The rain it raineth every day

The rest of the USA is experiencing record heat and sun, from what I read in the papers. Not here. In Portland, we've had "measurable rain" every day for the last 2 weeks. We are almost double our usual rainfall for the month of May, and -- after a couple of years of being about 30% below our average annual rainfall, we've made up to within an inch this spring.

And this is not your typical Portland rain, which is light showers and general drizzle -- annoying, but not even umbrella-worthy.  No, this is torrential downpours, with thunder and lightning (still nothing like a good prairie thunderstorm).  The ground is completely soaked, with muddy puddles on every paved intersection. Tree limbs block the way as you walk down the sidewalk, marinated leaves heavy with all the extra water.

The azaleas are taking it badly. Ours bloomed last weekend, and normally we have a few weeks of bright, sunny pink fluffiness. The buckets of rain have saturated and collapsed the blossoms, so instead, we have the remnants of a giant child's ice cream in the front garden, the mint-chocolate-chip mostly scraped away and the raspberry sherbet left for later.

They say the rain is supposed to taper off, but not for a few more days yet. We shall sea.  (hee hee)

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

- Twelfth Night

More Museums

Today we (CoG, Bride, Mater and I) went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. First, the fascinating exhibit The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000BC, then lunch, then wandering through the Sargent Room (actually, early 20th Century artists, but frankly most of the works were by John Singer Sargent).  The Egyptian exhibit was excellent and thought-provoking, and surprisingly an example of how search and discovery of art can inform anthropology, history and cultural studies as well.

In honor of the movie Bright Star, and John Keats, here's the painting Isabella and the Pot of Basil, by John White Alexander.  It refers to Keats' poem Isabella (which we see published in the movie).  (To read more about the painting, click here.)  In the poem, Isabella plants her lover's head in a pot of basil (he had been murdered by her brothers).

...  L.

With duller steel than the Persèan sword
They cut away no formless monster’s head,
But one, whose gentleness did well accord
With death, as life. The ancient harps have said,
Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:
If Love impersonate was ever dead,
Pale Isabella kiss’d it, and low moan’d.
’Twas love; cold,—dead indeed, but not dethroned.
LI. In anxious secrecy they took it home,
And then the prize was all for Isabel:
She calm’d its wild hair with a golden comb,
And all around each eye’s sepulchral cell
Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam
With tears, as chilly as a dripping well,
She drench’d away:—and still she comb’d, and kept
Sighing all day—and still she kiss’d, and wept.
LII. Then in a silken scarf,—sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,—
She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.
LIII. And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core....

(From Isabella or, The Pot of Basil, by John Keats)

Follow up to Long Song

Thanks for all the kind words (through comments and emails) on the Long Song, as one person called it.

Yes, it is based on things people told me while we were waiting. Something about my expression? Or the situation (sitting elbow to elbow in a little, warm car surrounded by the night)? Or maybe the town just needs a little therapy. I wouldn't have to say much beyond, "Well, it looks like we have about 10 minutes --" and their mouths would open and I'd hear so much, often so much more than I wanted to hear.

I don't think I can publish it, actually, without opening myself to a libel suit. It's a little too honest, don't you think? And too specific -- referring to people who everybody in town could figure out -- and some pretty horrible things they said or recounted doing to me. Some wonderful things, too, of course. I suppose I could change the "names", make up new names for the towns and try it. But I don't know how much would hang together out of context of what I was doing (sitting on an airport in my car doing research). And I don't know how well it would work with the names changed.

On the other hand, I've already revised it from what I posted last night -- I left out one rather crucial couple (some of the Others), and I think there are some who can be removed to make it shorter, without losing anything.

And I'm stuck on what body part would be the Others -- I have them as the sinews, because they are sort of forgotten in the body, yet critical, and most of those people in my story are "new" immigrants to the area, so not necessarily in the main part of the community, but they are the new blood and the future. But they aren't as critical as sinews. Blood doesn't seem right, either.

I also don't like the dead being memories -- because memories aren't a body part. The spleen? I had a couple definite spleens, but they got kneaded into other parts. I hate to lengthen it, but I can think of two spleens that aren't even mentioned. Maybe the mothers are the arms, and the dead are the heart. Hmmm, I might go with that. Any suggestions?

I Sing of the People of Forks

I sing of the body, the people of Forks.

I sing of the backbone: the men, who work, or who can’t find work, who range from desperation to cynicism, with little satisfaction in between.

I sing of the white man, caught in the middle;
who started out logging;
who moved on to commercial fishing when the logging slacked off;
who moved on to conservation when the fishing slacked off;
who now works for the Hoh Indian Reservation, managing conservation;
who mourns the loss of the streambeds and the hillsides, to logging;
who mourns the loss of logging jobs;
who blames technology by reducing crews from 8 men to 2, for the loss of jobs;
who trusts private logging industry and the DNR less far than he can spit.

