane does have mad cow disease, I will be very upset, because this whole season has been played for comedy. (Incidentally, does the firm ever lose a case?)


At Homestead Farm on Sunday, the fourth grade students from my son's Hebrew school picked apples for the hungry for Sukkot.


Not a real sukkah obviously, but it worked for shaking the lulav and saying the blessings. You can see here that the campfire in the middle of the semicircle was burning and everything smelled wonderfully of wood smoke.


Here by the pond is the assistant principal of the religious school wearing one of the silliest fruit-picking hats ever!


As you can tell from the ground, the apples were practically dripping off the trees; every time the wind blew a whole bunch of them cascaded down.


Not all the apples made it into the collection bags.


Only about half the families went back on the buses; the other half had other family members meet them at the farm...


...so they could take the hayride out to the pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins for Halloween.

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