1. Thursday was rare day, full of fun and pleasure, and I spent most of this morning drinking dark roast coffee and writing about it. Making a record of the day helped me relive all the enjoyment and I further augmented my pleasure by going to YouTube and putting on a video that featured a seemingly endless string of jazz piano tunes that were relaxing to have playing in the background. It was a great morning in the Vizio room.
2. In the afternoon, notification arrived that Billy Collins was about to begin another live broadcast and so I sequestered myself once again in the Vizio room to tune in. Today, Billy Collins brought us into the world of Philip Larkin by reading, "Aubade". An aubade is a poem or a piece of music appropriate for the early morning or the dawn. In Larkin's poem, the speaker awakes at four in the morning. The day before, he's worked all day. He got half drunk that night. As the new day stretches out before him, he realizes his death "is a whole day nearer now" and Larkin muses for the rest of the poem on death's inevitability.
After making and reading some comments on "Aubade", Billy Collins read a poem he wrote about death entitled "The Fish". It's not only a poem about death, it's also a poem about dining alone in an unfamiliar city -- in this case, Pittsburgh. It's a wily poem, seeming to be about the absurdity of having a plate with a fish on it staring up at the poem's speaker with "its one flat, iridescent eye". The poem turns, though, and becomes a tender meditation upon compassion and sorrow.
Later in the evening, Debbie and I turned off the news and I poured myself a cocktail I'd never tried before by mixing brandy, a spot of white creme de menthe, and some triple sec. I added orange bitters.
I told Debbie how much I was enjoying the Billy Collins broadcasts and, before we knew it, we launched into a long and wonderful discussion of Collins' poem "The Lanyard". Debbie read it aloud. We marveled at how deeply and lovingly Billy Collins' poem illuminates the essential generosity of a mother and how he excites such deep mother/child feeling in the poem through meditating upon a child making a lousy lanyard at summer camp and giving it to his mom.
3. So, wow!, Debbie has been exploring the copious possibilities of making pesto. Tonight, for dinner, she served egg noodles and perfectly cooked broccoli covered with her latest pesto made from cilantro and macadamia nuts. Brilliant. As the old tv ads used to say about Mounds candy bars: this pesto was indescribably delicious!
Here's a limerick by Stu:
They're found on a desk or a wall.
Moments in time to recall.
Could be scenery or places,
Maybe portraits or faces?
It's true that a picture says it all!
No comments:
Post a Comment