Overdue Friday lit. blogging: Franz Wright

The Only Animal

The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
traveled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked and abruptly
returned,
the room empty.

The only animal that cries
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth—

Somewhere

the only animal that smokes a cigarette,
that lies down and flies backward in time,
that rises and walks to a book
and looks up a word
heard the telephone ringing
in the darkness downstairs and decided
to answer no more.

And I understand,
too well: how many times
have I made the decision to dwell
from now on
in the hour of my death
(the space I took up here
scarlessly closing like water)
and said I’m never coming back
and yet

this morning
I stood once again
in this world, the garden
ark and vacant
tomb of what
I can’t imagine,
between twin eternities,
some sort of wings,
more or less equidistantly
exiled from both,
hovering in the dreaming called
being awake, where
You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry

strangeness of being
here at all.

You gave us each in secret something to perceive.

Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental
child

You said, though your own heart condemn you
I do not condemn you.

Kitty gone. Mama sad.

Recently we had to put our cat, Marcus, to sleep. He was not exactly a kitten at age 14, and after fighting gastrointestinal cancer for two and a half years, he was pretty much on his 9th life. But even though he was old and sick and we were expecting it, the loss of a pet brings its own unique kind of misery.

If you're not an animal person, this will probably sound strange to you. But now that he's gone, the emptiness in our house is palpable. I adopted Marcus from an animal shelter eight years ago. I knew him longer than I've known my husband.

He used to sprint from room to room in my old apartment at lightning speed (the cat, not the husband). When Marcus stalked the mysterious little flying bugs that showed up in that apartment periodically, he would sometimes leap into the air and catch one between his front paws. He'd sit on the back of the couch and look out the window and watch the birds. And when I was trapped in the claustrophobic grip of depression, he'd come silently up beside me and gaze at me with his deep green eyes, and purr. His purr sounded like an outboard motor.
When I slept on my stomach, he would curl up on my back. When he wanted to wake me up to give him breakfast, he'd gently lick my eyelids or my cheeks, or pat my arm with his paw.

Marcus put up with two house moves and the addition of a new human daddy and human little sister, all without the slightest complaint. And then he got cancer and we had to start giving him pills every day, which he hated. But his quality of life was undiminished for the most part, until shortly before he died.

He had been a fairly big cat, with long, glossy black fur that remained beautiful up until the end, but in his last couple of months he lost a lot of weight and became very bony. Then about two days before he died, he stopped eating. Twenty-four hours before he died, he was still jumping up on the couch. But the morning we decided to have him put to sleep, Marcus couldn't jump up anymore -- he couldn't even walk.

I carried him to his favorite windowsill in our living room so he could watch the blue jays in the trees that morning. I held Marcus in my arms when the vet administered the needle. He went out of our lives without a sound.

The Peanut looked from room to room for Marcus for a while, but now has stopped searching. But occasionally she will still say "Kitty?" in a questioning way, and I'll respond, "Kitty gone." And she will nod her head sagely and say "Kitty gone. Mama sad."

Journalism's finest hour

I swear to God, my head is about to explode. Just go read this, uh, "profile" of Bill Frist in the freaking Washington Post -- NOT The Onion -- but make sure you have a bucket handy, because it's going to make you want to heave.

Meanwhile, as the excellent Harry Shearer points out on Huffington Post, the whore-iffic New York Times has run a front-page story claiming the levees are pretty much fixed in New Orleans -- and buried the inconvenient news that they're actually, well, not so much fixed ("The overall New Orleans flood protection system...must be considered suspect") in the last paragraph.

I had a crotchety old journalism professor (is there any other kind?) named Seth King at Boston University who would have blown a gasket had this spectacular display of ass-kissing, ignoring of inconvenient facts, and general ineptitude been in evidence in the news business back then. (Back in the distant past of 1988, when I took his Journalism 101 class.)

I have no idea if old Seth is even still among the living, but if he's not, he is surely spinning in his grave.

Biggest public issue of the day: the Clintons' marriage

Today the New York Times returned to its late 1990s all-Clenis-all-the-time glory days with a front page dissection of Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage.

Because it's not like there's anything else going on in Washington or in the rest of the country that you might want to devote your reporting resources to, if you were supposed to be one of the premier newspapers in the United States.

It's not like there's an unnecessary war going on or anything.

Or an entire American city lost to a hurricane and flood nine months ago, with practically none of the rubble cleaned up yet, and the next hurricane season about to begin.

Or a massive coordinated government effort to spy on the activities of ordinary citizens.