I sing of the white man who is out of work
who 15 years ago started college in fisheries, but then moved to criminal justice;
who found he could not both attend college full-time in a city an hour away, and work
full-time here, even though he was 15 years younger then;
who has eaten a luau of octopus in Tennessee with a family of Samoans;
who sometimes guides the handicapped on hunting tours in the Olympic Mountains;
who sometimes works road crew;
who sometimes works for the DNR, counting fish;
who wants to do criminal justice, but the career path here is to work at the prison;
who doesn’t want to babysit big scary angry men all day;
who doesn’t want feces and pinecones thrown at him;
who is caring for his young nephews while his twin brother lies dying of cancer in a hospital ward in Seattle.

I sing of the white man who works for the DNR and the prison;
who takes work crews of prisoners out to the mountains;
who plants and thins three acres of forest a day with a 10-man crew;
who may do the planting too, or just supervises;
who takes his prison crew to forest fires in that season;
who earns $50K, not counting fire bonuses, for babysitting big scary angry men.

I sing of the wussy-assed wimp at the weather station;
who could not be from around here, because he drives a Prius;
who stood in his white socks and Birkenstock sandals;
who scolded me for leaving open the gate (never locked), thus encouraging vandals to come
to drive on the grounds;
who watched me from darkened windows for an hour afterwards.

I sing of the over-confident former commercial fisherman, who would not let me finish a
sentence.

I sing of the nervous system: the children, poised and ready for the starting gun, still close by
their mothers’ sides.

I sing of the boy, “taking a break” after high school;
who lives only to kill – moose, deer, elk, cougar, salmon, halibut;
who brings photos of the cougar he shot, and the moose in Alaska;
who wants to learn taxidermy, but thinks linesman’s school might be more secure.

I sing of the high-school senior who hopes for a baseball scholarship and wants to play in the
big leagues.

I sing of the midwife’s blank-eyed daughter, who sparkles when talking about boys.

I sing of the articulate boy reading a book in the back seat while his mother talks to me;
who was the only person to take any candy from the bowl;
who asks to sit in the Mini Cooper;
who is most delighted by the automatically dimming overhead light;
who is too young to mask his enthusiasm with the polish of high school.

I sing of the heart: the mothers.

I sing of the business owner who reminds herself repeatedly, aloud, that her boy must make his
own mistakes.

I sing of the midwife, awaiting two babies, who knows everybody in town and around it.

I sing of the young woman, starting late after nursing her three-week old son.

I sing of the elbows, or maybe the feet, bruised and sore: the men who are disabled,
who live with their families, on the cheap out here in the wilds.

I sing of the transplant from Detroit;
who was pistol-whipped by police 30 years ago in the city, crushing his skull;
who’s suspicious and sharp-edged;
who sees light more brilliantly than the rest of us and turns away in pain.

I sing of the gentle, funny, smart man, on disability, but not obviously disabled;
who is wider than he is tall;
who says All I have left is my appetite and my sight. But I’ve got diabetes, so even that’s
going soon.

I sing of the Vietnam Vet (two tours);
who took two bullets, and an AKA-47 rifle butt to the forehead just above his eye;
who is proud he can still count to 10 and signs his name in a childish scrawl;
who smells of ancient cigarette smoke, wood smoke, cheap alcohol, and mold.

I sing of his half-blind, glass-eyed younger stepson, monosyllabic.

I sing of his hardscrabble, handsome wife, goliath Chihuahua tucked under her coat;
who growls and barks against all strangers;
who keeps them all together by sheer force of will.

I sing of her elder son, as beautiful as twilight on a stormy day and smart as lightning;
who works at “The Park” (the National Park) on a maintenance crew;
who lives in a plumbless cabin on the shores of a glacier-fed lake;
who joys in the glory of the forest and the water and the rain.

I sing of their friend, the organizer, the arranger;
who is tiny and round and dark like a dew-painted stone in the forest;
who is lively and laughing like a salmon swimming upstream;
whose smoke-graveled voice is the nexus for seven disparate spirits, watching them,
nurturing them, rescuing them.

I sing of the outsiders, rubbing shoulders: the people of LaPush,
who confirmed with me (three of them, two nights) and then didn’t show, a few hours later;
who hung up on me when I called to see if there was a misunderstanding.

I sing of the retired deputy sheriff, expensively blonde,
who has the skin of a woman ten years younger (all the locals have young skin in this
rainy region);
who lives across the street from her grandchildren;
who cares for her great-grandchildren one day every week of their lives;
who has recently remarried and laughs at every mention of her new husband;
who plans to build a home for her children to stay in when they visit, on the five acres
she bought with her new husband;
who says, pursing her red soft lips, Oh, LaPush – they’re Indians. They are so lazy!
You can’t count on them for anything. And drunk-! Always drunk!

