Poem for Friday

Nature LXXX
By Emily Dickinson

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

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In case I have not sung the praises of the miracle of Imitrex recently, allow me to sing the praises of the miracle of Imitrex. I try not to take it, because I'm afraid I'll build up some kind of resistance and one day it won't work and that will be a nightmare, but after the Advil and then the Excedrin failed me and the storm front was still hours away according to the weather report, I gave in and took my pill and life is so much better. I get all kinds of funny symptoms from it not listed on the immediate side effects -- tingling in my extremities, extremely dry mouth -- and a kind of euphoria but I can never tell whether that's from the medicine itself or from the removal of the pain. Stupidly, I waited till after lunch to break down and take the pill, so was probably bored with my whingeing, though I am pleased to report that California Tortilla's tortilla soup is a good temporary measure when one needs one's sinuses clear.

Spent the morning rearranging the videotapes and DVDs to fit in all the DVD sets people got for Chanukah that had not yet been put away, since I couldn't concentrate or look at a computer screen; spent the afternoon testing younger son on vocabulary for the big class test tomorrow (he keeps spelling antithesis "antitheses" and I have not come up with a mnemonic to help him remember that the latter is the plural). Older son's bus got him to the stop early from Shakespeare Club so I had to fight rush hour traffic to pick him up, since was still quite a ways away. And I bought myself a black leather AmeriBag healthy back bag (well, ordered online because it was on a big sale at one of the big New York luggage stores) so I feel indulged.


Our Lady of the Highways. This sign and statue are along the stretch of 95 going from Maryland to Delaware and always make me smile.


I realize that she's Our Lady of everything to people who believe in her, but singling out the highways has always amused me and the scenery is lovely (which you can't get a sense of at all in these photos, since they were taken in winter through a closed window and I couldn't compensate for the glare very well, sorry)!

I was thinking that I enjoyed Smallville a great deal this evening, and it only just hit me that the episode was Lana-less! Lex is like a different character when all his interaction is with Clark and his father...I still miss the character he was a couple of seasons ago, and Lionel's a bit of a tame lion at the moment, but even so, it was so refreshing to see them interacting so much. I also loved Lionel telling Clark he needs to be careful -- not scolding Clark for stealing from LutherCorp so much as for what Lionel thinks is Clark being sloppy -- and Clark having to admit to him that there's someone else who can do some of the same things. I'm not a big Bart fan, a little too cutesy and he makes Jimmy look mature, but I like the fact that his situation made it necessary for Chloe to be a part of the nascent Justice League -- since Lois needs to be Lois, can Chloe be Wonder Woman? Every time I hear 33.1, I think of Section 31 on Deep Space Nine and it makes me giggle...is that Superman canon, like that storyline was telling me about where Superman was cloned and Lex used his own DNA to genetically modify the result?

Anyway, I love Oliver sticking the nickname "Boy Scout" on Clark since he won't play with the team and pick his own code name "Impulse didn't get to pick his own code name either"). In general I love the way Oliver interacts with Clark, so I really hope he will be back soon in spite of what he told Lois -- I'm ambivalent about the romance because we all know it can't last. Ollie makes a speech to Lois that reminds me vaguely of the one Clark makes to Lois in one of the Superman movies, though I haven't seen them in long enough that I could be misremembering...a sad scene but nicely done, him saying there are more important things in the world than what he wants and what he loves and someday he'll explain why, her saying she won't be waiting around for it. "This is the moment that I'm going to regret for the rest of my life, isn't it?" "Yeah." And then Lionel covering for Clark with Lex, lying for him! That is, lying for Martha, while Lex is trying to play Magneto from the first X-Men movie only without having any of the powers himself. I wish the show would dispatch with the Krypton-wraiths so Clark can go off with the Justice League...and take Lois and Chloe with him!

Also watched Shark, which was superbly, creepily, upsettingly done, and though some awful things happened, I loved it for all the ways in which it was the opposite of The Silence of the Lambs...we are not led to find anything at all admirable or sexy or compelling about the psycho! There's something really interesting about the fact that the killer is a fiction writer who deeply admires Stark from having watched him on TV...I wonder how many of the show's writers watch real DAs on TV and get off on very creepy cases. It cracks me up that Stark uses "Yahtzee!" as a phrase of triumph, like "Gotcha!" or "I win!" Though I am really glad he lost one, and such a big one, with so much at stake, because having a clever nemesis will be good for him and for the show, though I am unhappy that this killer victimizes women so exclusively despite having tortured his brother in years past. I thought at first that the writer was the red herring and the brother would turn out to be guilty, but the arrogance of this guy who is so determined to beat Stark at his own game more than makes up for there being no suspense in the whodunit. The scene where he's chatting up Julie like he's a student of her father is utterly terrifying, and nothing even happens!

Despite being anti-death penalty, after what Callison does to Janet, I won't be sorry if someone takes a gun to the bastard's head. (I feel differently about victims killing attackers than the state doing it systematically as a part of the judicial system...I'd likely vote to exonerate a woman who shot her husband's killer even though I'd never vote to execute the killer.) I don't blame Stark a bit for flying at the guy, it humanized him and it emphasized his anger issues at the same time; I like that he's not a cold fish, that he has so much simmering under there, though I also think he's rather dangerous and could be to his nearest and dearest as well as his enemies. Listening to Janet testify about the things her father did to her and the things Callison said to her was...fuck, so well done it's hard to talk about. Callison's parting words to Stark when Stark begs him to get help, "The Lord helps those who helps themselves," are also utterly freaky and part of me wonders whether Stark is going to very quietly help himself and society by doing in this guy...he was sure ready, in the restaurant with his daughter.

I am ready for this week to end. I just hope it's on a better note than last Friday!