Or an unprecedented looming environmental catastrophe.

No, the most pressingly important issue in America today is how much time Bill and Hill are spending together these days. This is what they apparently think, over there at the New York Times. I would give any amount of money to hear what goes on in the editors' daily news meeting. What exactly is the thought process that leads to the conclusion that speculation over the personal lives of political figures is more important than what political figures ACTUALLY DO in their official capacities -- good, bad and indifferent? Why are the personalities deemed to be so much more important than the policies?

And WHY, for the love of all that is holy, does the press still think that Bill Clinton's mistakes have more impact on the country than George W. Bush's mistakes? Are they really that clueless? They actually think that we care more about Clinton having an affair than we do about the shredding of the Constitution and the killing and maiming of God knows how many people, in our name and funded by our tax dollars, FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER?

Dear Peanut...

Dear Peanut:

In celebration of my second Mother's Day, I thought it would be a good time to write you a little letter and tell you how very very blessed I am to be your mama.

Of course I fell in love with you as soon as I saw you, but it's been even more amazing to get to know you and to realize that you are developing a strong personality of your own. I know you get frustrated sometimes because you are so perceptive and smart, and you want to try to do things that, at 19 months, are still beyond your reach. That's when you get mad and start howling and sometimes smack me or your daddy. But I love that as soon as we remind you about our "no hitting" rule, you get that look of concern on your face, because you know we don't like that, and you fling your arms around us to make sure we aren't really mad at you. Which we couldn't possibly be.

I love the way you seem to understand a scary amount of what is going on around you, and the way you make your requests undeniably clear. You want cheese and crackers for breakfast, every day, and you're going to keep telling us so even though we keep giving you Eggos and bananas. I guess you're thinking that, dense though we are, eventually we'll figure it out and serve up your cheese plate at 6 a.m.

I love the way you look slightly concerned and say "Mine!" when other kids climb onto the playground equipment you happen to be using at the time. But you never go and push anybody off of it.

I promise to teach you to be as strong and independent and fearless as you can possibly be, and to love yourself no matter what you look like or what you weigh. (But if present trends continue, and "beautiful" and "gorgeous" remain people's first reactions when they meet you, I'll try to teach you to deal with that reality, without becoming too full of yourself because of it.)

I hope very much that you grow up to love science and math like your daddy, so that your first job out of college pays way more than the slave wages I earned for my first journalism gig. And I pray that all through your school years you'll be able to look the bullies in the eye with pity and laugh.

I'm so grateful that you came into my life.

Love,

Mama

"...let Facts be submitted to a candid world..."

Are we ready for a new Declaration of Independence yet? How far gone will things be in this country before people start to wake up?

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 2006

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King George is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Here's the facts, then:

• World Trade Center: Gone
• New Orleans: Drowned; abandoned
• Middle class: Disappearing
• Rich: Getting richer, thanks to tax cuts
• Poor: Screwed
• Environment: Raped
• Civil liberties: Obliterated
• Corporations: Fat and happy
• America's armed forces: Sent to die for no reason

Spring in New England

My head is so congested from the freakish amount of pollen in the air that my eyeballs feel like they're about to shoot out of my skull, and yet when I left the house this morning, it was so cold that I wished I had gloves on.

Welcome to spring in New England, shortly to be followed by summer in New England, which for the past several years has featured rain forest levels of humidity.

Story of the weekend

This past weekend, Mr. Fraulein and the Peanut and I took a road trip to lovely Brattleboro, VT, to visit some friends of ours and their 5- and 2-year-old daughters. Much dessert and many brunch items were consumed, innumerable baby dolls were played with, and, in spite of a few minor toddler tantrums, fun was had by all. I have to share this great story about an excellent comeback by the 5-year-old, little A., to an overbearing relative.

The way my friend S., A.'s mommy, tells it, during a recent family gathering, they were introduced to S.'s uncle's new wife, who apparently at one time was a noteworthy ballet dancer. (At least, according to New Wife herself.) Upon being introduced to A., and hearing that A. is very fond of her ballet classes, New Wife proceeded to drill the 5-year-old on her knowledge of the ballet positions, etc. She also rather condescendingly insisted that in the future, A. would look back on this meeting with no small amount of awe, since she would then know what a famous onetime-dancer she had met.

"I used to be a ballerina," New Wife smugly pronounced.

To which A. responded: "I'm STILL a ballerina."

Colbert: Genius

Edward R. Murrow, meet Stephen Colbert. It's pretty pathetic that the best muckrakers today are comedians.

