Friday Five

No new one this week, so I went back into the archives…..


1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?

I guess if magazines are listed, this works as well.... Etiquette books. It's fun, the prose tends to be lively, and I learn something. After that, scripts. Of course.

2. What is your favorite novel?

I cannot pick just one. Please. Good Omens; To Kill A Mockingbird; Neuromancer; Orlando....

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)

My favorite poem is dependent on my mood.

Jabberwocky, by C.S. Lewis - 'Twas brilling, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe….

Tossing and Turning, by John Updike - The spirit has infinite facets, but the body confiningly few sides.

I Am Not Resigned, by Edna St. Vincent Millay - I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.


But the one I try to keep uppermost in my brain is:

You Do Not Have To Be Good (Wild Geese), by Mary Oliver -

You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


And then there are the two that stay uppermost whether I want them to or not….

The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats -

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(etc.)

and...

The Hollow Men, by T. S. Eliot

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
(etc.)

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?

I just wish I had more time. There's a lot of American literature that I've missed (hence TKaM was read for the first time last year), and I'd like to delve further into that.

5. What are you currently reading?

My As Bees In Honey Drown script. And a manners book, The Modern Gentleman, just before bed.

No matter what I say....

about not really having a place immediately felt like "home", I love my city.

I love being 18 floors high in downtown, looking out the window and seeing a mix of gorgeous old stone and stone-faced buildings with lovely scroll details and window ledges and sleek, gleaming, bright glass buildings that evoke a future time for me. I love being able to see the Mississippi from a corner window on my floor. I love the neighborly feel, the sense of things being tidied up because we like how the city looks when it's clean.

As utterly indifferent to live music shows as I am, I love the absolute vitality of the music scene here. I love it when songs I thought were only played around the U of M campus pop up in different cities. I love seeing the influence the Cities have had and still have on the current music trends.

I love the theater community here. I love the fact that I have the opportunity to consistently work with a core group of people, and still be able to bring new talent in all the time.

I love my neighborhood. It's funky and older and contains some stunning apartment buildings at comparatively good prices, while being very centrally located. I can walk to two major museums, a co-op grocery, a gourmet grocery store, a liquor store, my auto mechanic, my drycleaners. There is a fantastic rib joint on the corner, a fun Polynesian/Chinese throwback restaurant just down the street, and a theater, kitty-corner from the rib joint.

There's problems, yeah. There's always problems when you get a mass of humans living on top of each other. The buses are going to strike, the snow didn't get plowed very well, there's more and more graffiti, jobs aren't showing up as we've been promised.

But this city makes me happy. I like it very much. My life? On the whole? Quite good. Yes.

Randomness on a Friday afternoon.....

I accidentally swapped rings today, so all of the rings for the left hand were on the right, and vice versa. It's kind of scary how much that change was subconciously affecting me until I discovered my error.



I am 50% British, just like
Hugh Grant
Thought you drive a British sports car you are most likely to have a blowout in LA.

Take the Brit Quiz at
darrenlondon.tripod.com/britquiz1.htm
Quiz written by Daz daz71


Apparently, I have a new title: Czarina of Darkness. I like.


Postatem obscuri lateris nescitis.
"You do not know the power of the Dark
Side." There are two possibilities: you
are a Star Wars geek, or you are unreasoningly
scary.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
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