Poem for Tuesday

Cuisine and Sex
By Jalaluddin Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

You risk your life to feed desires,
yet you give your soul only short grazing spans,
and those grudgingly.

You borrow ten and repay fourteen.
Most of your decisions can be traced back
to cuisine and sex.

The fuel basket goes from one stokehole
to the next. Six friends hoist
your handsomeness and carry it
to the cemetery.

Food changes going from table to latrine.
You live between deaths,
thinking this is right enough.

Close these eyes to open the other.
Let the center brighten your sight.

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Had a relatively quiet morning. Wrote articles on Walter Koenig, Nicholas Meyer and Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. Edited fic. Did some major rearranging of some minor files. Had The Desperate Housewives Cookbook delivered to review for Get Desperate, and howled while reading it -- my style in the kitchen is a cross between Susan, Gabrielle and Lynette (either I burn everything, I order in, or I make things focused on feeding children...oh, here is a fan version of Edie's Pasta alla Puttanesca). Also got a fabulous package from including Erin Hunter cat novels for my son, this year's U.S. Games Systems Tarot catalogue and A Year With Rumi, so you can thank her for today's poem! *smooches * If I lived near Stamford, I would apply to write copy for the Tarot catalogue because I could do a better job. I wonder how one gets to be a reviewer at Aecletic...I would so happily review Tarot decks in exchange for the decks themselves.

This is the only evening younger son's school book fair was open well after school hours, so we all went over there around younger son's soccer practice and bought exciting things like a book on Sudoku with Rubik's Cube-type Sudoku puzzle that older son wanted, a Happy Feet tie-in that the penguin fan wanted and the new Captain Underpants book that both kids wanted, thus proving that boys really never do outgrow toilet humor. (Okay, and I bought a little teeny gorgeous illustrated book on Renoir.) Since we were already out and our stove is still broken, we then went to California Tortilla where we saved lots of money because on Monday nights they spin a wheel and people end up winning free burritos, chips, queso, drinks, brownies, etc.

We watched Heroes, still very X-Men meets X-Files, I end up rooting for the women getting screwed over by men to get violent revenge which doesn't make me like myself much, but it didn't make me turn it off in disgust five minutes in like Studio 60 did...when I'm choosing Monday Night Football over a drama about television, something's wrong. I don't know where Sarah Paulson came from but she's giving me a whole new appreciation for ewwie-cutesy actresses like Melanie Griffith who don't repulse me nearly as much as she does at the moment. My husband had announced that the Monday night game was going to suck, anyway, because the Cardinals were so bad and the Bears were so good, and lo and behold, Phoenix is winning handily.


An albino corn snake in the Croydon Creek Nature Center on Sunday.


And a turtle -- I believe this is a red-eared slider, but it was in a tank with a couple of other species so I may be confused.


The little screech owl, Cosmo, is sitting on top of his shelter at the right of his cage, fast asleep. He was hit by a car and must remain in captivity.


In the woods along one of the hiking trails, a spiderweb in the sun.

Apparently I spoke too soon: the Cardinals have managed to blow it completely. (They have a player named Denny Green and every time an announcer said his name, I thought he said Denny Crane!) Ah well, am more of a Bears fan anyway after living in Chicago, though it has not been the same since the Ditka Era.