Friday lit. blogging: Tennyson's "Ulysses"

Awesome, awesome poem. It's all about determination--I love the part about "'Tis not too late to seek a newer world..."

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.


There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends,'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.


Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[1842]

Heard around our house recently

Here’s what happens when you live with a toddler: you find yourself actually saying things like this:

-- Please take the cheese out of your ear.
-- Will you stop standing on the Cheerios box?
-- Can you take the remote control out of your mouth?
-- Why are you trying to wedge your baby doll into the wine rack?
-- No, really, take the cheese out of your ear.

I'm it

This is exciting: I've been tagged by Magpie over at Shocked & Appalled. (OK, this was weeks and weeks ago, and I am just now getting around to it, which is pathetic.) So here goes:

Four jobs I've had

1. Obituary writer at a small local newspaper. This involves spending a lot of time talking on the phone to funeral directors, who, as you might expect, are partial to macabre jokes.

2. Corporate marketing whipping-girl at The Management Consulting Firm From Hell. My boss WAS Michael Scott from The Office, if you can imagine him as a 58-year-old woman. Same hellacious insecurities. Same cluelessness about the violent inappropriateness of everything that came out of her mouth. This is an actual conversation I had with this woman not long after I was hired:

Boss From Hell: So, how old are you?

Me: Um, I'm 33...why?

BFH: Well, you know, the mid-thirties are the best time of a woman's life! You are approaching your sexual peak now! I hope your husband appreciates that!

3. Managing editor of a teeny weeny weekly newspaper. This was the weirdest job I've ever had (and for those of you who don't know me, that is saying something). When the toilet paper ran low in the ladies room, we would approach the company facilities manager, who would supply us with a single additional roll. Once, at a staff meeting for the editors of the papers in the chain, it was reported that another managing editor left for lunch several days earlier and hadn't been seen since. The job paid so little, she didn't even bother to call anyone to say she was quitting.

4. Reporter at a tech trade magazine during the Internet boom. I look forward to regaling my grandkids with stories about this one.


Four movies I can watch over and over

1. Office Space
2. Monsters Inc.
3. His Girl Friday
4. Raising Arizona


Four places I've lived

1. Boston
2. Oxford, U.K.
3. Northern New Jersey
4. Telford, Shropshire, U.K.


Four TV shows I love to watch

I'm hard pressed to come up with four -- I just think TV sucks lately! But The Daily Show and The Office spring to mind.


Four places I've been on vacation

1. Bermuda
2. Tuscany
3. Ireland
4. Cape Cod


Four blogs I visit regularly

1. Daily Kos
2. This Modern World
3. Shocked & Appalled
4. EverythingSFNE


Four of my favorite foods

1. Bagels, muffins--the whole carb group
2. Prosciutto and melon
3. Fresh mango
4. Shu mai (Chinese dumplings)


Four places I'd rather be

1. The King's Arms pub, Oxford
2. Driving through the Tuscan countryside
3. Watching the sun set on the beach in Wellfleet
4. Walking in London


Four albums I can't live without

At this point we have pretty much given up our CDs in favor of XM Radio.


Four vehicles I've owned

1. A crappy Renault
2. A crappy Pontiac
3. A crappy Mitsubishi
4. A slowly-crapifying Honda

More Tom Cruise wackiness

Good news: Tom and Katie have downplayed reports of their plans to eat their baby's placenta.

Can you imagine what kind of loon this poor kid will turn out to be?

Friday lit. blogging: Virginia Woolf

Because you also can't get enough Woolf (or at least I can't.) Here is an excerpt from a scene I love in Mrs. Dalloway -- the scene where Peter Walsh returns to England and visits Clarissa Dalloway on the afternoon before her party. What I love most about this scene is the wordless emotional interplay between the two characters:

Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her, flicking a bandanna handkerchief from side to side. Masterly and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades lifing his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently. Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over.

Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter.

And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.

Good omen

OK, so I'm still fairly bummed out about the possibility that the Chimp-in-Chief is going to start a nuclear war, so I'm grasping around for anything that seems like a good omen for the future. This afternoon was gorgeous here in Massachusetts, just as it should be with Easter coming up this weekend. The trees outside our windows are just beginning to bud, and the daffodils are blooming. (Whenever we are outside, we point out the flowers to the Peanut, and tell her that they are "beautiful flowers, just like you," since her middle name means "beautiful flower" in Chinese.) I took a walk at lunchtime to pick up some cookies from Athan's, and I was amused to hear my wedding song, Ella Fitzgerald's version of "Love You Madly," playing as I made my selections.

