Strawberries
By Edwin Morgan
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates
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Thursday was warm and sunny, after I woke up from a dream in which I was working on an X-Files crossover with Supernatural starring Jensen Ackles and when I pointed out that I thought his character should be dead, the writers told me to write a sex scene that would bring him back. (No, I have no idea!) The rest of the morning involved some photo stuff and some organizing stuff. And after lunch, I got to talk to my college roommate.
We went to Redmond Town Center so I could get some things at the Bath & Body Works semiannual sale, plus we walked around a bit before getting milkshakes and stopping at Trader Joe's. Then we came home so I could get on my usual Thursday night fangirl chat, we ate dinner, we watched this week's Silo which is more nail-biting every week, and now we're watching some of the Warrior Nun endgame. Picking strawberries at Swans Trail Farms:
A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 2–7
By William Shakespeare
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits: I'll be gone;
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
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I had a busy Monday but I got a lot done, the biggest thing being that I gave away all the professional VHS tapes in the house -- hundreds of them -- to a freecycler. I also took all the rest of the VHS tapes out of their boxes and put the boxes into a huge box I got from my parents to take to the county recycling center (we have to figure out where to take the VHS tapes themselves, since they're considered hazardous waste). I also mailed an Amazon package back at UPS and an eBay sale package at the post office, plus I stopped at the mall to pick up a Bath & Body Works order and at my parents to get the aforementioned boxes.
We had peanut noodles with chick'n for dinner, then we watched three more episodes of For All Mankind, which is absolutely fantastic in both story and performances, and so far I'm really not sorry the Soviets landed on the moon first no matter what shenanigans got the Equal Rights Amendment passed. I'm glad they addressed the facts about von Braun and I absolutely love Ellen, Danielle, Tracy, and especially Molly! Here are some pictures from the National Building Museum's Playhouse entrance, which is designed like a pop-up book of A Midsummer Night's Dream approaching the tunnel that leads to the Folger's performance stage.
I had a quiet morning of laundry and chores, but it was all good because in the afternoon we went to see Jurassic World: Dominion. I loved the movie -- the major cast across the franchise all together, the maybe-ill-advised-but-that's-how-life-is couples, the found families (including dinosaurs), the anti-corporate-pro-environment messages which are sometimes heavy-handed but that was true of Crichton's original book, even the cheesy lines and scientific ridiculousness also present in the previous 5. A couple of things were retconned in ways that I think greatly improved them -- in particular, one female character was given agency in a way that actually suggests men are no longer necessary, hahaha -- and overall I found it pretty hopeful. Also, Jeff Goldblum has a line (which I swear he must have ad-libbed) that had me howling.
The movie was at the theater in the mall (formerly Arclight, now AMC), so I also got to stop at Bath & Body Works' annual sale for body wash, and we picked up Cava for dinner on the way out, since we were under a thunderstorm warning though it only grazed our part of the county and delayed the Nats' game. We ended up watching Infinity War after dinner because we were in the mood for it -- we've been watching the Thor: Love and Thunder relevant prequels over the past many weeks plus some other Avengers movies just because we like them, and other than Loki being gone too soon and the too-long Battle of Wakanda, this one has a lot of lovely character moments. I still haven't sorted my canal photos so here are some of the bunnies we saw while out walking with Pepper in Redmond:
Scar
By Emilia Phillips
Sometimes it’s
bigger than my
body, the body
that gave it
life, that is
its life—as if I’m
a frame for
it, as if it
continues beyond
my end, although no
one, not here,
can see where
it goes, how
far, & now
it finds
its way into
every possible
place I
imagine, even
the past, which believes
in my scar like
a prophecy, & like a god’s
work, I have no
memory of it breathing
into me &
abstracting me
to myth from which to
remake the world
into the rising
& falling
action of fiction—my body
as denouement. Sometimes I feel
it without waiting
for its hum on
the nerves, its shivering
arc from eye
to jawbone. How often
I want to
give it a voice so
it can tell
me what I want
it to say—that it knows
me like tomorrow
does. That a need lives
in lack’s because.
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Happy belated Cinco de Mayo! Which we celebrated with tacos for dinner. I had a very nice day mostly with my friend Alice, with whom I went to lunch at the Brooklyn Deli, then stopped at the mall, which I have only been to once since the pandemic began. There has been a lot of shift, but we went first to several that are still there -- Vera Bradley to see the new Star Wars patterns, window-shopping at Lilly Pulitzer, Hallmark, and Francesca's, perfume samplers at Sephora, and we went to the new LEGO store which is a place of absolute delight and I have seen the new Thor sets!
Alice went home in the afternoon and
