Poem for Monday

This Fish Way
By Jalaluddin Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

The ocean way is this fish way
of the watersouls of fish who die becoming the sea.
Fish do not wait patiently for water.

In this world full of shape,
There you are with no form.

You have made a universe
From a drop of my blood.

Now I am confused.
I cannot tell world from drop.
My mouth and this wine glass are one lip.

I am Nobody, the fool shepherd.
Where is my flock? What shepherd?

When I talk of you, there are no words.
Where could I put you, who will not fit
in the secret world, or in this one?

All I know of spirit is this love.
Do not call me a believer.
Infidel is better.

--------

It wasn't quite as insanely, outrageously warm Sunday as it had been Saturday, though there were little pink blossoms coming out on local trees and the sun shone most of the afternoon, before the rain clouds rolled in and we had a flood watch in the evening. We went for a hike at Seneca Creek State Park -- the same park that had the drive-through winter light show last month -- though this time we were in a different area, walking along the creek in the woods and then stopping at The Woodlands, which has a model log cabin, a millstone and some exhibits on the Clopper family who owned the mill for whom the road leading to the park is named. I took photos of the mill ruins and the creek and the flowers coming up in the beds by the visitor center, but I will post those tomorrow, because we experienced The Return of the Big Stripey Pest during the rainstorm which caused much upheaval for the entire family:


I can't be certain that this is the same raccoon that visited last October, but its MO was the same...show up on the deck after dark on the night the garbage cans were full for pickup the next morning, peer in the windows and climb around the deck furniture.


This time discovered its presence while he was trying to bring in the recycling bin to carry it out front. The raccoon seems utterly unafraid of people, as it pressed its nose and paws against the window and cocked its head at us while I was taking these pictures. It was also unfazed when we banged on the window to stop it from climbing on the deck table umbrella collapsed for the winter.


Then the pest on the deck inspected the "squirrel-proof bird feeder," taken down for being an utter failure at its task. Clearly it is not any better at being raccoon-proof, at least not when lying on its side on the deck. The raccoon seemed quite pleased to find cobwebs covering the opening and played with them in its paws.


Cinnamon, however, was not amused. At all. Neither was Rosie. The two of them glared and hissed and jumped at the window, only to jump back and cower under the table when they realized the pest was bigger than they were. It stayed under the overhang through the rainstorm, driving them insane. Here Cinnamon looks at the tail as the raccoon crawls out from under a chair...when she is nervous, she puffs out her striped tail and we call it a raccoon tail, so this amuses us greatly.

We did a bunch of chores in the late afternoon -- we had to stop for cat litter and at Trader Joe's for brown rice -- so in consolation we also looked at the fuzzies in Petco and went to Congressional Aquarium to see the fish and turtles. Still no luck tracking down a Wii nunchuck anywhere for a decent price. Which reminds me, I want to ask a stupid favor: Did anyone get an extra Musical Amigos toy in a box of Trix (or any of the other cereals that come with Happy Feet action figures) that you'd be willing to trade for any of the others? We have duplicates of all the rest and our local food store no longer has the specially marked boxes.

We had intended to watch the Narnia special edition on On Demand, but by the time we stopped being distracted by the raccoon, it was too late for such a long movie, so instead we watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on cable since we had deprived the kids of it the night before. It got such bad reviews that I was ready for it to be unwatchable, so I was pleasantly surprised by it; it's nowhere near as good a film as the first two and exacerbates some of the plot holes of the second movie that I usually repress, like the time paradox where they build Skynet based on material from the first Terminator. And it had a downer ending that seemed like a sure setup for a sequel I assume we'll never get now that the Governator has other things to do. But it's worth watching just for the opening, Ahhnold arriving naked and marching into a club on ladies' night, having a stripper in black leather assume he's gay, stealing the stripper's clothes to much cheering and leaving in the stripper's Elton John sunglasses.

There are a number of stupid plot decisions, like having the T-X turn into her female avatar when she could have killed Kate very easily continuing to appear as her fiance, then turned herself into Kate herself to get to John. And why turn her hand into a saw to cut through the car instead of just punching her way through like she did with the truck? So much seemed done for special effects awards rather than any sort of logic. I won't get started on the female Terminator spending most of the movie in fetish garb and high heels, either. One of my favorite moments was John telling his future wife admiringly that she reminds him of his mother -- Oedipus complex much? Oh, that's right, he has to send his father back in time to fuck his mother and get killed! -- but it really brought home the extent to which Kate is not Sarah, and Claire Danes is not Linda Hamilton, which was probably not a good thing to draw attention to. I'm not sorry I saw it, though, since it was better than the reviews led me to expect.

The Patriots beat the Jets and the Eagles beat the Giants! This is good news not only because we generally root for New England and against the Giants around here, but because Dhani Jones went to my sons' elementary school and he visits occasionally because his mother still lives nearby. I didn't watch either game at all closely but we caught the ends of both.