Rat-a-Tat-Touille

This movie is charming, witty, sly, and ooh-la-la romantic. It also has some provocative sideplay about the relationship of the artist to his/her muse. I give it a 5-star rating (or should that be ratting?). Seriously, Pixar has outdone itself. Better than Toy Story 1 or 2. I've finally found a movie for my 2008 Oscar Watch recommendations.

VIII

Eight things you didn't know about me.

1. On the date of my birth, Walt Disney applied for the patent for the "un-birthday" teacup ride. The ride had already been at Walt Disney World for 2 years.

2. I was born west of the Mississippi River, the only one in my immediate family not born in a Kentucky-Tennessee rivertown.

3. I used to dream of being a professional tennis player, but I was too inconsistent in practicing and frankly not good enough, although I have won many doubles tournaments. (I did get paid for lessons, so I guess that makes me a pro--LOL). I haven't played tennis in 15 years.

4. Although I am fascinated by them, I have no tattoos. Yet.

5. My husband and I met and were married in 3 months. Somehow it took.

6. I can type 250 words per minute, but am only that fast when I hear dictation. I cannot sight-type well at all.

7. My mother wanted to name me after Vivien Leigh. My dad prevailed and named me after a tombstone.

8. I collect many, many things, including antique postcards and pink and black kitchenware.

Mr. Dawson Would Be So Proud!

The Man-Moth?

I know, I know, it's a typo for mammoth, but this also is an interesting paper trail:



THE MAN-MOTH

Here, above,
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.

But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

Up the facades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer's cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye. It's all dark pupil,
and entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee's sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you're not paying attention
he'll swallow it. However, if you watch, he'll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

Elizabeth Bishop

A Cataract of Collective Nouns

Group Names for Birds: A Partial List from Terry Ross

A bouquet of pheasants
A brood of hens
A building of rooks
A cast of falcons
A charm of finches
A company of parrots
A congregation of plovers
A cover of coots
A deceit of lapwings
A descent of woodpeckers
A dissimulation of birds
A dole of doves
An exaltation of larks
A fall of woodcocks
A kettle of hawks riding a thermal
A murmuration of starlings
A murder of crows
A muster of storks
An ostentation of peacocks
A paddling of ducks [on the water]
A parliament of owls
A party of jays
A peep of chickens
A pitying of turtledoves
A raft of ducks
A rafter of turkeys
A siege/sedge of herons
A skein of geese [in flight]
A sord of mallards
A spring of teal
A tiding of magpies
An unkindness of ravens
A watch of nightingales
A wedge of swans [or geese, flying in a "V"]
A wisp of snipe
_____________________________

A group of pineapples is called a prickle, a group of grapes is called a stem, and a group of apples is called a fall. A "fall guy" was originally the person who was blamed for picking a bad apple. (from Gullible Information)

Does this make Eve the first "fall guy"?

_____________________________

My favorites: Probably an obstinancy of bison, a confederacy of caterpillars, or an unkindness of ravens (Ruth Rendell used this as a title for a great mystery).

Delft to Delphinium, China to Cobalt, PJP to HP

The sky in Maxfield
Parrish is Aurora blue
ink bled into flue
__________________________________________

Here's what I want for my birthday, Harvey: HINT HINT HINT: The web site features the words: Parker. Discovery. Seduction. Possession.

In case you don't get the hint, there's more at the link above. Remember: Sonnet. Ocean. Asian. "When the Stars Go Blue."

PS You said to tell you. I'm telling.

What It Takes to Make a Pro Blush

Your Score: Bette Davis

You're one smart cookie, and you know it. You also know how to let everyone else in on the deal. You are in charge and keep everyone in line with your biting wit and cutting remarks. You're charming when you need to be, and the light sparkles behind your eyes. But when cornered, you can act, but quick. You're always ready with just the right come-back. You go your own way and have your own, unique way of tackling life. It's not a great idea to cross you; you can cut down the competition with one well-chosen line. Your leading mean include Errol Flynn and Paul Henreid, men who like a feisty gal.

Find out what kind of classic leading man you'd make by taking the Classic Leading Man Test.

