Poem for Monday and Port Orchard Waterside

Against Boredom/Toward Warmth 

By Jane Wong 

Boredom, my mother warned me,

  is for the rich. And so I became amused

by tying grass together with grass,


by ants carrying their dead, by bending

a spoon as far as it could bend.


I spent days imagining my back

as a spoon bending and the men

  who would watch me bend.

I even avoided laughing

to save energy.


I imagined having a fit of laughter

one day and lighting

a whole house


with it, keeping heads warm

with the trill of it.

I dreamt of being

  a radiator, waking the ribs

of all the boarded up houses

  you’ve lived and lazed in.

-------- 

My Monday morning was all about laundry and other chores that got ignored over the weekend. Then we had lunch, finished up a bunch of work, and went out to CVS to pick up a prescription and to Safeway to do the food shopping we never got around to on Sunday. It was quite hot for this area, 85 degrees, so we didn't take a long walk, and the ducklings and goslings were hanging out in the shallows where they usually sleep at night. 

Around dinner, we watched the great 11-inning Orioles-Rangers game that the Os ultimately won. Then we finished the fourth season of The Bear, in which four of the major actors give tour de force performances but I feel like the supporting characters get short shrift, the women this season in particular, so I want a fifth season. Now we're watching more of The OA. Some photos of boats, flowers, and a heron from Port Orchard on Saturday:

Greetings from Snohomish

We spent a lot of Sunday playing Iron Dragon with Chris and two other friends, though I snuck out when it wasn't my turn for some Pokemon Go Fest raiding and spawning regionals. Everyone brought lunch food so we ate very well! After we left, we talked to Paul's father and took a walk in the spectacular late afternoon weather. We weren't very hungry for dinner, so we had peanut butter sandwiches while watching the last few episodes of The Bad Batch with Cheryl.

 

Now we're watching the second episode of The Gilded Age this season, flinching because the only actor on this show worse than Meryl Streep's daughter is Vera Farmiga's sister -- who is also not remotely believable as a 17-year-old innocent -- and cringing even more at the period nonsense, but I still get to see Carrie and Audra so I'm putting up with them (Cynthia Nixon's prissy Temperance storyline makes so many people want to punch her in the face anyway that I can tolerate seeing it).

Greetings from Port Orchard

I had a lovely Saturday west of the city across the bay. We went to Port Orchard, where we walked along the inlet by the marina and briefly visited the farmer's market, then we went to the home of a friend -- Julia, the older sister of Daniel, Adam's best friend from childhood -- whose own daughter just graduated from high school so they were having a party. We drank shirley temples and made flower crowns and there was a pinata and lots of food, and it was a delightful afternoon!

 

We stopped in Gig Harbor on the way home because it's on the way and so beautiful by the water. (I'll post pics from Port Orchard and Gig Harbor later in the week.) When we got through the traffic, we watched some Bad Batch, then we had strawberry shortcake with our neighbors and gave them a cat charm from the farmer's market. Now we're watching some more of The OA, in which Jason Isaacs is even more evil than he's been in anything else and that's saying something.

Poem for Friday and Cedar Waxwings

Giving a Manicure 

By Minnie Bruce Pratt 

The woman across from me looks so familiar,

but when I turn, her look glances off. At the last

subway stop we rise. I know her, she gives manicures

at Vogue Nails. She has held my hands between hers

several times. She bows and smiles. There the women

wear white smocks like technicians, and plastic tags

with their Christian names. Susan. No, not Susan,

whose hair is cropped short, who is short and stocky.

This older lady does my hands while classical music,

often Mozart, plays. People passing by outside are

doubled in the wall mirror. Two of everyone walk

forward, backward, vanish at the edge of the shop.

Susan does pedicures, pumice on my heels as I sit

on the stainless-steel throne. She bends over, she

kneads my feet in the water like laundry. She pounds

my calves with her fists and her cupped palms slap

a working beat, <i>p'ansori</i> style. She talks to the others

without turning her head, a call in a language shouted

hoarse across fields where a swallow flew and flew

across the ocean, and then fetched back to Korea

a magic gourd seed, back to the farmer’s empty house

where the seed flew from its beak to sprout a green vine.

When the farmer’s wife cut open the ripe fruit, out spilled

seeds of gold. Choi Don Mee writes that some girls

in that country crush petals on their nails, at each tip

red flowers unfold. Yi Yon-ju writes that some women

there, as here, dream of blades, knives, a bowl of blood.

-------- 

A lot of the work I intended to get done on Friday got derailed by the Supreme Court, which kept doing things so monumentally stupid that I had to stop and read things and rant a lot. Plus I joined a wonderful group for liberal Jewish people whose online support groups and even many of our friends would rather attack those of us who won't let a single handwaved "all nations have a right to exist" on Colbert make up for a lifetime of "we stand against the entirety of the white supremacist zionist settler-colonial project." 

