From Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by David Hoffman
You, God, who live next door —
If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
With my urgent knocking —
This is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you’re all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there’s no one to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I’m right here.
As it happens, the wall between us is very thin.
Why couldn’t a cry from one of us break it down?
It would crumble easily.
It would barely make a sound.
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It was a chilly Superbowl Sunday, so we figured we should probably stay relatively close to home in case the weather turned earlier than predicted (we had snow flurries on and off all day, though nothing that stuck, and it's supposed to be in the low teens in the morning). So after younger son was home from Hebrew school, we went to Great Falls, which we had almost to ourselves as temperatures under 40 have apparently become too low for most local people to want to tolerate. The canal has been drained dry near Great Falls Tavern, presumably to protect the new canal boat Charles F. Mercer from potential weather issues while the new boarding ramps are built, so that part isn't as scenic as usual, but the river had made ice crystals cling to the rocks overhanging the water and there were eastern bluebirds and a couple of herons and some geese and vultures.
I wrote a short obituary for TrekToday, based on articles at StarTrek.com and The Los Angeles Times, about Lee Bergere, the actor who played Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain" which ironically I had reviewed less than a week before he died. Later in the day I got a note from his daughter, Mimi Bergere -- whom I had quoted (via the Associated Press) in the article -- thanking TrekToday for all the nice comments on the bulletin board about him. That struck me as such a nice thing, that she had looked to see if Star Trek fans remembered her father and that they had. My other Trek news for the weekend was a follow-up about the "holodeck" for speech therapy patients which is also a nice thing to be covering. In a fannish vein, my entire family watched Highlander's "The Samurai" while I was folding laundry (their vote -- we were split on The Prisoner vs. The Simpsons along age lines so we compromised) and the kids liked it so much they then got in the mood to watch the "cow quickening" from the fifth season blooper reel, which gets funnier every time I watch it. We watched the rest of the blooper reel too before going to my oldest friend's annual Superbowl party -- thirty or so families coming and going between the television in the living room, the playroom in the basement and the massive buffet in the kitchen!
For dinner I had five hot wings plus a couple of cheese squares and some fruit. For dessert I had a brownie, cannoli, three small chocolate covered pretzels, two medium chocolate covered marshmallows, a bite of my husband's donut, a bite of my son's frosted cake, some M&Ms and a bit of chocolate crepe with whipped cream. In other words, health food. It was a lovely night. *g* As for the game, after the opening play when the Bears ran the kickoff back for a touchdown, I only saw the first half sporadically, as there were children to be pursued and Boston Terriers to be visited where they were locked away upstairs, and, you know, just one more pass around the dessert table. At halftime the little girls at the party announced that they wanted to put on their own halftime show, so they counted off and did something vaguely resembling a dance before Prince came on. (Prince doing Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Foo Fighters!) The party always breaks up around halftime, as nearly everyone who comes has children younger than ours, and we were sent with a huge package of hot wings that we will be sharing with my parents on Monday night along with their Superbowl leftovers.
This is Rainbow, who was in her element since the dogs were locked up, doing what cats do best...
...except when receiving attention from one of the partygoers.
This may be a football party but the host and hostess' older son has spent the past three years playing computer games instead of watching. There is always a crowd of interested parties at the computer, though to my surprise, my older son actually watched most of the game.
Prince finished the soggy halftime show just before we left. I was impressed he didn't worry about performing in all that electrical equipment in the pouring rain!
I made the mistake of betting on the team for whom I was rooting, but
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