Link: The Classic Dames Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

An Open Letter to My Fantasy Basketball Cohorts

Oh, fellow members of We Hear Voices, who as a total majority criticized me for picking Tony Parker, who's laughing now?



I picked this photo because it's a strange combination of victory dance and pas de deux.

Volunteer!

We saw what looked like dandelion leaves volunteering in a plastic planter we'd left in a heap by the potting shed. Here's what we have now (not our plant--ours is bigger).





Turns out it's fairy fan flower--some seeds we didn't remember planting and probably just tossed in a pot. It sits in a metal plantstand outside our walkway and fireflies are glowing in this evening,little peridots. It's the only purple thing we have in our yard besides the violets in early spring (and part of the trim on our house's gingerbread). The five points do fan out, and the plant does make little circles that look like fairy rings.

Mr. Greenjeans--oops, Harvey--is outside coaxing the first Roma to get slightly ruddier. I have some big green tomatoes for frying up this weekend.

Poems are coming slowly, but they're coming. I have a garden of Eden one almost finished. It wants to be a sestina until the very end. Maybe I could have a quintina?

Oh, yeah--almost forgot. Our papillon eats Japanese beetles. Maybe we should have him cloned!

Dairy Query--Not So Scrumpdillyicious, Huh?

In 2001, a man bought a sundae at Dairy Queen in Danville, Kentucky,with a $200 bill (above) and received $197.88 in change. Because there is no $200 bill, the perpetrator could not be charged with counterfeiting, even if he were apprehended. (It's of interest to note that this bill is issued by the Moral Reserve).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcasting.

From the Boston Globe: The Rock Lobster?

I find this story absolutely charming. Nature certainly has surprises.


A royal crustacean jackpot

A crustacean with a royal blue shell won the equivalent of the lobster lottery, avoiding the usual fate of boiling water and butter because of its brilliant hue.

Instead, the 1 1/2-pound lobster will grow old in a 400-gallon tank, eating cut fish and shelled shrimp and hiding from the grabby hands of students on field trips.

A genetic mutation gives 1 of every 3 million lobsters the distinctive blue color, a rarity that flashed like a neon sign at Robert Green when he pulled the spiny decapod out of a trap early Sunday morning in the mouth of the Thames River, near Groton, Conn.

"As soon as it got out of the water, you could see this thing glowing," Green, 46, said yesterday in a telephone interview from his home in Norwich, Conn. "I wasn't going to eat the thing. It was too pretty."

Green took the lobster to the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, where it will be kept in a classroom, said Catherine Ellis, curator of fishes and invertebrates.

If Green had decided to try his blue lobster for dinner, he might have been disappointed.

"They all turn red when they are cooked," Ellis said.

ANDREW RYAN (New York Times)

Initialisms

Scattergories

Your name: Pamela
A Country: Peru
Song Title: Paint it Black
An Artist (painter, photographer, etc): Pablo Picasso (like those double initials!)
A Reason to stay Home from Work or School: Procrastination
Something you'd see at a Zoo: Polar bear
A Snack: Popcorn
A Character in a Book: Peter Pan (again the double initials!)
Something Icky: Pesticide
A Six-letter Word: Pollen
Something Breakable: Pottery
Non-Alcoholic Drink: Peach tea
Something you Whisper: Please.

Age 21, and 21-0

Nadal has never lost a match at the French Open. I'm glad to see him win again. That beautiful red clay court is proving to be Pompeii for Federer--he's been buried alive, mid run.

San An & Sam

Easy win--85-76, LeBron James not even a factor. The Spurs played completely devastating defense--Tony Parker was in the paint, and my favorite player Tim quietly got it done everywhere.

I am a happy girl with my two S.A's tonight--San Antonio, Sam Adams.
________________________
Gardening is going well. All the plants are in the ground, the caladiums (caladia?) are pushing up through the silver and purple wandering Jew in the planters, roses and daylilies are blooming pink and yellow, the hosta are sending up lilac shoots, and the hydrangeas are really spreading. (We planted 5 new ones this year and divided two old favorites). We have three blue, 4 pink (the divided old favorites), one pink and green blooming one that is gorgeous, and one weird one with green-white variegated foliage--it's supposed to be purple and white--not sure if this one will bloom this year--or if the divided ones will blooom.

