By Tom Sleigh
Out of the stone ark that carried them this far
in their two by two progress up to here,
they've outlived everyone
and everything they've known—
he in his fishscales up to his waist, she
in her grunge hairdo of stone:
and on each face no guilt for surviving,
no stony comprehension
of all they've left behind, just a joy
so of the moment it seems almost heartless,
the two little stone gods grinning mad little grins
at whoever could be so foolish as think stone
thinks, as to think they could get close
to what those grins might mean...
And in the hotel room
where all this is happening, traffic flow
halting in its own stalled glow
ricocheting pane to pane, I'm
coalescing out of sleep, dissolving back,
as if it were the moment just before
the moment cracks
and I become a little god,
that grin on my face making me
feel a little silly, silly immortal, silly
not to die when my dad's
long dead, Amy's dead three years,
Benny died a year ago, and Jason's
just died, his stare still dissolving in the room.
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On Wednesday I finally broke down and did something I've been thinking about literally for years: I got a pro Flickr account. I can't afford Google, Dropbox or Amazon's cloud storage for the number of gigabytes I have, and after spending weeks (literally) trying to back up first to CrashPlan, then Carbonite, realizing that it would take just as long to download everything if I ever needed to, I came to the conclusion that Flickr is the most cost-effective way to store thousands of large photos offsite. Once they're uploaded, the visual interface is terrific (organizational tools, sizing options, degrees of privacy, no bandwidth limitations) -- but unfortunately the only way to upload is in batches of 200 using one of Flickr's uploaders, which is not only slow but labor-intensive. I spent hours uploading and am only through my 2003 photos.
Not much else happened that was exciting. Adam went to cross country practice after school and was not happy to have to run six miles in the muggy heat (I didn't go for a walk until after 6 p.m. and even the bunnies were hiding). I debated watching the Democrats all evening, but Paul reminded me that it was the first night of football season -- Cowboys vs. Giants, no less -- so we kept switching to that, and now we have Comedy Central on, though Stewart's DNC coverage has been pretty flat so far and Clinton is on top of his game. Here are some more photos from the rainy Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire on Labor Day!
The "story" at the PA Faire this year involves Puritans blaming the theatre and general licentiousness for an outbreak of plague.
The Queen, however, was unimpressed and marched through the center of town...
...and Henry V went on as planned (here the English sail to France).
There was lewdness on stage and off -- for instance, Miguel (of Don Juan and Miguel) tried to get Adam's girlfriend to run off with him, but Maddy was having none of it.
Naturally, there were still pirates...
...and
The rain made the stage too slippery for the dog show to be safe to perform...
...but the Human Chess Game went on despite the weather!
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