I sing of the tongue: the friends, with ties other than blood;
who greet each other in surprise in the glow of the car lights;
who say I didn’t know you’d be here! How’s your father?;
who say See you Friday! Or See you at church! Or Say hi to your mother!
who sometimes say, as we drive back through the dark across the runway, Oh yeah,
I remember her now. My mom used to work with her at the bank.

I sing of the girlfriends in their 40’s, who both come together, twice;
who each sits in the dark car for two hours while her friend is with me,
who each is a silhouette with a cigarette for an evening, window half-open even in the rain;
who each is relaxed, but prepared to run to the rescue.

I sing of the gut and intestines: the retirees, who came here for the climate.

I sing of the early-retired nuclear chemist who came to hike the rain forest, because he had
hiked every other climate already;
who had lived five years in Las Vegas, hiking in the sear dry heat and learning to gamble;
who fell in love with the former deputy sheriff, a widow with young skin, and
who stayed;
who misses sunlight and travel and speaks often of god, and oftener of death;
who has a wife who will not sell her home as he sold his;
who plans, despite her, to build a house for them both on the five acres they bought together.

I sing of the retired gumshoe from around dere near Chicahgo;
who has an accent you could cut deep dish pizza with, and piercing blue eyes;
who at six foot five and three hundred pounds had nothing to fear while investigating;
who moved here with his wife because he’s thrifty, and you can live thrifty here;
who moved here because it was the only place in America you don’t need air-conditioning;
who knows all the honest car mechanics in Portland and gave me their names and addresses from memory;
who would have been happy to have talked for hours:
who did talk for hours: on the phone…during his wife’s session… and he came early;
who remembered I liked Ikea and brought me a catalog to read, and a book catalog, and the local paper.

I sing of his wife; almost as big as he;
who pleaded with him to find her a bathroom;
who lets him do all the phoning;
who waited for him to open her car door;
who laughed through our session and called her husband a babbler, just like his name;
who could have held her own against a cougar.

I sing of the Mrs. Cravitz, with three police scanners and four CC cameras on her backyard;
who caught those punks smoking down by the trees, and they couldn’t sell that car for
months -- that’s what limburger cheese will do;
who patrols the downtown blocks at the wee hours, laden with mace and pepper-spray;
who raised three kids alone, and raised them military, we’ve always been military;
who has two sons in the Marines in Iraq right now;
whose new husband has no military connections, and his eldest is a doper. When he comes
to the house, I follow him around with bleach, because dopers are full of germs.

I sing of the Mr. Cravitz, large and hearty and educated, friendly and warm.

I sing of the memories: the dead.

I sing of two teenaged girls in an especially gruesome car accident last weekend, their
sudden absence a reverberating, tingling shock for everyone we meet.

I sing of the husband, 55, chopping wood one minute, flat dead the next, while she was
making a phone call.

I sing of the baby boy, mentioned by his mother 25 years later, then carefully laid aside.

I sing of the baby brother, not a teenager yet, death unexplained.

I sing of the sinews and the muscles: the others.

I sing of the bank teller, come here from Detroit 30 years ago, only a local for 10 years;
who wants to talk about Lost and Buffy;
who knows all about how our money is filtering through town;
who explains about counterfeit traveler’s checks.

I sing of the nurse, intense and quick;
who came here from Michigan six months ago;
who shed her first name with her husband I was determined to lose something of
the old me;
who doesn’t recognize her old signature anymore as being her.

I sing of the bus-driver, the 3 a.m. to noon shift, between the pockets of humanity,
Forks to Clallam Bay and Clallam Prison, then Neah Bay, and back;
who traveled the world for 19 years with Disney on Ice;
who came here because his folks retired here;
who says Rain is better because once you’re wet, you can’t get any wetter.

I sing of the people of Forks.

Contemplation before the Holidays

If I Could Give All To Time

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
Nor lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time's lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time - except except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to safety with? For I am there
And what I would not part with I have kept.

Robert Frost, 1942

A rather difficult poem (the odd syntax of the penultimate lines I find confusing). I found it copied out by hand, by myself, amongst papers I have been cleaning through. I have a vague notion I came across the poem while reading about William Styron (his book "Crossing to Safety" refers to this poem) although I don't know why I was doing so, because I haven't read any Styron. Did he die recently? Was I reading an epitaph? Or maybe his birthday on Writer's Almanac? 

I love the rhythms and images of this powerful poem, but I don't think it is one of Frost's best.