We went out in the afternoon to do a little shopping and get my wedding manicure removed (normal people can't remove dips without professional filing!) so now I have much shorter, average-looking nails. We only took a short walk because it was drizzling, we saw the ends of the astounding Orioles and Mariners turnarounds, and we watched some Bad Batch, this week's hilarious Murderbot, and now the even more hilarious Resident Alien. We have a family of cedar waxwings in the wetlands hiding from the herons:

Poem for Thursday and Swans Trail Newborns

Twelfth Night From The Willow Cabin 

By Mary Szybist 

Can you see through the window, the moth

(color of old handkerchief) flickering up

through the dark -- as if it would tell us something?

It doesn't. I continue to stack

the forks neck upon neck until they lie

still, they lie right. The moth flutters

lower. The cross-eyed cat approaches

with its tiny, bee-like mouth.

How can I say what it is to see it

brush you? As it denies me

even the smallest affection, I call it

Lucy, after the rich woman of Sicily

who spooned out

each of her eyes,

placed them on a platter,

and sent it to her suitor as a way of refusing...

What separates self from the flutter

of longing? They don't fit

the way these spoons fit into each other.

They are more like knives that won't stack.

We do not own ourselves. We do

we know not what, and fear it: yes,

I believe miracles might change me,

but I mean conversion from.

O sweet burn-all-over,

we do not distinguish thirst

from hunger, nor the cat

at our feet, temptation from

the moth at the window. O sweet

burn I have always wanted

this pleasure, this end

-- yet I intend to be gentle.

-------- 

Thursday was a study for me in how even smart people often would rather read two articles from sources that fit their bias and decide that they're experts in something they didn't know the first thing about a day earlier. I was out of spoons by evening just begging people to check their facts and getting accused of various prejudices over that simple request, without anyone giving two fucks why I and the people I was citing were feeling triggered, so although it was a pretty quiet day around here, I am not in a good mood. 

It was yet again a lovely day outside, a bit drizzly and cool for swimming so the beach wasn't crowded and the skies were full of birds. Our evening TV alternated between The OA, which I've been meaning to watch for ten years and which I'm already obsessed with (STOP BEING EVIL JASON ISAACS), and The Bear, which has some slow parts but I forgave everything because of the visit to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, a tour we did many times when we lived in Chicago. More baby animals from Swans Trail Farms' festival last weekend:

Poem for Wednesday and Zoo Wilds

From 'Ducks' 

By Frank W. Harvey 

From troubles of the world I turn to ducks,

Beautiful comical things

Sleeping or curled

Their heads beneath white wings

By water cool,

Or finding curious things

To eat in various mucks

Beneath the pool,

Tails uppermost, or waddling

Sailor-like on the shores

Of ponds, or paddling

- Left!  Right! - with fanlike feet

Which are for steady oars

When they (white galleys) float

Each bird a boat

Rippling at will the sweet

Wide waterway…

When night is fallen you creep

Upstairs, but drakes and dillies

Nest with pale water-stars.

Moonbeams and shadow bars,

And water-lilies.

-------- 

Wednesday was another gorgeous day. I only got to talk to one of my high school friends this morning -- one's at the beach, another was visiting a relative -- but it was the one who's now family, so it was nice to catch up. After lunch, Kristen and I watched the second half of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which remains way too long and much too devoid of decent character moments especially in the second half. 

We walked to the beach and saw growing ducklings, watched the Orioles get shut out, then put on The Bad Batch with Cheryl. After she went to bed, we went on the dock and saw adorable local otters! Then we came back for the season premiere of The Bear, which remains intense and unhappy and moving, and the new episode of The Buccaneers. Some of the Arctic, African, and Asian animals at Point Defiance Zoo: 

Poem for Tuesday and Point Defiance Otters

The Otter 

By Seamus Heaney 

When you plunged

The light of Tuscany wavered

And swung through the pool

From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,

Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders

Surfacing and surfacing again

This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.

You were beyond me.

The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air

Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,

When I hold you now

We are close and deep

As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.

You are my palpable, lithe

Otter of memory

In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,

Each silent, thigh-shaking kick

Re-tilting the light,

Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you’re out,

Back again, intent as ever,

Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,

Printing the stones.

-------- 

I know a lot of people are suffering from excessive heat so I will try not to brag about how beautiful things have been here -- I mean, it was over 70 today which is hot by Seattle-area standards, and we needed all the fans on, but it was a beautiful afternoon to walk to the beach and with school out there were lots of people despite it being a weekday. We've also had more herons and eagles, now that the babies are more independent, and we still have gosling and duckling families in the wetlands. 

The Orioles didn't have as good a day though they went to extra innings while my DS9 group was watching "Progress" (such a good Kira episode that we skipped generic Trek "Storyteller"). Afterward, we watched the first three episodes of Ironheart with Cheryl, which I enjoyed -- the girl power, the Chicago setting, the links to Iron Man, the social relevance -- and now we're watching the first episode of The OA which I've been meaning to watch for ages. Point Defiance Zoo otters: