Sunday, October 02, 2011

Poem for Sunday and Renfaire Redux

Autumn
By Amy Lowell


They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?

--------

We spent another very lovely day at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, this time with my friend Annmarie who was out of town the last time we went, though Adam bailed on coming after two weekends of Renaissance faires and stayed home to do homework and see his friends. The only drawback was that the paper said it would be in the low to mid 60s, but it was in the low to mid 50s and I didn't bring a warm enough jacket...and now my eye is bothering me a lot again and I feel like I am getting a cold, which is a serious downer though that is more likely from being around sick relatives and fighting off the infection as from being chilly. We saw lots of things we did not see last time: the acrobatic troupe Barely Balanced, the comedy due Hey Nunnie Nunnie, the sword swallower Johnny Fox, Shakespeare's Skum doing Richard III, plus the Squire of the Wire and bits of shows by musicians. I had cheesecake on a stick, the one thing my Renfaire season had been missing thus far.


Annmarie with Cameron of Barely Balanced...


...here seen juggling knives


Mother Redempta and Sister Philomena Claire of Hey Nunnie Nunnie seek out sinners in the audience.


Richard III plots the deaths of most members of his family and wishes to learn how to bwahahahaha properly.


The ghost that haunts the Squire of the Wire's stage interrupts a trick while the Squire is juggling.


Johnny Fox, the King of Swords, swallows a sword.


Painted Trillium performs music near the glassblowing building.


Hamlet ponders his family and friends' treachery.

We caught up on the Harry's Law episode we missed with the power out on Wednesday, which like all David E. Kelley shows had some great lines and some that were simply ludicrous, but I enjoyed it overall more than the Doctor Who episode we watched right afterward whose title is a spoiler. I complained when the character named in the title was first introduced as the great love of the Doctor's life that I had a problem with that being shoved on an audience rather than developed -- you can't TELL me that a character is someone's great love, you have to SHOW me, especially when he's been passionately involved with a recent companion -- but I figured that they'd take care of that, at least, as the series went on, and now I feel like I am still being TOLD to accept that she's his great love without actually being shown how that developed, because if shared adventure and affection and occasional sexiness were sufficient, he should have been in love with Amy and Rory, not you know who.

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