Poem for Friday and Viking Golf

From The Prophet
By Kahlil Gibran

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way,
begin no day where we have ended another day;
and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant,
and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart
that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

--------

I had a busy Thursday doing chores, broken up by a surprise lunch at Tara Thai with Karen who was working from home and therefore was around for an hour, which also gave me an excuse to walk around Washingtonian Lake. When Paul got home, we ran out to Giant and sorted paperwork. We also kind of watched the Ravens-DC game (of course I was rooting for Baltimore, who are undefeated in the preseason), but mostly I am trying to sort music files and figure out where my multi-USB charger went. From Fenwick Island, my favorite miniature golf course, Viking Golf:

Poem for Thursday and Brookside Butterflies

Traveling Again
By Du Fu
Translated by B. Watson

I remember the temple,
this route I’ve traveled before,...
I recall the bridge as I cross it again.
It seems the hills and rivers have been waiting,
The flowers and willows all are selfless now.
The field is sleek and vivid, thin mist shines,
On soft sand, the sunlight’s color shows it’s late.
All the traveler’s sorrow fades away,
What better place to rest than this?

--------

Quickie, I spent Wednesday doing things I need to get done before traveling, which is a nice reason to have to do chores! I was in the mall twice. I went once to buy underwear (shut up) and do a Regirock raid (shut up) as well as to ship the Xbox that Adam got from Microsoft (though he doesn't want it) to Daniel (who does want it). Then we went back in the evening to pick up Euros and have dinner at Cava because we were right there and why not.

It was insanely hot, even the bunnies looked cranky, so I did not walk outdoors much and driving before the AC really kicked in was icky. We watched Ocean's 8 after we got back from dinner, which of course I really liked -- not the greatest script but it has Helena Bonham Carter and Cate Blanchett as well as a whole pile of other actresses I enjoy, and they were all fun together and all the villains were men. Brookside butterflies, indoors and out:

Poem for Wednesday, Ordeal by Innocence, Beach

A Gift
By Leonora Speyer

I Woke: —
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.

Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird’s-notes.

--------

Tuesday was low-key and all about chores. Our neighbor and cat-sitter came over so we could discuss the cats and the state of the world. I had to stop in the mall to buy some things and conveniently my Pokemon group was doing a raid there, though since there ended up being so many people, we'll probably get EX raid passes while I'm out of town. 

We watched Ordeal by Innocence in the evening since everything is reruns, though I don't generally love murder shows unless there's some central personality making it interesting, and although there are great actors (Bill Nighy, Anna Chancellor), pretty much all the characters are hard to like. Here are some beach photos from last week:

Poem for Tuesday and Mycological Association

Introduction to Mycology
By Chelsea Rathburn

Shiitake, velvet foot, hen of the woods, wood
ear, cloud ear, slippery jack, brown wreaths

of Polish borowik dried and hanging
in the stalls of a Krakow market—all these

were years away from the room where I lay
once, studying the contours of your sex

as if it were some subterranean species
I’d never encounter again. Because I hadn’t

yet tasted oyster—not even portobello—
when I thought mushroom, I meant the common white

or button, the ones my mother bought for salads
or served in butter beside my father’s steak.

First taste of love, or toxic look-alike,
there was your stalk and cap, the earth and dark,

our hunger, wonder, and need. Even now,
I can’t identify exactly what

we were, or why, some twenty years later,
learning you lay dying—were in fact

already dead, suspended by machines if not
belief—I thought first of your living flesh,

the size and shape of you. My amanita
phalloides, that room was to exist forever,

as a field guide or mossy path, even
if as we foraged, we did not once look back.

--------

Too appropriate a topic not to post with the photos I took yesterday, "'Introduction to Mycology' addresses a friend and one-time lover who was a victim of a workplace shooting," Rathburn told Poem-a-Day. "I wasn’t prepared for the places the news would send my mind as I was writing, but I decided to follow the poem...I think of it as an elegy not only for my friend, but for innocence too."

My Monday was quite uneventful after a very busy weekend -- laundry, CVS, catching up on correspondence and some writing, a couple of Ho-oh raids before they ended in the afternoon. I watched Begin Again while folding laundry because I was in the mood for music and the cast. After dinner (leftover Nic-o-bolis and Mexican food) we watched this week's Elementary. Mycology at Brookside:

Greetings from Brookside Gardens

We went back to College Park on Sunday to bring Adam his pillows and some other things he didn't find down the basement in the great wreckage with things we haven't finished sorting from our summer of disasters, particularly since Daniel's closet has to remain empty for several more weeks. We went to the Old Maryland Grill in the new Hotel at UMD, which is one of the places where Maddy is now working and she'd told us she would be there, though by the time we were done sorting and packing and got to College Park, she'd left early because her other job called. Still, we had brunch there before taking Adam back to his house.

Since we were already on that side of the Beltway, we decided to go to Brookside Gardens to see Wings of Fancy before the butterflies are sent to their next location. We also walked in the gardens, saw many turtles, and visited the weekend mushroom exhibit. We stopped at the food store on the way home, and around dinner we watched the end of The Aristocrats (somehow it only pinged during the final episode about the rising that it was an Irish production), then On Chesil Beach, which is well acted and quite depressing but I don't think the novella translates as well to the screen as stories without such intense interior thoughts.

Greetings from College Park

Quickie after a long but nice day in College Park with Adam, who knew nothing about his new residence but the name of one roommate via a mutual friend, so did not know until he arrived around noon that his bedroom had absolutely no furniture. Thus we spent the rest of the day acquiring a bed plus a bookcase and dresser from IKEA that had to be put together, then we went to Azteca for dinner before a stop at Target to get pillows and a couple of other things. So now he is (mostly) ready for his senior year, though he is only taking a part-time schedule of classes in the fall since he is resuming his internships with both NIH and NASA.

Meanwhile Daniel had to have kitchen pipes replaced and still has floorboards torn up, but it sounds like his building manager is taking care of that. We did not get home till nearly 10 p.m., though apart from being sad about Paul's aunt, it ended up being a pretty enjoyable if busy Saturday. Here is Adam's new room in various states of construction (new housemates helped unpack the vehicles), plus the backyard and pumpkin patch out front, the kitchen, and the IKEA trip!

Greetings from Delmarva

We are (sadly) home from the Eastern Shore, doing laundry and trying to organize things while Adam prepares to move to College Park on Saturday for his senior year. We got up early so we could go to the beach before we had to check out; the water was as calm as it has been since we arrived, and we saw at least 20 dolphins leaping just past the surf, closer to us than people swimming parallel to the shore! After we cleaned off, packed up, and drove to Rehoboth Beach, we ordered Nic-o-bolis for dinner, then got Thrasher's french fries plus ice cream and whoopie pies for breakfast while waiting for them to be packed.

We stopped to picnic for lunch at Martinak State Park on the Choptank River and Watts Creek, where we walked to the pier after we ate and saw fish and a skink. Then we drove the rest of the way home, threw in a laundry, and went to my mom's house to eat the Nic-o-bolis. It was a sad evening because we learned earlier in the day that Paul's aunt Nadine had passed away from the inherited liver disease we only recently learned she had, so we called his parents, who are upset that they weren't well enough to travel to see her this month. Now we're trying to find all the things Adam stored in the basement before the bedbug invasion.