Harvey's designed next year's project, a retaining wall, walkway and the koi pond I've dreamed of for years. What else? Oh, oriental lilies are glowing like crushed opals and ferns are unfurling their ammonite fronds. We've crushed spearmint in iced green tea.

Next year--we'll have the moss on/between the bricks--it's really taken to the transplant, and we can start to think about more tulips and what kind of stones for the walkway--start budgeting for the walls. For a few weeks, we can relax, weed, deadhead, and enjoy what Harvey (especially!) has worked so hard to make look so natural organic.
______________________
Books for the MFA--I love him, but why oh why are we reading Henry James' Daisy Miller? The Turn of the Screw? The Beast in The Jungle?? Any suggestions are truly appreciated as to why this is in a MFA fiction-writing seminar.

The First Song We Danced To: Click on the X

For some reason this won't embed, but this is the very first song Harvey and I ever danced to.

Bald-Faced Tales from Tennessee and Wasp Poetics

Harvey and I went down to Tennessee to dig up ferns on his family farm. We moved about 20 of them, and as we were walking through fields knotted with Queen Anne's lace and butterfly bush, we came upon a beautiful bald-faced hornet. (It's the only black and white "yellow jacket" in North America, or so I've read). Usually found in California/West Coast, Harvey's speculation is that he brought this back in his boyhood collection of papery cones of hornets' nests and other boyhood cabinet-of-wonders objects, and he may be singlehandedly responsible for their residency in west Tennessee. (Harvey's family moved a family of 5 children (ages 12 to 3), a dog, two parents, and two cats in a VW Beetle from San Diego to the outskirts of Hallelujah Hill, Tennessee, going from a California split-level to a 2-room basement in a part of Tennessee so rural that phone lines didn't even reach into the woods until about a decade ago. Wireless Internet arrived at the same time as Ma Bell. I'm glad in retrospect that my parents weren't the back-to-nature type, although I myself longed to be a flower child). Anyway, Harvey's hornet's nest came violently to life after being kept too near their woodstove. This may be a distant descendent of one of those California "transplants."

___________________________________________________________________________

Upon A Wasp Chilled With Cold--Edward Taylor

The bear that breathes the northern blast
Did numb, torpedo-like, a wasp
Whose stiffened limbs encramped, lay bathing
In Sol's warm breath and shine as saving,
Which with her hands she chafes and stands
Rubbing her legs, shanks, thighs, and hands.
Her pretty toes, and fingers' ends
Nipped with this breath, she out extends
Unto the sun, in great desire
To warm her digits at that fire.
Doth hold her temples in this state
Where pulse doth beat, and head doth ache.
Doth turn, and stretch her body small,
Doth comb her velvet capital.
As if her little brain pan were
A volume of choice precepts clear.
As if her satin jacket hot
Contained apothecary's shop
Of nature's receipts, that prevails
To remedy all her sad ails,
As if her velvet helmet high
Did turret rationality.
She fans her wing up to the wind
As if her pettycoat were lined,
With reason's fleece, and hoists sails
And humming flies in thankful gales
Unto her dun curled palace hall
Her warm thanks offering for all.

Lord, clear my misted sight that I
May hence view Thy divinity,
Some sparks whereof thou up dost hasp
Within this little downy wasp
In whose small corporation we
A school and a schoolmaster see,
Where we may learn, and easily find
A nimble spirit bravely mind
Her work in every limb: and lace
It up neat with a vital grace,
Acting each part though ne'er so small
Here of this fustian animal.
Till I enravished climb into
The Godhead on this ladder do,
Where all my pipes inspired upraise
An heavenly music furred with praise.

Edward Taylor

Quite a jump to the next wasp/hornet poem I remember, all the way from metaphysical to skeptical: "The White-Tailed Hornet" by Frost, which is beautifully accurate in its evocation fo the hornet's behavior, even though there is no "white-tailed hornet" species.

