Verda Delp: Saturday evening

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Saturday evening

Thinking about things:

Today's travels around the neighborhood mostly.

My sweet Desie

Claremont Veterinary for Desie’s blood panel: call for results on Monday afternoon. I am trying to be patient with my worries. I do not want Desie to be sick.
Clementine for Eucalyptus branches: pick up on Tuesday afternoon. I ordered beautiful muted grey-green Eucalyptus berry branches for my new white vase. The grape size berries and the tiny ceramic balls on the rim of the vase will go together quite nicely I think.
TJ for yogurt and Pellegrino: I think I am set for the time being. I like to gather enough supplies for the week because I do not like to shop.
Berkeley Bowl for lettuce and carrots and grapefruits and strawberries and blackberries and raspberries and apples and grapes: enough to make salad and fruit salad, respectively, for the next few days. And, just so you know, the carrots are for Desie. She has two or three everyday.
Home for a time for writing an entry for my blog: save as draft: not ready for posting. I will see about this.
Café Roma to meet my former student Vanessa: I loved talking with dear Vanessa about teaching and learning. She loves her teaching, as I knew she would.
Ashby and College for a surprise hello from Luporini when she happened by as I was about to cross the street on my way home: make a date for writing together.
Galaxy Nails for a manicure: wear gloves when I wash dishes and sinks and chemex coffee makers. I love the women there. They take good care of me.
Vero to help out Veronica for a few minutes: wait to hear what she thinks of the suggestions I made for her announcement about a fund raiser she will be having later this month. Veronica and I are friends and she also cuts my hair.
Clark Kerr track on a brisk walk with my dear Desiree: Piedmont to Parker to Clark Kerr and up the stairs to the track and then Belrose to Domingo to Hazel to Webster. Desie found a pine cone on Belrose and she carried it all the way home. Good girl.

1-5 and 10 with my sweet Desie.

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A Poem by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look  Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled  And paced upon the mountains overhead  And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Books I Like

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Cutting for Stone

The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

A Reliable Wife

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Olive Kitteridge

Little Bee

Tinkers

Plainsong

The Book Thief

Out Stealing Horses

One Man's Meat

The Sky Fisherman

Amy and Isabelle

To Kill a Mockingbird

Sweeping Up Glass

Gate at the Stairs

Half Broke Horses

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Motherless Brooklyn

My Dog Tulip

The Graveyard Book

Angle of Repose

Room

Reading My Father

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Brooklyn

The Tiger's Wife

The Samurai's Garden

Salvage the Bones

Vaclav and Lena

The Fault in Our Stars

Language of Flowers

A Month in the Country

House of Stone

Berlin Childhood around 1900

The Hare with the Amber Eyes

Canada

The Unusual Pilgrimage of Harold Frey

Eventide

The Tie That Binds

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Shaggy Muses

Year of Wonders

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

The Sense of an Ending

Beautiful Ruins

The Orchardist

Great House

The Light Between Oceans

Man Walks into a Room

a land more kind than home

A poem by Raymond Carver


  
Happiness
So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.
[Thank you, Elizabeth.]

Reflections on "White Rabbits"

For me, upon discoverment [which is giving language/words/understanding to observations about the self that have been hidden or are hiding], it is both the letting go and figuring out how to be without a white rabbit that is very very hard. It makes me have to be brave, to close my eyes to my fear [perhaps it should be open my eyes, but when I am afraid, I want to not see the danger] and forge ahead [with tiny and careful steps—here again made up of language/words/understanding]. Only to find [and know] that there is no one moment when a white rabbit is let go [forever] but rather replaced [and this replacement resides with a lasting fragility]. I do think [and know] that this is good.

[an excerpt from a note to friend.]

[Read: Oh Dear, Too Late for the White Rabbits by SIMON WINCHESTER]

A Poem by Mary Oliver

DREAMS

All night the dark buds of dreams open richly.

In the center of every petal is a letter, and you imagine

if you could only remember and string them all together they would spell the answer. It is a long night,

and not an easy one--you have so many branches, and there are diversions--birds that come and go,

the black fox that lies down to sleep beneath you, the moon staring with her bone-white eye.

Finally you have spent all the energy you can and you drag from the ground the muddy skirt of your roots

and leap awake with two or three syllables like water in your mouth and a sense

of loss--a memory not yet of a word, certainly not yet the answer--only how it feels

when deep in the tree all the locks click open, and the fire surges through the wood, and the blossoms blossom.