6 skills I retain after 11 treatments of Chemo:
1. Putting on or taking off a turtleneck without losing the toothpick in my mouth.
2. Driving a car with my knees under the steering wheel. (On private farm property. Chemo pain meds keep me off public roads.)
3. Sleeping in any position: prone, supine, curled, sitting.
4. Writing light verse, and sometimes poetry.
5. Helping folks laugh.
6. Praying.
I’m sleeping on sheets with 2,000 thread count.
My cars and my toilets all have heated seats.
My steaks are all prime & my pies are home-made.
My wife is a beauty & loves to be laid.
My pilot, my driver, my cook and my maid
All think I’m as perfect as a boss can be.
I earned what I have the old-fashioned way:
My parents were rich and gave me a start.
They helped when I failed, and cheered when I won.
We bought all the votes in the biggest landslide
Our State ever saw–ain’t democracy great?
Round, like a spaceship
Black, like the dirt it finds
Whirring, like a mix-master
Bumping into chairs, tables,
Couches, beds, walls, doors
Bouncing, spinning, random
Cleaning of rugs, hard-wood floors.
Speaking when stuck,
Full of dirt, needing to recharge.
I am needed to open paths,
Lift cords, put furniture back,
Carry to charger–spouse can
Watch Trump on TV–uncleanable.
Once again Dennis Aubrey’s writing and photography on Via Lucis Photography of Religious Architecture offers a rare jewell worthy of wider circulation.
Beziers has fallen!
They’re dead.
Clerks, women, children:
No quarter.
They killed Christians too.
I rode out,
I couldn’t see nor hear a living creature.
I saw Simon de Montefort.
His beard glistened in the sun.
They killed seven thousand people!
Seven thousand souls who sought sanctuary
In St. Madeline’s.
The steps of the altar were wet with blood.
The church echoed with their cries.
Guiraut Riquier, troubadour (Translated by Martin Best)
In 1130, the master builder Gervais built a Romanesque cathedral in the thriving episcopal town of Béziers. Built eighty years before Notre Dame de Paris, it had a comparable nave height as that Gothic masterpiece and was 50 meters long. Evidence given at the time indicates that it was a truly remarkable structure but it lasted only 79 years. The Cathedral of Saint Nazaire was burnt to the ground on July 22, 1209.
We went to Béziers in…
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No kneeling after knee replacement,
But can still sit and bow my head–
So not yet
Prayers unanswered for another:
Disease, decline, and death–
But not yet
Aged, depressed, diminished,
But want to see tomorrow’s sunrise–
Still not yet
But when cancer has taken body and mind,
Life is lifeless, no pleasures are left:
Please pray for my peace, not my life.
INTRODUCTION: Views from the Edge posted this piece on April Fools Day, 2016. Perhaps something like this will happen at the presidential town hall meeting tonight.
Orange hair and rude speech are colorful. When a presidential candidate speaks off the cuff in street language, he’s colorful. Like the class clown in junior high school, he’s entertaining. In class, or under the big tent of the three ring circus, the clown captures everyone’s attention. You never know what he’ll do next. He’s colorful.
But sometimes clowns go too far; they push the boundaries of propriety. When a clown offends the crowd, he becomes not only colorful but odoriferous, and nothing can empty a room like an offensive odor. When a clown pretending to be a world leader, wise and substantive, declares that women who have abortions should be punished, but he’s not yet sure how, everyone in the crowd – pro-life and pro-choice alike – is offended by the flatulence.
Today Donald Trump announced the end of his campaign for the GOP nomination. Speaking from the steps of the State Capitol in Madison, WI this morning at 8:30, he took off his “Make America Great Again” hat, brushed back his orange hair, put on his New York Yankees hat, puckered his lips, and declared he never wanted to be president. He just wanted to shake things up. “I’m a businessman,” he said. “The Presidency is for liars and Losers!”
Happy April Fools Day!
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is society, where none intrudes
By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
– Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” [1812-1818]
Standing at the edge of the pool of Blue Spring, our hearts are strangely quieted. Calmed. Still. At peace as we watch the West Indian Manatees move through the virgin waters of Blue Spring.
So gracefully does the Manatee approach the spring head, the deep vertical cave through the limestone that gently empties 165 million gallons of water per day into the St. Johns River from the aquifer below, enough for every resident of greater Orlando to drink 50 gallons of water a day.
The Manatee knows nothing of Orlando. Nothing of Epcot or Disney World. Nothing of vacations, technology, shopping malls, or the nearby Holy Land Experience theme park. She lives where she is . . . in this undisturbed place where she spends her winters to survive the cold by the warm water of Blue Spring.
Her movements are effortless . . . fluid and gentle, like the water around her. Her huge flat tail, like a leaf wafting in a soft breeze, glides her through the aqua blue waters of the Blue Spring. Slowly, very slowly, she inches toward the edge of the black oblong opening in the water, the deep black hole in the Earth. Her tail stops moving. She stops. She stays very still. She lowers her head, like the Virgin Mary pondering the mystery of an immaculate conception, as if bowing down to the source of her life.
West Indian Manatees
Blue Spring is its own kind of Temple. A sacred place of the deepest silence where only those natural to this habitat belong. Today I was there, and the beauty of it deepened the sense of wonder of flesh and blood and water and algae and sabal palms and a natural quiet. My head bows in rapture on the lonely shore, mellowed and calmed, joining the Manatee, bowing over the place deep below the surface from which the pure water flows.
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
– William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” [1800-1810]
“Go to sleep!” you insist,
But I can’t resist
Thinking of another word.
I know it’s absurd,
But my mind has just heard
A new verse aloud in my head.
So I grab for my phone
And since I’m not alone,
Turn, so light’s not in your eyes.
When it’s day, a surprise!
A new verse you will read!
“Oh great,” you say, “Just what I need…”
The best kind of hug you can find,
Is not from the front, but behind.
Your hands can just squeeze
Whatever they please,
That is if your friend doesn’t mind!
-Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 28, 2016
Yesterday Bernie Sanders won big time by over 7o percent in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. The bird that alit on Bernie’s podium was not afraid of Bernie. Watch the video.
Views from the Edge 