Digging my friends

Only a philosophy prof. is likely to turn up unexpectedly at your door with a shovel and a trunk full of canna lilies and start digging in the front of your house--all the while expounding to your daughters on the quality of your dirt, the meaning of life, and the importance of knowing about Pablo Neruda.

Lizzy later posted on facebook, "I love my mom's friends." Yeah. Me too! All of you. Thank you for being xox

Read Liesl's blog at http://www.clottedcognition.com/ If you're a student who liked me, you're gonna love her, so take her class already! One of these days, we're gonna get that learning community together, Liesl--maybe with a service learning component involving community gardens?

Introducing Joy's Poetry Pants!

Joy added some of EAP's Bells to her poetry pants. It's a new fave. She made me read the whole thing to her immediately I staggered in from the lake. It's long, but how could I refuse when she'd vacuumed?

...in a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire...

The poetry pants fade in the wash, but Joy re-scribes them in lessons if the teacher is being dull--the more boring the lesson, the more interesting the pants. Participial phrases always produce great creativity!

"The Guest House"

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
جلال‌الدین محمد رومی

6 October 2001--a memory

today, a five-year-old, with dancing eyes and dripping hair, splashed through puddles to the edge of the muddy world and looked on her first rainbow, laughing Nearly nine years ago, but it seems like yesterday--the day Lizzy saw her first rainbow. Joy, Lizzy, and I had been playing with mud and sticks down by the river. Racing up the fields to get home, Lizzy stopped and looked up. Her mouth was wide open and she was laughing. "They're REAL!" she yelled. "I didn't know they were REAL!" Happy Birthday, my beautiful teenage daughter--13 today. Wow!xoxoxo