For my money, there is no such thing as too much Ella Fitzgerald. Especially when you're browsing in a pastry shop on a lovely spring afternoon.

Living mindfully; working for change

These days, I am trying very hard not to take anything for granted. I guess that's one mother of a cliche, but it's how I feel right now. The last few months -- really the last few years, since the stolen presidential election of 2000 blasted me out of my complacency -- I've been having an incredibly strong feeling that our whole way of life is about to change, and not for the better.

Between the nuclear sabre-rattling, the global warming, the peak oil, and the economy, I look to the next few years, and I can't imagine things continuing as they've been. It's very hard to picture a peaceful, stable future for this country. So I try to live mindfully, cherishing every moment with my family and friends, every book, every movie, every sunset, every meal.

But the question now is, what do I do? I can't do nothing. I can't look into the Peanut's eyes, years from now, and tell her I didn't at least try to make things better. I know that writing letters to our "representatives" in Congress is probably hopelessly naive, as I've said before. So if we want to make our country live up to its former greatness -- if we want to create an America that values education and personal freedoms, that helps the weakest among us instead of demonizing them, that accepts its responsibilities as a steward of the planet, that cooperates with the rest of the world instead of starting pointless wars -- what do we do?

I want to ensure some kind of future here for my daughter, if I possibly can, and I want to start today. How do we create this new reality?

Friday lit. blogging: Andrew Marvell

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shoudst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Tom Cruise: Bonkers

OK, it's not like we didn't know he was nuts, but even for him, this is completely wacky:

Tom Cruise may have found a way to keep Katie Holmes from violating the precepts of Scientology and shrieking in pain when she gives birth to their child.

It's a specially crafted adult pacifier, reports Star magazine.

18 months ago today

...I waddled into the OB's office for my 39-week checkup. My blood pressure had been fine for the whole pregnancy, but not that day.

"Look at that, your blood pressure has really shot up," the doctor said.

"Oh, really, what does that mean?"

"That means you have toxemia. And the cure for that is to get that baby out. I'm calling over to Labor and Delivery now to let them know -- we're going to induce you tonight."

"Oh my God."

A few hours later, Mr. Fraulein and I were back at the hospital, clutching my overnight bag and pillows from home. There can't be a more surreal feeling in this life than the crazy, overwhelming anticipation of taking off your clothes, getting into one of those delightful hospital nightgowns, and settling your giant self into that adjustable hospital bed, knowing that very soon, your baby is coming out. I had never been in the hospital before in my life. I will never forget how odd it felt to be in that room, dragging my IV pole with me every time I had to go to the bathroom. Sitting watching TV with the baby monitor stretched over my swollen belly. Taking phone calls from my freaked-out parents.

They started the induction later that evening by giving me a drug called Cervidil to soften up my cervix. After this, feeling just minor cramps, I went to sleep.

Then the next morning -- 18 months ago tomorrow -- Pitocin. This was the thing I'd been dreading, after so many friends' stories of Pitocin-induced labors that lasted 18, 24, 30 hours and more. A few hours later, I was surrounded by what seemed like a cast of thousands in the delivery room, cheering me on, chanting, yelling, PUSH! PUSH! And the waves of pain, ebbing and flowing like water, going away completely in between the contractions, which came as such a surprise to me. And Mr. Fraulein clutching my hand.

Somebody up in the sky, or somewhere, was smiling on me that day. In spite of the Pitocin, after just nine hours of labor (including two hours of pushing) the Peanut emerged, yelling, into the world. Mr. Fraulein heard her yelling before she even came out. And after nine months of thinking she was a boy, we discovered that we had a little girl Peanut on our hands.

The first things I saw were her feet. "It's a girl!" people yelled from all directions. I was stunned. I had truly felt like some cosmic voice was telling me I was having a boy. So much for mother's intuition.

And then they gave me an ice bag to sit on, and someone produced a hospital dinner that tasted, to me at that moment, like it came from the finest restaurant in the world. And the Peanut aced her APGAR test and settled onto my breast for her first meal.

Happy 18-months-in-the-world, little Peanut!

More on Scalia

The Boston Herald has been digging into the story of what really happened when Antonin Scalia supposedly gave a reporter the finger in a recent event at a Boston church. If this account is true, what he actually did is even worse:

Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.”

As someone with literally dozens of hotheaded, easily offended Sicilian relatives, I can tell you for a fact that to say "vaffanculo," accompanied by that flicking-the-hand-out-from-under-the-chin action, does not mean "(expletive) you." It actually means "go take it up the ass."

Classy!