The White-Tailed Hornet

The white-tailed hornet lives in a balloon
That floats against the ceiling of the woodshed.
The exit he comes out at like a bullet
Is like the pupil of a pointed gun.
And having power to change his aim in flight,
He comes out more unerring than a bullet.
Verse could be written on the certainty
With which he penetrates my best defense
Of whirling hands and arms about the head
To stab me in the sneeze-nerve of a nostril.
Such is the instinct of it I allow.
Yet how about the insect certainty
That in the neighborhood of home and children
Is such an execrable judge of motives
As not to recognize in me the exception
I like to think I am in everything--
One who would never hang above a bookcase
His Japanese crepe-paper globe for trophy?
He stung me first and stung me afterward.
He rolled me off the field head over heels,
And would not listen to my explanations.

That's when I went as visitor to his house.
As visitor at my house he is better.
Hawking for flies about the kitchen door,
In at one door perhaps and out another,
Trust him then not to put you in the wrong.
He won't misunderstand your freest movements.
Let him light on your skin unless you mind
So many prickly grappling feet at once.
He's after the domesticated fly
To feed his thumping grubs as big as he is.
Here he is at his best, but even here--
I watched him where he swooped, he pounced, he struck;
But what he found he had was just a nailhead.
He struck a second time. Another nailhead.
'Those are just nailheads. Those are fastened down.'
Then disconcerted and not unannoyed,
He stooped and struck a little huckleberry
The way a player curls around a football.
'Wrong shape, wrong color, and wrong scent,' I said.
The huckleberry rolled him on his head.
At last it was a fly. He shot and missed;
And the fly circled round him in derision.
But for the fly he might have made me think
He had been at his poetry, comparing
Nailhead with fly and fly with huckleberry:
How like a fly, how very like a fly.
But the real fly he missed would never do;
The missed fly made me dangerously skeptic.

Won't this whole instinct matter bear revision?
Won't almost any theory bear revision?
To err is human, not to, animal.
Or so we pay the compliment to instinct,
Only too liberal of our compliment
That really takes away instead of gives.
Our worship, humor, conscientiousness
Went long since to the dogs under the table.
And served us right for having instituted
Downward comparisons. As long on earth
As our comparisons were stoutly upward
With gods and angels, we were men at least,
But little lower than the gods and angels.
But once comparisons were yielded downward,
Once we began to see our images
Reflected in the mud and even dust,
'Twas disillusion upon disillusion.
We were lost piecemeal to the animals,
Like people thrown out to delay the wolves.
Nothing but fallibility was left us,
And this day's work made even that seem doubtful.

I like this pair-up.

P.S. Just remembered this Sexton poem--going back again to the description of the natural world, and its inversion of the wasp going "to your house." I think the real "rudder" that steers this poem is its "do not/wants to" structure.

Hornet--Anne Sexton

A red-hot needle
hangs out of him, he steers by it
as if it were a rudder, he
would get in the house any way he could
and then he would bounce from window
to ceiling, buzzing and looking for you.
Do not sleep for he is there wrapped in the curtain.
Do not sleep for he is there under the shelf.
Do not sleep for he wants to sew up your skin,
he want to leap into your body like a hammer
with a nail, do not sleep he wants to get into
your nose and make a transplant, he wants do not
sleep he wants to bury your fur and make
a nest of knives, he wants to slide under your
fingernail and push in a splinter, do not sleep
he wants to climb out of the toilet when you sit on it
and make a home in the embarrassed hair do not sleep
he wants you to walk into him as into a dark fire.

MIA, MFA Manuscript, and a Gem from Squidglass

Dormitory room reserved ($10/night, couldn't turn it down).
Books ordered ($50.00 for Frost, H. James, Spanish Modern Poets, Kaffir Boy and my old nemesis Fussell)
MFA manuscript sent (5 poems/8 pages, not exactly priceless but as good as I can make 'em).

This summer's readings: Robert Olen Butler; Tony Crunk; Fred Haefele; Ann Neelon; Phil Stephens (my mentor!); Dale Ray Phillips; Lynn Pruett; Squire Babcock; Mountaintop Mining Group; mes amis et moi, aussi .

I look forward to this summer. The manuscript I sent includes 1 old poem rewritten, 3 newer poems, and 1 poem that dates from this morning. I wanted something fresh-- and frighteningly so.

The dorm will be quiet. I may be the only person on the top floor. I just adore a penthouse view...

I ordered this custom glass pendant from Etsy/squidglass. Isn't it awesome? Guess who's the subject...