Reading Update

Book #3 of 2018 was Patched Together: A Story of My Story, by Brennan Manning.  Few people have expressed God's grace like Manning.  As someone who needs God's grace every single day, I appreciate his words.

Book #4 was Caribbean Style, by Suzanne Slesin and Stafford Cliff.  I decided that this year I want to take some time to read through the text of the beautiful art and photography books I have on my shelves.  It makes me happy to look at the gorgeous photos in this one, and I would imagine that if you live somewhere cold and snowy, this book could provide some helpful therapy.  Published in 1985, it is out of print, but it looks as though you can get an inexpensive copy on Amazon.

Book #5 was Stoner, by John Williams.  I checked this out of the library after reading about it in a list of books every teacher should read.  I do appreciate books that explore how it feels to teach, the kind of inner battles that it's possible to fight when you have a student who makes your life difficult or a colleague who's using subtle power games that would sound ridiculous if you described them out loud to someone else.  (Another book that mines some of this territory is Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt, which I reviewed briefly here.)  In the case of this university professor, there's another person making his life miserable, and that is his wife.  A plot summary would sound despairing, but I found this book surprisingly uplifting in its portrayal of a man whose life is lived mostly in his own brain.

Book #6 was Kent Haruf's Our Souls at Night. I loved this poignant story about how desperately we all need love and connection.

Book #7 was Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest, by Beck Weathers.  For some reason I have read several books about Everest in the last few years.  I think it began when I read Peak for the first time with my seventh graders.  I have no desire whatsoever to climb enormous mountains, and I get out of breath just reading about what it's like.  Beck Weathers was part of the expedition Jon Krakauer wrote about in Into Thin Air.  (I read it in 2016.)  He was, as the title tells us, "left for dead."  Somehow he managed to survive, though much damaged by his experience. This book is about his recovery, including the recovery of his marriage, which had suffered from his obsession with climbing mountains.  We hear from Beck himself, his wife Peach, their two children, and several of their friends.  There is no sugar-coating of the messiness of the situation.  I was especially fascinated by the connections between Beck's depression and his mountain-climbing.  He found that climbing eased the emotional pain he felt much of the time, and he kept pushing himself more and more as his depression worsened, even as he saw how he was destroying his family.

Human beings are mysterious creatures, aren't they?  I think that's the theme of this set of books, except maybe the one full of Caribbean photos.  I guess I needed that one to recover from the intensity in all the others. 

January: The Dead Season

I remember that when I first moved here, my Kreyol teacher told me that Haitians call January the dead season.  The festivities of Christmas and Independence Day (January 1st) are over, it's the middle of the dry season, and it's cold (well, what passes for cold in the Caribbean).

I find the weather this time of year pretty nearly perfect, and there's certainly no Seasonal Affective Disorder to worry about, because the sun is shining brightly every day.  But January is rough, anyway, for a couple of reasons. 

Photo from my walk this morning - look at that sky!

First, January 12th, 2010, was the date of the earthquake.  That's what we call it, the earthquake, as though there's only ever been one.  Or, in Kreyol, goudou goudou, after the sound it made when all the concrete buildings shook and many of them fell down.  On the first day of January, we eat pumpkin soup, the traditional New Year's dish, and that's great, and then soon enough we go back to work and spend the next few days gearing up for the anniversary, which, even eight years later, is so overwhelming and sad.  Even after the day itself is past, we remember the days that followed that one, days of aftershocks and fear.

(This year, there was the additional joy of hearing nasty things said about Haiti, again and again.  Did he say it or not?  It almost doesn't even matter, because whether he did or not, we had to keep hearing about it, and I had occasion to tell my middle schoolers that we don't use that kind of language in my classroom, even if it is on the news.)

The second reason January is rough is that at work we have to declare our intentions for next year; are we coming back or should they advertise our jobs?  So this is the time when we start learning which of our friends are leaving.  One of my best friends of many years moved away without warning in the summer, due to her husband's health issues.  Now, more will go.  This makes me sad every year.  And again this year.

It's tempting to say, "That's it, I'm not ever making any friends again; instead I will go live in a cave and have no further interaction with human beings, thus sparing myself heartache in future."  Instead of doing that (which seems like a really good idea to me), I am attempting to continue being nice to people in the hopes that some of them might not move away.  Losing people is hard, and it doesn't get any easier as I get older; it gets harder and I seem to recover from it more slowly.

Welcome to the dead season.  At least the weather is perfect!

Poetry Friday: Finding Poems for my Students

I was thinking about this poem this week; I reviewed the book it appears in, E-Mails from Scheherazad, here.  I highly recommend this book for its wonderful poems by Mohja Kahf on being an Arab American.  This poem is just about being a teacher, and I relate to it so completely.  Maybe some of my teacher friends will, too.

Finding Poems for my Students
Mohja Kahf

O my students,
I scour the world of words
to bring you poems like the rocks
my girls dig up in riverbanks
and come running to show me
because the notches in them
say something true, something
that an ancient Wisdom
wanted us to see.

I run to you, pockets full of poems.
I select: This poem will help you pass a test.
Here is one that is no help at all,
but is beautiful; take it, take it.

O my scroungers after merely passing grades,
I bring you poems I have hiked high
and far to find, knowing
they will mostly end up like the rocks
my daughters find, tossed in drawers
with old batteries, mislaid keys,
scraps bearing the addresses
of people whose names
you no longer recognize or need.

