By Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Sitting here
Loving like this
Alone again
In God's valley
After that magnificent storm
Of Your presence just
Passed.
I am like an elegant cypress
Whose face and form
Your beauty
Ruined.
Why not
Accuse You of infidelity
Or much
Worse
When every
Lover of God in this world
Would gladly
Testify
On
My
Behalf.
--------
Paul came home at lunchtime and we drove downtown for the funeral of my parents' good friend, which was held at my temple though I've never been to a memorial service there before. Like all funerals, it was a sad mix of celebratory and painful. The very first person I saw when walking inside was someone with whom I went to high school and whom I really haven't seen since then, and nearly all my parents' local friends were there, including people I haven't seen in 20 years. The last time I saw the man who died was also a sad occasion, my great uncle's funeral earlier this year, and I hadn't spoken to him much except for at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs in recent years.
But I grew up with his oldest daughter, with whom I went to ballet and Hebrew school as well as public school, we took piano lessons from the same teacher, we went to each other's birthday parties. Her father used to videotape our recitals back before anyone else had a video camera, he filmed my mother's surprise 40th birthday party (I can't believe I'm older now than she was then), he was at many of the big events in my childhood from school plays to awards ceremonies to graduations. The service was very nice, conducted by the most personable of the rabbis, who had obviously talked a lot to the family even though they weren't members of the congregation. All four of the daughters spoke as well as both sons-in-law and the oldest two grandchildren, all of whom obviously adored him. He had a full life but he died too soon, and he was around my own parents' age, which makes it pretty chilling for me.
A Jacob sheep at Dancing Leaf Farm on the Countryside Artisans open house tour last weekend.
Unsurprisingly, one of the sheep seemed to mind the biting chill in the air.
The dogs, however, tried desperately to follow us into the shop and, when they were dismissed by the shopkeeper, settled for trying to steal cookies from the tin on the porch.
This sheep and lamb etched on glass were on display at Art of Fire in the side building where Tuatha Gallery and Dancing Pig Pottery had their wares on display.
Dancing Pig had their fabulous Green Man mugs, goblets and bowls for sale...
...as well as these fantastic new pieces with ravens...
...and the pieces with goddess symbols and pagan holidays.
The Maryland Renfaire's Allen Ye Printmaker was visiting Art of Fire too.
Paul's office holiday party was this evening at Dave & Buster's, so the kids and I had pizza and watched the G4 rerun of Monday night's Heroes, where we discovered how incredibly annoying those side-scrolling internet additions can be. Still, we liked the episode for the most part -- I am so much happier when the storylines converge, and it's nice when there's a gimmick like the comic book that supposedly records the characters' lives holding it together thematically. Spoilers: Had Claire and Hiro really never spoken to one another before? I thought they did way back first season. I loved the flashbacks with their parents -- someone did a great makeup job on the Bennetts, and it was nice to find out that Hiro's mother did have some influence on his life, on this show where it's so often all about the dads. And yay, a new George Takei scene! "Aren't you the new chef?"
So now Sylar has a reason to hate Angela and Arthur Petrelli both -- I'm not at all sorry if Arthur is gone, if his death is the tradeoff for Elle's then it's a storyline I can live with, though naturally on this series I'm taking death even less seriously than typical TV deaths that often don't last. When Claire went to pick up baby Claire, I was yelling "No, it's a paradox!" a la Doctor Who, even though obviously the laws work differently here and evil aliens don't get to take over. Oh and speaking of Doctor Who, I guess it is just as well that I could not afford tickets to go see the Tennant-Stewart production of Hamlet in London over winter break, since it sounds like poor David Tennant may not be in the play.
Tonight's Pushing Daisies was definitely not one of my favorites...maybe the theme of someone bringing her beloved father back from the dead hit a little too close to home right now, or maybe it's just the Pet Sematery-ness of it all, but I really did not appreciate Chuck's beloved father coming back so wrong that he makes his creepy friend with the pocket watch and the shotgun seem almost benign by comparison. Spoilers: We already knew that Charles Charles was no saint, having impregnated Lily while he was dating Vivian (though at this point I am entirely confused: how come Chuck's aunts have the same last name as her father if they're not in fact related to her father? Are they all cousins, which would make more sense of why Lily hid her pregnancy than wanting to protect her sister?). But he really didn't need to be a scarier manipulative creep than Ned's horrible neglectful father, did he?
It's a lovely claymation opening, anyway, and Emerson's pink shirt deserves some kind of award of its own. And I really howled when the architecture guy complained about the stucco crust overhang on the beautiful old art deco building housing the Pie Hole, and any episode in which Olive sings and Emerson says, "Shut the a-cappel-up" is worth keeping. But wow, Ned doesn't stay mad at Chuck for bringing her father back -- a huge violation of his trust -- nearly as long as Chuck stayed mad at Ned when she found out he was responsible for her father's death in the first place. I'm starting to think maybe Ned/Olive wouldn't really be settling, but making the best of the situation rather than letting old wounds fester.
Daniel had put on a Robot Chicken earlier this week that I meant to post about, because it made me SO SO SO happy: a Thelma and Louise parody picking up right after the ending, with the car flying over the edge and crashing many feet below in the canyon, leaving them both lying there with broken bodies reflecting that really, jail doesn't seem so bad now -- they might even have gotten off on a technicality -- and then they die. Meanwhile Harvey Keitel's character is standing on the rim of the canyon going on about what a tribute to freedom they are. I felt so betrayed by all the bullshitting feminist critics who talked about how fabulous the film's ending was -- oh, they went sailing right out of the frame, they weren't trapped in any man's narrative, death is preferable to living as a woman who's been compromised or, you know, is a survivor...Seth Green totally nailed it, those women were offered up as sacrificial victims and there's nothing admirable about it. Go Robot Chicken.
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