What Choice You Had

What Choice You Had

"Come to my room, help me 

choose the dress I'll be buried in.

Is it too morbid of me to ask you?"

Your first choice a fuchsia dress

silk, long sleeved, belted.

"Is it too garish for a funeral?"

You decided,

at your funeral you would wear

what you wanted,

bright color such a deliberate

counterpoint to your fading.

Final statement

by a legend of stylish dressing.

"Perfect choice, Mom."

"Guess what," you whispered, "it's a size 10!

I've always wanted to wear a size 10."

We laughed at your perverse

pleasure - loss of weight

even if it's to cancer, size 10

even if it's in your casket.

It had its intended effect.

Mourners remarked on how 

beautiful your dress was, 

how so like you.

                                                        

                                                                                        Mary Harvey Warren

in loving memory of Mary McLellan Harvey

I posted this poem  two years ago for a 100 word challenge. This is its full version posted in response to Victoria Slaotto's prompt at dVerse Poets entitled Meeting the Bar: Writing Emotion.
Check out this great resource blog for poets which contains both information and prompts.

Don Giovanni and Opening Night for the Opera

Kierkegaard wrote that Mozart's Don Giovanni is "a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection." Flaubert called Don Giovanni, along with Hamlet and the sea, "the three finest things God ever made."

Tchaikovsky always held Don Giovanni in the greatest awe and regarded Mozart as his musical god.

Last night was the opening night for the Opera House, Teatro Alla Scala in Milan and they performed Mozart's masterpiece, Don Giovanni. The orchestra was under the direction of Daniel Barenboim and I was there! In a wonderful program whereby the opera is filmed up close and personal and screened in theaters all over Italy, I was able to attend, see everything, from the stunning, sumptuous theater, the people coming in in all their beautiful finery, for example the President and the Prime Minister, the orchestra warming up and then the start of the opera with the gorgeous overture. We had incomparable seats for a fraction of the cost and close to home. What a great idea. 

The quality of the music, singing and performances were astonishing, breathtaking. I located this aria, "Lá ci darem la mano" on You Tube, between Don Giovanni (an arrogant sexually promiscuous nobleman) and one of his many conquests to give you a flavor. He's trying to tempt her and it starts: "There we'll join hands and you'll say yes". They showed subtitles in Italian so it was easier to follow the dialogue and arias. They also had interviews with the director and conductor about their vision and the opera itself at intermission. It was an incredible evening.

To top it off, my friend and neighbor, who loves opera, came with us, as did our tutor and his friend. Afterwards, rather than go out for pizza, which was the first proposal, we all went back to our tutor's house for a late but delicious dinner whipped up by his friend. It was the better way to end such a full evening- in the presence of friends, sharing good food and wine, savoring the shared experience. A perfect evening.

30 - 30 - 30 - Happy Birthday, Kelly!

From my daughter's birthday on December 6 to mine on January 26 our family ages are: my father- 95, me- 65, my daughter- 35, my granddaughter- 5.

I looked up the meaning for the number 30 and found it has it's own wikipedia page and people called "thirtyophiles" who sing its intricacies and praises, most of which I don't understand. There's even a You Tube video by one of these fellows at the end of the page who goes on for six minutes about the magic of number 30. Amazing!

I just think it's very cool to have this 30 year spread between four generations of my family for these two months, even if there's no cosmic significance.

As for my daughter turning 35, now there's cosmic significance. Kelly, child of my heart, when I became a mother, I thought I was mothering her to life, but in some mysterious real way, she brought parts of me to life that never would have come forth except in response to her. Mothering her is my  favorite life role so far, although I'm crazy in love with my Honey and have great fun as grandmother to her two Dear Ones.

It has been different than I thought at every step of the way and I cherish it all. Well, after I got over myself and opened up to her as separate from me, I cherished it all. I didn't really get that it would continue my whole life, mothering, but I'm so grateful it has. I'm grateful to be Kelly's mother and I thank her for choosing me to be her mother. I admire and love her.

