By Carolyn Forché
This is your museum of stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir,
stones loosened by tanks in the streets
of a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,
schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,
pebble from Apollinaire's oui,
stone of the mind within us
carried from one silence to another,
stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, hornblende,
agate, marble, millstones, and ruins of choirs and shipyards,
chalk, marl, and mudstone from temples and tombs,
stone from the silvery grass near the scaffold,
stone from the tunnel lined with bones,
lava of the city's entombment,
chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,
paving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,
stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,
those that had flown through windows and weighted petitions,
feldspar, rose quartz, slate, blueschist, gneiss, and chert,
fragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe
of a Buddha mortared at Bamiyan,
stone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,
from a chimney where storks cried like human children,
stones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,
altar and boundary stone, marker and vessel, first cast, lode, and hail,
bridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,
stone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,
stone bramble, stone fern, lichen, liverwort, pippin, and root,
concretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,
all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk
with hope that this assemblage, taken together, would become
a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immovable and sacred,
like the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn.
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On this lovely spring Thursday for which I overdressed because the paper said low 50s and it was actually mid 60s, I had lunch with my friend Jo at Lakeforest Mall so that after our burgers (no one told me Red Robin had salmon burgers!), we could check out the new expanded comic store and the feng shui/metaphysical store, Good Luck, that has moved into the old comic store space. It was lots of fun and I get to see her again next week at the Girlyman concert, for which she gave me my tickets even though I forgot my checkbook to pay her back! Driving home, I saw the Lakeforest parking lot flock of Canada geese (the geese migrated there before the mall was built and nest in the drainage ditch pond behind the parking lot), plus the whole herd of deer and a groundhog on the grounds of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (article on NIST deer birth control here), so it must be spring! Here are some orchids from the US Botanic Gardens to celebrate:
Took younger son finally to get his violin case replaced because the school hasn't figured out anything about who to punish for damaging it...sigh, but at least we have insurance so it's fixed. And we had hamantaschen for dessert because Purim begins tonight. It's a little sad that my kids are now too old to dress up as Ahaseurus or Mordechai and have no interest in the Purim carnival considering that this is a very celebratory holiday of clearly Pagan origins (Ishtar and Marduk) despite the various averted Jewish disasters associated with it as well, and Queen Esther is a rocking female figure. But as long as I get my hamantaschen (raspberry, cherry, apricot and chocolate this year!), I feel properly festive, and now I'm drinking a bit of Bailey's Irish Creme as a late acknowledgment of St. Patrick's Day (Jews are supposed to drink on Purim). It's nice that Good Friday, Purim and Ostara are all coinciding this year so lots of people are having holy days together.
Watched Smallville which is getting goofy not only with comic mythology but with its own...either I really missed something or they've utterly shifted Lionel's backstory in the past season, and Lex is back to Way More Stupid Than Necessary, but I enjoyed it anyway because -- loser fan girl alert! -- Gina Holden, the actress who plays Dale Arden on Flash Gordon (and whose acting I have been picking on all season), shows up as Patricia Swan and brings out Lionel's inner villain which is always all to the good. Spoilers: Really, I enjoyed a lot of silly things about the episode -- pouty pretty bruised Clark trapped in the Tholian Web of Kryptonite, Lana standing up to Lionel (the one character with whom Lana has real chemistry, but then, Lionel would have chemistry with a cardboard box), and finally we get Super-Bimbo Kara back instead of Amnesiac-Bimbo Kara!
Okay, I love the idea that Lionel killed Justin Teague's father (EVIL!) and Oliver's parents (VERY EVIL!) and the rest of his wicked cabal, and it explains a bit more about Genevieve though not why he didn't know she had that weird witchy stuff going on. And Lionel pretending to Chloe and Lana that Lex must have found out about Clark from Kara and kidnapped him when it was Lionel all along (PURE EVIL!) and putting on that "Oh, Clark, I'm so upset and worried for you!" performance after Clark found out Lion-El was behind it all (DELICIOUSLY EVIL!) which even Clark is finally smart enough not to believe. But all this Lionel backstory is insane! Didn't we see the precise moment where Lionel found out what Clark was in that episode where Lionel and Martha were trapped in the elevator precisely so Clark would have to save them?
I snickered when Clark announced that he wants to see the good in all people but he thinks the Luthors are a lost cause because they're only capable of doing the right thing if it benefits them...gosh, and is Lana so different? But then I was really shocked that Lex had Patti killed for her necklace -- it would have been so simple to have her knocked out and stolen it, and moreover, it actually works to Lionel's advantage to have her out of the way. At least she gave her father's Grail Journal to Clark first. But it's a bit of sloppy arc late X-Files type writing, and that disappoints me as much as the WTF characterization.
Paul has Friday off because the stock market is closed, so we are going to Richmond to see the Confederate White House which was closed the last time we were there. Which means I get to pounce on Dementor Delta! Have a great holiday if you celebrate one, and a good weekend if not.
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