Your current glazed-eye indifference
doesn't bother me.  One day,
when you are either cleaning house
or moving (and sooner or later
everyone must do one or the other),
you will shake the drawer and the poem
will fall out.  And may the poem be for you
the one phone number in the universe
you were looking for, and may it be
for you the mislaid key
to your greatest need.
On that day,
you will read.


How thankful I am for the poems (and other writing) my teachers (and others) have found for me, and shared with me, all through my life.  How many times they have been the mislaid keys to my greatest need!

Today's roundup is here.

The Day After

I took a walk this morning, and took some photos of this beautiful place where I live.  Not everyone thinks it's beautiful, but I notice that quite a few people who don't think so have never been here.

 Broken bottles on the top of a wall, used for security.

Yesterday at lunch, a colleague who wasn't here in Haiti when the earthquake happened was asking me questions about my memories of that day.  I was surprised how emotional I felt as I answered; I have told these stories so many times by now that I would think the tears would be over, but they aren't, not completely.  She wanted to know whether the anniversary was an especially tough day, and did I think that it would be better if it were a holiday.  The answers to that are yes, and I'm not sure.  The anniversary is difficult.  At first, the twelfth of every month was difficult, but now I don't think about the earthquake all the time any more.  But should January 12th be a holiday every year the way it was for the first few?  It will never be an ordinary day to me, and it is hard to work.  I cried several times during the day.  But even being at work yesterday, I found myself sucked into social media, and getting involved in looking at everyone's photos and reading everyone's reminiscences.  If I'd stayed home all day, that would have been intensified even more.  Maybe the best way to honor those who died is to go on, to live the lives they aren't able to, to have a normal day.

Of course, on social media yesterday there was also a lot of discussion of the words allegedly spoken by the President of the United States about Haiti.  There were responses, videos, comments.  Anderson Cooper teared up as he talked about a small child who had been rescued and praised the dignity of the Haitian people; his video was widely shared by friends who live in Haiti.  Tucker Carlson said that the President was only saying what almost every American believes; nobody shared his video, but I saw a tiny clip of it in a montage I watched. 

Today, on the day after the anniversary, I feel as though 2018 is finally starting for real.  Every year we have to get through that terrible day, January 12th, before there's the clean slate feeling of New Year's Day.  I wish I hadn't let the President's words occupy my thoughts so much yesterday.  The more I think about what he allegedly said, the more I feel sorry for him.  He can't know what he doesn't know; he has not had the opportunities that I have had to know people from the countries he criticizes or to live in them (I've spent a large portion of my life in two such countries).  How much poorer his life is!  However, he is not someone whose views affect no one but himself.  He has the power to change the lives of people he despises and disrespects.  So in addition to pity, I feel deep concern and even fear about where he will lead the world.

Someone's champagne bottle on the road

The banner says, in French, "Haitian Coalition of Volunteers."

But the saddest and most dispiriting experience yesterday was reading comments from people who defended the President's words.  It hurts to find out what people really believe, deep down, and are now moved to say or type.  Whether or not they would use the President's vulgar language, there are many who would like to deny the opportunities of the United States to people who come from countries that they look down on.  They don't want foreigners coming to the US as students - the number of international students is way down this year already - and they definitely don't want them making their lives in the US.  Yesterday there were studies posted showing that immigrants have a positive impact on society rather than a negative one.  People gave their own experiences and wrote about immigrants they know or their own immigrant families.  People posted beautiful photographs of countries to which the President has given an ugly name.  Some reached back into history to point out that the riches of the US are based on the free slave labor that built the society, and to outline the ways that Haiti has interacted with the US - Haitians fought in the War for Independence, for example.  After Haiti became a nation in 1804, the US refused to recognize the new country because of fears that their own slaves would "get ideas" about emancipation.  The US is not guiltless in Haiti's poverty.  But some were able to dismiss all of this.

My word for this year is ENOUGH, and it is not easy to find the moment when I have had ENOUGH input from the news and from social media.  I want to know what is going on in the world; I want to connect with friends and share their joys and sorrows.  But I don't want to allow the President and those who think like him to occupy the limited bandwidth of my attention.  As I walked this morning I composed arguments in my head, but really, the arguments spiral out of control already.  I want to focus on the job I have to do, the kids I have to teach.  I want to show the people I interact with that Haiti is not as the President has described.  But it's not my job to convince everyone in the world that Haiti is wonderful (it is) or that Haitian people are strong, hardworking, an asset to any society (they are).  Many people don't want to be convinced, and honestly, I am sad for them. 

On this, the Day After, the 13th of January, I remember how Haitians were the day after the earthquake.  People were sleeping in the streets because they didn't trust that their houses weren't going to fall down on them.  Some had lost everything.  Many were terribly injured.  But they were helping one another.  They were digging survivors out from under buildings.  They were sharing what they had.  They were singing hymns of praise and thanking God for their survival.  Haitians have suffered much worse than having bad things said about them, and they will move on and do what needs to be done. 

Poetry Friday: My Earthquake Poems for the Eighth Anniversary

January 12th will never be an ordinary day to me.  It is the day that I learned about earthquakes. Today, on the eighth anniversary of January 12th, 2010, I want to share some of the poems I wrote in the months afterward.  For years, it seemed that everything I wrote had something to do with that awful day, whether I started out intending that or not.

One of the changes that the earthquake made in me was that I became much freer about sharing my writing.  Before it happened, I hardly ever shared my poetry.  I didn't even tell where I lived, let alone show my soul the way poetry does.  It was a huge step for me to post this poem about the Hotel Montana at the end of January, 2010, and I even said in the comments that it was scary but that I found the courage to do it because of what my friends in Haiti were doing.

I don't know what you know about Haiti.  Lately some hateful things have been said about the country and its people, but take my word for it, as someone who has lived here a large percentage of my adult life: Haiti was a beautiful country before the earthquake, and it remained a beautiful country after the earthquake.  It was full of beautiful, courageous, strong people before, and it still is.  But there was something about that "earthquake time" that was special; people came together in amazing ways to help each other and care for each other.  It was unforgettable.  I won't ever forget it, and neither will anyone else who was here and who saw it.  

These poems are about my own experiences.  I wrote about what happened in prose here and here and here, and then rehashed it again and again through the whole rest of that year.  There are many posts in my archives about the situation in Haiti and what was happening to other people, but my poems are very personal and don't reflect anybody else's views or experience. 

In April 2010, I posted Earthquake Vocabulary.

In May I posted Morning, about missing my husband while I was in the US and he was still in Haiti doing relief work.

In November I was back in Haiti, still struggling with the emotional aftermath, and I wrote Wave. Later that month I wrote Ordinary, about how much I appreciated the normal day to day aspects of my life after being away from home for so long.

In January 2013, for the third anniversary, I shared This Quilt.

In December 2013, I posted Sounds from this House. This is an example of a poem that I didn't expect to be about the quake at all when I started writing it.

In January 2014, I shared my poem about being evacuated from Haiti after the earthquake, called How to Pack an Evacuation Bag.

In March 2015 I posted Tears.  This one wasn't explicitly about the earthquake, but it's certainly one of the things I do still cry about, even now.

For last year's anniversary, I wrote Memento Mori and How Long Healing Takes in Port-au-Prince.

I've written much, much more - poetry and prose - about the quake.  Writing was one of the things that kept me sane, and continues to do so.

On Sunday we gathered with our church family and shared many stories of our memories from that time.  My husband commented that there are things you get over, and things you never do, and perhaps January 12th, 2010, falls in the second category.  While we go days or weeks now without thinking about it, it's always a part of who we are.  It changed everything.

Today's roundup is here.

Photo credit: I'm not sure who made this image, but it is widely used every year as a profile picture on Facebook.

Reading Update

Welcome to the first Reading Update of 2018!  I haven't read much yet, but here are the first two books of the year.

Book #1 of 2018 fits in well with my OLW, ENOUGH.  Living in Haiti is a constant challenge in figuring out how to care for other people, and realizing that you are never enough. You can never fix all the problems around you, no matter how hard you try. You can never fix even the problems of the people who come and specifically ask you to fix their problems. You find yourself saying "No" a lot, and even when you do say "Yes" you feel conflicted about whether you did right. Kent Annan has many wise things to say in this book, Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice, Loving Mercy, and Walking Humbly in the World.  There is no magic formula (I would mistrust it if there were), but here are some tastes from the table of contents:

Attention: Awakening to Justice
Confession: The Posture for Engaging
Respect: The Golden Rule for Helping
Partnering: With Not For
Truthing: Hard Thinking and Feet on the Ground
Practicing Faithfully Even When We're Overwhelmed

I highly recommend this book; it would make a wonderful choice for a discussion group.

Book #2 was Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey.  My daughter and I read aloud the Fagles translation to each other in the summer of 2016, and as soon as we saw this new one advertised, we knew we wanted to read this one too.  On January 1st the Kindle edition was on sale for $3.99, so we grabbed our copies and started reading. We finished the 24th book last night.  I'm sorry for you if you don't get to read it with my hilarious daughter, who also happens to be a Greek student, but you should definitely read it anyway.

This translation is fast-paced and readable.  It doesn't make any effort to preserve archaic diction; in fact, there were a few words that we found a little jarring in their modernness, like "canapés" being served at a banquet, Penelope's suitors sitting around "playing checkers," or Odysseus giving his men a "pep talk."  We loved reading it, and remembered once again that this is just a great story; there's a reason people have been reading it for so many centuries. Telemachus is a whiny adolescent who has every reason to feel grumpy.  Penelope is courageous and resourceful in spite of her terrible circumstances.  Windy, self-important, deceitful Odysseus somehow still stirs your heart.  Life is all about grief and loss, but it's also about dinner.  And how much more modern could you get than these lines:

"The worst thing humans suffer
is homelessness; we must endure this life
because of desperate hunger; we endure
as migrants with no home."

Poetry Friday: Then and Now

Back in 2011, I watched a friend care for her son during church, and then wrote the poem below.  I sent it to the friend, and she posted it on her blog, but I realized the other day when I was looking for it that I had never posted it here on my own.

It's easy to look back on lovely times in the past and wish for them back, but in the spirit of my OLW for 2018, ENOUGH, I'm also posting a more recent poem, appreciating some of the advantages of my life now.

Holding a Baby in Church

As the praise band warms up
The mom notices me ogling her baby
And asks if I'd like to hold him.
Would I!  I grab him, trying not to seem too eager,
And relish the feel of the bundle.

That sweet weight brings back
Years of Sundays
When the baby I held was my own.

In those years I lived more in my body than my head
As I carried babies all day
And nursed them at my breast.
I was indispensable,
Source of all they needed.
When we were apart
I could kiss ouchies over the phone.
I was the great and powerful Mommy.

I would stand to sing,
Relieved, because sitting down,
I was likely to go to sleep
(Another short night).
I swayed to the music, letting keeping the baby happy
Be my excuse to move.
Worship then was physical, primal,
As my tired body swayed back and forth
And as the fierce love I had for that baby
Reminded me, deeper than words,
Of the love of God for me.

This baby, who is not mine, starts to fuss
And I give him back to his mother.
I see her nurse him
And later I see them outside
And I remember that too,
Walking in the back of the sanctuary,
Pacing with a noisy child
Out of earshot,
Longing to hear the sermon.

These days I am back in my head;
I sit in the pew and nobody is in my lap or
Putting little arms around my neck.
I am clean and nobody has drooled on me.
I stand still to sing.
My shirt remains tucked in.
My children read their own Bibles
And I can hear the sermon all the way through.

As I look at the mom
Whose baby I borrowed for a moment
I wish for her life,
The aching body,
The fatigue,
The dear, ever-present weight in my arms.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Gratitude List

Praise be this evening for work ended,
the bare feet, the droning fan,
the smell of soy sauce floating upstairs from the kitchen.
Praise be the doves outside my window,
the dried eucalyptus in the bottle,
the empty mug, my tea already drunk.
Praise be the books on my shelves,
the photos of friends who smile at me benignly,
the fully-charged laptop, playing music I’ve chosen.
Praise be the lizard, scampering across the wall,
digesting bugs that will not trouble me tonight.
Praise be the quiet, the nobody needing anything,
the slight rumbling of my stomach that will soon be quelled,
the peace, and sleep not far off.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


(Here's the first time I posted this one, back in April 2017, including a link to my mentor text poems, "Gratitude List," by Mary Lee Hahn, and "Gratitude List," by Laura Foley.)

Today's roundup is at Reading to the Core.

QWP Update

Last time I updated the blog on the status of my QWP was back in November, when I'd written 21 first drafts out of my goal of 50 before my fiftieth birthday in February.  (Here's my original post on my project.)  Now, with a little less than two months to go, I'm up to 31 first drafts. 

OLW 2018

In 2017, my OLW was ROOTED.  (I'll put links at the end of the post to all my One Little Words since I started this in 2009, so you can meditate on the rather pathetic fact that I have the very same issues every single year.)

I started thinking about my 2018 word about a month ago, and there was really only ever one word on my list: ENOUGH.  I want to remind myself that God's daily provision will be ENOUGH for me, without hoarding or fretting.  He will also give me what I need so that I can be ENOUGH for what the people around me need from me. 

"Pain du ciel" means "bread from the sky," and refers to the manna that fell in the wilderness in the book of Exodus.  The people were to collect it every day, and only enough for that day; if they tried to stick some extra in Tupperware for tomorrow, it would go bad.  The exception was on Friday; they were to collect two days' worth, and the manna never went bad on the Sabbath.  The provision came when they needed it, not before.

Chances are that my provision won't come from the sky; it might even come in a lopsided truck like the one in the photo.  But I know from experience that God will provide for me, and that His provision will be ENOUGH.  I don't need to worry that I'm missing out on something I should have had or that someone else's manna is a tiny bit more delicious than mine.  (Even Jesus limited Himself to one human life - and it was ENOUGH.)

2009: LOOK
2010: LOVED
2011: TRUST
2012: HEAL
2013: SHALOM
2014: GARDEN
2015: UNAFRAID
2016: LOVED

This post is linked to Spiritual Journey First Thursday at Reflections on the Teche.

CY365, Year One

Today I had a feeling of accomplishment as I posted my photo for Day 365 of 2017.  This year I took at least one photo (usually many more) each day.  I chose one (at least) to post on Facebook in response to a prompt from http://captureyour365.com/.  Here's the post from last January where I announced in a rather half-baked way what I intended to do.

The fact is that this was a difficult year.  It was a difficult year for my family, and it was a difficult year for the world.  But when I look at the folder marked "CY365," I see blessings.  I see beautiful moments.  Some of the photos I don't like at all; in all of them I see flaws.  But I see evidence that there was so much to thank God for, every day of this year.

Here's the first photo of 2017, a bowl of soup joumou, the traditional Haitian food for New Year's Day.

And here, for December 31st, is a vegetable stand on the Jacmel road selling joumou for tomorrow's soup.

I don't know if I'll do this forever, but for 2018, I'm going to keep posting a daily photo.  I started this as a way to be rooted in my everyday life, here on this beautiful island where God has placed me.  I liked the results; I liked starting my day by sharing my life with others.  To be honest, I liked best when others enjoyed the photo, too; my children accused me of "living for likes."  But some of the ones I liked best were ones that didn't get much response, and that was OK too.

Here are some more of the photos I took and liked this year.

Here are a couple of articles from CY365 that I thought did an especially good job of capturing the experience I had this year:  What it Means to be an Everyday Photographer and Shedding Light on Your 2017 Capture Your 365 Project.  I don't consider myself to be a "real photographer," though I did learn many new things about photography this year.  But I do consider myself to be someone who is looking around for beautiful moments and trying to record them, every day.  I'm looking forward to capturing another 365 days. 

Reading Update, What I Read in 2017, Favorites, and a Bonus!

My daughter is in college in the United States, and thus benefits from the bounty of libraries - her college's, the public library, and all libraries reachable by inter-library loan (which is basically all of them).  Every time she comes home, she brings me a little handful of books she has checked out for me.  The next three books were the ones she brought this time.

Book #93 of 2017 was Strange the Dreamer, by Laini Taylor.  Actually, this one wasn't a library book at all, but an ARC my daughter won in a drawing.  I enjoyed this very much, as I have all of Taylor's books that I've read, but the last line in the story was: "Because this story was not over yet."  So now begins the wait for the next one in the series.

Book 94 was The Necessary Beggar, by Susan Palwick.  This was just the kind of immigrant story I love, with the slight difference that the immigrants are from another dimension.

Book 95 was Life Among the Savages, by Shirley Jackson.  This was entertaining.  The voice is reminiscent of Gerald Durrell, except with children, not animals.

Probably book 96 was the last one I'll finish this year (although you never know).  It was the seventh in the Inspector Gamache series, A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny.  

This was a good reading year.  I didn't read as much as some years, and I read more than others, but in general the quality was high.  Here are links to my reading update posts:

Books 1 to 5 
Books 6 to 12 
Books 13 to 21
Books 22 to 27 
Books 28 to 36 
Books 37 to 40 
Books 41 to 45 
Books 46 to 55 
Books 56 to 60 
Books 61 to 67 
Books 68 to 75 
Books 76 to 83 
Books 84 to 92  
And of course, if you scroll to the top of this post, you'll see books 93 to 96.

I encountered some amazing writers this year.  One was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  I actually read my first book by her right before the end of 2016, and I read several more this year.  My favorite so far is Americanah, which I reviewed here, in May.  

Another new-to-me writer was Derek Walcott, who died this year right after I started reading Omeros (reviewed here in April).  I have been reading more of his poetry, and I hope to read more of his narrative works in 2018.  Walcott's world is so similar to mine (he's a Caribbean poet, from St. Lucia), and I am fascinated by the way he blends history and mythology into the current lives of people of this region.  

My daughter has been telling me about Mary Doria Russell for a long time, and this year I read three of her books.  The Sparrow, reviewed here in July, was a harrowing but riveting reading experience.  

Two more wonderful writers I've encountered in the last month or so are Imbolo Mbue and Julie Otsuka.  

And now, the bonus from the title.  In November 2016, I read Ted Oswald's book Little Flower.  Ted was in my writing group, so I got to read a manuscript copy.  Because it wasn't yet published, I couldn't put a link in the post when I reviewed it.  I've since edited my review to add a link to the Amazon page, since the book came out this month.  Go read it - it's really good!

At this time of year, I read lots of lists of what was good and what wasn't, and I've also noticed articles on how to get in the reading habit.  While there are many good habits I need to cultivate, I am so very thankful that reading is firmly part of my life, no effort required.  I can't imagine living without a book or two or more in process, and I'm privileged to have a job where I can share books with others (some eager, some reluctant). 

What did you read in 2017?  What should I add to my list for the new year?  

This post is linked to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon for December 30th, 2017.  People are sharing their reading lists for the year.

Poetry Friday: Islands

I got a book of Derek Walcott's poetry for Christmas from my daughter, and here's one of the first ones I read:

Islands
(for Margaret)

Merely to name them is the prose
Of diarists, to make you a name
For readers who like travellers praise
Their beds and beaches as the same;
But islands can only exist
If we have loved in them.  I seek,
As climate seeks its style, to write
Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight,
Cold as the curled wave, ordinary
As a tumbler of island water;
Yet, like a diarist, thereafter
I savor their salt-haunted rooms
(Your body stirring the creased sea
Of crumpled sheets), whose mirrors lose
Our huddled, sleeping images,
Like words which love had hoped to use
Erased with the surf's pages.

So, like a diarist in sand,
I mark the peace with which you graced
Particular islands, descending
A narrow stair to light the lamps
Against the night surf's noises, shielding
A leaping mantle with one hand,
Or simply scaling fish for supper,
Onions, jack-fish, bread, red snapper;
And on each kiss the harsh sea-taste,
And how by moonlight you were made
To study most the surf's unyielding
Patience though it seems a waste.

Derek Walcott

I've been an island-dweller myself for more than twenty years now, and I have definitely loved in this beautiful island of Haiti.  I'm looking forward to reading more of Walcott's "verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight, cold as the curled wave, ordinary as a tumbler of island water," and as a wannabe poet myself, those are some good goals for the new year.  

 Heidi has today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: First Day of Vacation

First Day of Vacation

I finish turning in my grades
and look up,
amazed to find the world still going on around me.

I haven’t put away laundry for weeks,
and the piles of clutter have taken over.
I’ve forgotten what the faces of my life look like,
but there they all are,
smiling hopefully
and seeking my attention.

I’ve been too busy evaluating to live,
too busy assessing to appreciate,
too busy wielding my multicolored pens (not all red)
to let color seep into my soul.

Today I will observe
with no rubric in hand,
I will listen
with no agenda,
I will read
without judging,
and just because I want to.

Today I will rest
and ignore schedules
and eat when I please.

Today I won’t teach anyone anything,
except, possibly, myself.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

I took this photo at Wynne Farm, Kenscoff, Haiti, last month.  

Here's today's roundup.

Reading Update

Book #84 of 2017 was a reread, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, by Lauren Winner.  I read it for the first time last year, and it is such an honest book, and such a relatable one.

Book 85 was Anne Bogel's Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything.  This was very interesting, and at some point I will go back to it and delve in more deeply.  It gives an introduction to several of the best-known frameworks for identifying personality types, like the Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, and Love Languages.  I love Anne Bogel's podcast, What Should I Read Next?, and her blog, Modern Mrs. Darcy.  On the podcast, she has an amazing ability to cut to the essentials of people's reading tastes after just a few minutes of conversation.  The other week, she did a live event where she recommended books based on even less contact.  Some of that incisive understanding is on display in this book, as well.

Book 86 was The Actor and the Housewife, by Shannon Hale.  There are very few books which examine a long, platonic friendship between a man and a woman.  Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings (briefly reviewed here) is one, and there are hardly any others that I know of.  While I didn't necessarily believe all the details of this book, I very much believed the essentials of the friendship, and I loved reading about it.  I find Hale's books uneven; some I enjoy, and some I can hardly finish.  This one was lovely and surprisingly touching.

Book 87 was Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue.  This book, set in New York City in 2007 and 2008, is about a couple from Cameroon who are trying to make it by working for successful, wealthy Americans.  I liked the realism of the book and the complex, imperfect characters.  Books about immigrants are my favorite, and this one is up there with the best.

Book 88 was Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God, another Lauren Winner reread.  Winner explores metaphors for God and the way humans interact with Him.  This is a wonderful book, my favorite of Winner's.

Book 89 was English Lessons: The Crooked Path of Growing Toward Faith, by Andrea Lucado.  Yes, that Lucado; Andrea is Max's daughter.  Her voice reminds me more of Donald Miller's than Max Lucado's.  I enjoyed this book and would like to read more of her work.  The "English" of the title refers to Lucado's time studying in Oxford.

Book 90 was How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem, by Rod Dreher.  Dreher combines his reading of Dante with therapy and meetings with his Orthodox priest to make sense of his life.  I could very much relate to his approach, as I often find myself and my life situations in what I'm reading.

Book 91 was The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka.  I loved this poetic, wonderfully written story of picture brides coming from Japan in the twenty years before World War II, and the way they were caught up in the internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.  I've never read anything quite like the first-person plural voice of this short and beautiful novel.

I've been reading Book 92 for a long time, and I finally finished it.  It's Isabel Allende's novel about Haiti, Island Beneath the Sea.  This was hard to read because of the subject matter, Haiti's bloody history of slavery and oppression, and also because it seemed to go on and on.  I wanted to finish it, and eventually I did.  The characters had a lot happen to them, but were surprisingly forgettable; this may be partly because I took so long to read it, and kept going weeks between sections, and partly because the details of the story are so horrific and gory that I was almost flinching as I read parts of it.  It also felt very much as though I was reading in translation, which of course I was.  I haven't read any of Allende's other books, but maybe I should try one. 

December Vibes

I’m nearing the end of my first year-long Photo-a-Day project.  Each day in 2017 I followed prompts and posted photos online.  It’s been fun, grounding.  I’ve learned new things about photography, about the world around me, and about myself.

There are just a few photos left this year. Tomorrow’s prompt is “December Vibes,” and as I walked to work this morning, I wondered what that even means.  “Vibes,” short for “vibrations,” is a word that generally annoys me.  People write online in response to reports of illness or trouble, “Sending good vibes.”  It’s a secular alternative to prayer, an idea that if we think pleasant thoughts really hard, positive effects will follow.  I can see why that seems like the same thing as prayer, but it just isn’t. 

And December?  Obviously the intention is “festive,” and perhaps “snowy,” but as I walked down the trash-lined Port-au-Prince street on this toasty morning (the temperature was probably somewhere in the mid-eighties), on my way to finals week at school, I felt neither festive nor cold.  I didn’t have any exams today, and I wasn’t proctoring, and my daughter is home from college, so it was downright painful to force myself to get up and get to work.  As I looked at myself in the mirror before heading out, I thought how old and tired I looked: old lady face, old lady hair, old lady clothes.  December vibes were definitely grumpy.

There’s a major construction project near my house, with guys up on shaky, scary-looking wooden scaffolding working with cement, and dropping bits of it on passers-by.  I moved to the other side of the street.  Then, unbelievably, I heard kissy sounds and catcalls in Kreyol from up above, falling down on my old lady head instead of crumbs of concrete.  “Really?” I wanted to shout, incredulously, but instead I followed my usual procedure of ignoring, pretending I didn’t understand, continuing on my way. 

When I got to school, I went to the teacher work room, since exams were taking place in my classroom, where I usually work.  The air conditioning wasn’t functioning, and there are no windows in the room. The assortment of torn desk chairs fixed with duct tape appeared even more pitiful than usual.  The few teachers already there looked as though their December vibes matched my own. 

But, ah, on the table there was a gingerbread house, an annual tradition made by a fellow teacher.  Immediately I knew I’d found my December vibes.  I grabbed my camera and took some pictures.

This was no kit gingerbread house, constructed with cardboard and tasting like it.  No, this was a gingerbread house filled with character, made from dark, spicy gingerbread, tasting delicious and also nourishing.  It had a bit of a wonky shape to it - think Dr. Seuss architecture rather than modernism - and it was topped with white icing and gumdrops.  “Merry Xmas,” it read.  My colleagues had already begun to eat the roof, so I needed to feel no guilt about digging in myself, and very soon, the exam-grading teachers had made the house look as though a hurricane had passed through.  December vibes don’t include hurricanes because the season ends the last day of November, but we’re all too familiar here in Haiti with hurricanes, and earthquakes, and the idea that everything is temporary.  How much better to cause the destruction yourself, with your fingers, and eat the delectable results, than to wait for the elements, or the construction workers dropping things on your head.

December vibes include evaluating your students’ work, and realizing they learned less than you had hoped, but in some cases, more than you realized. 

December vibes bring our alumni sweeping back home after their first semester in college, or their third, or their fifth, or more.  They come in to visit, remarking on how much they miss my classroom, which if I recall correctly they didn’t love quite as much when I taught them in middle school.  At my house, we have a tradition of waiting until my own college student returns to do all the Advent rituals from the first two and a half weeks of the month.  How we missed those kids, and how thrilled we are to have them home! 

December vibes stir up memories from Christmases past, friends and family, moments lost and never to be repeated.  There’s a definite touch of melancholy in December vibes.

But December vibes are also scrumptious, filled with the strains of Handel’s Messiah, the anticipation of beach trips coming up soon, the careful setting out of the coconut shell Nativity scene - and the sweet, spicy taste of gingerbread. 

Poetry Friday: Warm at Christmas

I found this poem one year when looking for Christmas poems about warm places.  You'd think there would be a lot more of them, and maybe they are, just in languages I can't read.  Do any southern hemisphere Poetry Friday people have any other poems in this vein to share?  My students just can't relate to cold weather imagery the way they can to beach-going at this time of year.  

I don't mean to gloat (OK, maybe I do, a little), but the weather is so lovely here right now.  The perfect time to live in the Caribbean - hurricane season is over, and it's in the eighties every day.  Come see us!  (My daughter will be coming home soon from her college in the frozen north, and I just can't wait.)

Carol for a New Zealand Child

Christmas in the picture book

Gold and white with snow,

Winter in the desert

Where the three Kings go.

Ice on the camel-rein,

Rime on the crown,

Snow round the stable doors

Of Bethlehem town.

I carol Baby Jesus

On a nor-west day,

A summer wind is blowing

Across the beach and bay.

Sea gulls whir where

Children run to swim

Laughter in the breakers

Their Christmas hymn.

Dorothy Neal White

Here's this week's roundup. 

Poetry Friday: Sonnet 65

Sonnet 65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

William Shakespeare

My favorite part in this Shakespeare sonnet is the third and fourth lines, "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?"  Everything falls to time, even strong and mighty things like brass, stone, earth, sea, rocks, steel.  How can beauty survive?  And yet it does.  It's amazing how strong beauty is, really, especially when you consider that its action is no stronger than a flower.  Four hundred years later, Shakespeare's love still shines bright "in black ink." 

These have been some pretty "battering days" recently, and I am so grateful for the beauty around me and for its power to make everything better.

 

Here's this week's roundup.

Communion

I wrote this poem a few weeks ago, exploring metaphors for Communion, that ritual central to the Christian faith.  The "you" in the poem is my husband, and the conversation at the beginning really happened.  I was amused at the juxtaposition of the sacred feast with the banal travel mug.  Then I started thinking further about all that Communion does and is.  "Dan" is a doctor friend of ours who helped my husband out a few years ago during a health emergency here in Haiti that ended up in surgery.

I'm posting this today to go along with the Advent Photo-a-Day prompt "Presence."  One of the ways I experience God's presence week after week is by taking communion with my church family, passing the bread and wine around our circle, saying to one another, "The body of Christ, broken for you."  "The blood of Christ, shed for you."  I'm no theologian; people much smarter than I am have argued for centuries about exactly what the Eucharist means and doesn't mean.  This poem attempts to put into words some of what it means to me. 


Communion

I laughed at you
that Sunday morning
for transporting the communion wine
across Port-au-Prince
for our service
not in a chalice or grail,
but in a travel mug

As though it were coffee to wake us
(Which I suppose in a way it is)
Or cocoa to comfort us
(Which I suppose in a way it is)
Or soda to refresh us
(Which, again, it is).

Perhaps an IV bag would be a better choice.
Remember that time Dan drove you to get another scan
Before your gall bladder surgery
And the way he held the bag up over his head
as he helped you to the car,
and then how he rigged it to hang from the handle above your window
and then drove you carefully,
swerving and avoiding potholes,
to the place where the machine wasn’t broken?
Glucose solution to keep you going,
Carried by a friend.

What’s really in that mug, you know, is blood,
Blood given freely,
Blood to transfuse us,
To pump the life back into us
When we lie near death.

And since there are many who need
waking
comfort
refreshment
energy
life

And who aren’t
right here
right now

A travel mug
(or a whole fleet of travel mugs)
will do nicely.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Poetry Friday: Any Morning

I love this poem for its ordinariness and its straightforwardness.  I tend to overthink everything (I don't think anyone who knows me would argue with that), and sometimes it's good to be reminded of what is good in the world, and to focus on that before facing the newsfeed.  I've been home sick for the last two days, and tomorrow (Friday; I'm typing this Thursday night) I'll go back to work, although I suspect I'm not quite ready.  At least my voice is mostly back, due to resting it for two days.  And in spite of the chaos that always awaits after two days with subs, however excellent those subs are, I'm trusting there will be "pieces of Heaven" to be collected in my classroom.  You'll find that phrase in the last stanza of the poem if you click through at the link at the end.


Any Morning
by William Stafford

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Here's the third (and last) stanza.

Mary Lee has this week's roundup.

Here's a morning photo I took on my walk to work one day early in November; it certainly looks as though "Trouble is busy elsewhere," doesn't it? 

Poetry Friday: Odes

Welcome to my traditional annual Poetry Friday post on odes.  Here's last year's, with links to others.  I always do odes with my eighth graders during Thanksgiving week.  This year we looked at Pablo Neruda's Ode to a Tomato, Ode to Scissors, and Ode to a Hummingbird.  We talk about the ecstatic, over-the-top quality of these poems, and we brainstorm a list of possible topics of our own.

This is last year's list - I forgot to take a picture of this year's.  There is some overlap from year to year, but also lots of quirky originality.  This year one girl said "bras," and while I'm pretty sure she was trying to be shocking, I put it on the list, because well-fitting underwear is definitely ode-worthy.

So here's one I found this year, in my copy of Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970, by Pablo Neruda (this is a bilingual edition, with facing page translations into English by Ben Belitt).  It seems appropriate for several reasons.


Ode on Ironing

Poetry is white:
it comes out of the water covered with drops,
it wrinkles and piles up in heaps.
We must spread out the whole skin of this planet,
iron the white of the ocean:
the hands go on moving,
smoothing the sanctified surfaces,
bringing all things to pass.
Hands fashion each day of the world,
fire is wedded to steel,
the linens, the canvas, coarse cottons, emerge
from the wars of the washerwomen;
a dove is born from the light
and chastity rearises from the foam.


This year I am thankful for many things, but one of the greatest is writing: writing that I do, and writing that I read.  I'm thankful for novels and poetry; for thank-you notes; for my students' writing prompts, sitting in a heap on my floor waiting for me to grade them (OK, I'm not as thankful for those).  I'm thankful for my Quinquagenarian Writing Project.  I'm thankful for the way writing helps us smooth out the sanctified surfaces, figure out our lives, make the miserable parts bearable and the beautiful parts longer-lasting.  Anne Lamott writes, "My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean. Aren't you?"  Yes, I really am.  

I'm looking forward to reading posts from this week's roundup, hosted by Carol at her corner.

Poetry Friday: George Hitchcock Paints Mary

My daughter and I saw this George Hitchcock painting at the Art Institute of Chicago.

I wanted to write about the painting, but first I went looking for more about Hitchcock.  I found out that he lived from 1850 to 1913.  He was American, but did most of his painting in the Netherlands, where he lived in a houseboat.  I also found some other paintings of his that I loved, including these two which were also of Mary.  I wondered if he had used the same model for all three.  The first and second look a lot alike; it's hard to tell with the third because you can't see Mary's face.

George Hitchcock Paints Mary

He painted her in a field of lilies.
The painting is called “Annunciation,”
but Mary is alone
among rows and rows of lilies,
some trampled down
as though recently visited
by an angel.
She’s dressed in blue
with a halo on her head.

He painted her holding a newborn.
She’s sitting in a field
with a cow in the background.
She’s surrounded by flowers:
a pink tulip, daisies and dandelions.
There’s a flowering tree.
She’s wearing a purple cloak
and a halo
and looking new-mother tired.

He painted her fleeing to Egypt.
She’s on a donkey,
and this time she’s bareheaded,
and that must be a baby in her arms,
but the eye is mostly drawn to the
Queen Anne’s lace and cornflowers in the field.
Joseph follows behind.

Wherever she goes,
there are flowers,
as though they spring up ahead of her and behind her,
as though they want to be near her,
as though the challenges of her life
are made a little easier by their bright beauty.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Jane, the Raincity Librarian, has this week's roundup.

QWP Update

My goal for my QWP (Quinquagenarian Writing Project) is fifty first drafts between the beginning of the school year and my fiftieth birthday.  On October 18th I had written eleven first drafts, and now I'm up to twenty-one. 

Reading Update

Books #76 and 78 of 2017 were two I didn't enjoy very much.  They were Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall, a YA title by Wendy Mass, and No One Knows, by J. T. Ellison.   In both cases I pushed through to the end because I wanted to know what would happen, but I found both unsatisfying. 

Book 79 was Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny, number six in the Inspector Gamache series.  I loved the setting, among the English-speaking community in Quebec City.  I'm glad I stuck with this series.

Book 80 was Oh Pioneers! by Willa Cather.  Cather is brilliant at describing the setting, and as one of her characters says, against that backdrop, "there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before, like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over thousands of years." 

Book 81 was a reread, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, by Robin McKinley.  This is such a lovely book, a pleasure to read.

Book 82 was Saints for All Occasions, by J. Courtney Sullivan, a story of an Irish-American family in Boston and what happens to them after the death in the first chapter of the oldest son sets in motion a series of unveilings of long-suppressed family secrets.  I found this extremely absorbing and loved the way the different characters were portrayed.  We know each other so little!

Book 83 was painful to read, partly because it helped me know someone better who is very dear to me and who told me that she found this book an accurate portrayal of symptoms she has experienced.  The main character suffers from anxiety, intrusive thoughts (what she calls "invasives"), and compulsive behavior.  The book is John Green's new release, Turtles All the Way Down.   I had to stop reading frequently to cry and get lots of hugs.  The descriptions were so vivid that I was plunged fully into Aza's reality.  I could hardly bear it.  I can hardly bear that anyone suffers like this.