October 25, 2012

A long quiet morning, mostly sunny and warm today, with the promise of cooler weather tomorrow, but it's a weather promise, who knows it if will be kept.  The air is still, the leaves hanging limp and fading under a bright blue sky, cloudless and empty.  The striped cat has been touring the yard, just walking around and stopping to sit and moving on; he looks . . . bored.  The birds are coming and going, blue jays came to the water bowl, but it is empty and they were not happy.  I have to get a new bowl as this one is beyond repair now and I hate to disappoint the birds.  I have looked for one but it needs to be wide and pretty shallow, and so far I have seen nothing that I thought would work.  Now I am considering a dishpan, with the pumice rock it in, it might not be too shallow but it will be big enough to have room all around the rock for the birds perch on.  I saw one of the big woodpeckers fly through the back yard earlier.  I am always amazed at how big they are and how really red the feather on their heads are!  They are very showy with their bright white and deep black plumage. 

I spent some time this morning going through political research, as I will vote early tomorrow after school.  If both sides are telling the truth then we live in a very strange world, and you know I think we do.  I am amazed at what politicians will say, all of them.  It seems they all say only those things they think will be approved of, and if something is said that is not, then they change it until it is.  And that seems to me all sides not just the one you might favor.  They only point to the best of what they have done, ignoring any aspects that might be less than favorable.  I have to vote because I want to have a say, but more and more I think my vote doesn't really make any difference, that it's too hard to know what any candidate stands for or what any of them can or will do once elected.  You just have to vote and take your chances.  All those people seem to me so far removed from my regular life that I don't understand how they can say they understand it.  And my circumstances are not bad compared to so many people in dire straits.  I hope everyone who is eligible to vote does.  Even if you think it's futile and no one is speaking to you or about your circumstances, it's the process that makes up democracy.  In a world where children are shot for supporting education for everyone, not just the males, where so many really have no say, it seems important to vote even if feeling less than sanguine about the candidates.  We have both the right and the responsibility.

Self Portrait

I lived between my heart and my head,
like a married couple who can't get along.

I lived between my left arm, which is swift
and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.

I lived between a laugh and a scowl,
and voted against myself, a two-party system.

My left leg dawdled or danced along,
my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.

My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,
my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.

Let's just say that my left side was the organ
donor and leave my private parts alone,

but as for my eyes, which are two shades
of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.

Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow
while Adam puts his right foot down.

No one expected it to survive,
but divorce seemed out of the question.

I suppose my left hand and my right hand
will be clasped over my chest in the coffin

and I'll be reconciled at last,
I'll be whole again.

Edward Hirsch

This poem is a schizophrenic as I feel some days, like there are two or more of me trying to live in the same body, inhabit the same mind.  The aspects he finds divisive I do as well . . . right and left, two takes on a shoulder, sinister and righteous, but yes, divorce is out of the question, and in the end I will come to some kind of accommodation, I hope somewhere short of death <chuckle>.  I feel it's the same with the country, divorce is out of the question and we will just have to live with all sides of those questions and their consequences.  No one knows what will be helpful, each side thinks they have the right answers and the facts to prove it, but I am raising my left eyebrow, and live somewhere between a laugh and a scowl, the only two party-system to which I think we all belong when it comes to politics.