3 + 5 things I love about Kelly:
1. That she exhorts your two children to listen to their bodies and stop eating when they're full.
2. That she breast fed her babies on demand and trusted their wisdom to know when to stop.
3. That she chose where she wanted to live, found a way to finance going there and then followed her passion and lives there.
4. That she chose the man whom she wanted to marry, built her relationship with him, then trusted her judgement and heart and asked him to marry her.
5. That she and her husband built their own home, raise their own food, and always seek ways to strengthen their community.
6. That she knows, loves and preserves the Trinidad rain forest, encourages others to discover its treasures, and fights those who would harm it.
7. That when her son grew to hate school, she removed him and decided, after consulting with trusted friends, to home school him and her daughter.
8. (proposed by her Dad): That despite our faults and mistakes, she continues to love her parents.

Happy Birthday, Kelly!

Fall Colors in Our Neighborhood

I'm struck by the beautiful colors in our neighborhood these days of extended fall. They're different than the dramatic colors of my native New England, a bit more subtle and subdued, but lovely nonetheless. Much of the color come from the leaves still on the vines after the recent grape harvest that is the source of our wonderful regional wines.

Taken yesterday on a country road down our hill:

Taken from my balcony this afternoon as the sun momentarily broke through the clouds.
Those are vineyards in the distance peppered with olive groves.
The first photo looks west and the second, south:

What is Poetry?

First it's the words-
green words, ripe words to sip and smell, full
flavored on the tongue to transport,
temper, grip and affront.
Bottled up words concede,
become brainstorms. Words
presage, seethe and shudder, have affairs
with other words, grow gravid with illicit seed, bear
new words with primal screams.
Words smolder and succumb, relent and sulk.
A conspiracy concocted to break open our skull, bartered
to bare our heart, pursued on purpose, built in play to poems.

Ciphers decipher life, shape breath. Given mazes
poems make maps, an overview when view is overwhelming.
Poems elude and denude, invade minds in praise of words, never
inured to their salute. Poems specify new words, ascribe powers to them,
chant them, liken them to purple lupine, cast them on breath's wind,
fingered, picked, an incantation of words to stun and stupefy.
Poems revere words, cull words, draft and give back.
Poems stammer and ado, talk and bicker, clash and cause
a cause celebre. Haggles ensue in a hullabaloo. Some
rebut, some debunk, some quest or pester.
Poems bellow, howl, whoop and shout,
splash speech across the page, gnaw on magic.

This is posted in response to the generous prompt on dVerse Poets Pub by Gay Reiser Cannon on Form For All, Poetic Devices: Image, Symbol, Metaphor, Allegory. 

This site is a great way to learn more about poetry, crafting poems and read other poets.

Wake The Sleeping Giant

This is a poem written by my friend, Ruth, on her marvelous blog Synch-ro-ni-zing, posted on November 24 and entitled: What To Do On Thanksgiving. If you like great poetry, check out hers.

Take

the torch

down from the wall

and bravely wake

the sleeping giant

of your soul

Stir

dormant magnificence

out of her crouching

fraction of light

Strengthen

hibernating

hips arms and legs

into stomp

and thunder

on the dance floor of

your particular praise!

This great poem and call to action mobilized me mightily, got me meditating and writing for hours. To write in answer seemed to be a way to find my vision at this time, my dreams for the future. Ruth's poem contains two important questions:

1. Who is this sleeping giant of my soul? 

2. What do I thunder in particular praise of? 

When I was 19 years old, on a week long retreat, I had a vivid vision (not the seeing kind of vision) while praying. I tried to put it in words but it left me speechless. It was a sweeping, certain kind of  knowing that we are all one. Humans in our totality and diversity, animals as fellow creatures, protectors, and guides, all things living - trees, plants and flowers, all things in nature - mountains, land, sea and sky. All. One. And that this is the divine, the sacred, the whole, the holy. The priest on that retreat said it was heresy when I told him, but I've held that vision in my heart as a gift given to me.
It was the only vision of my life but it was enough, it's the ground of my being.

I thunder in praise of this vision. 

Other things I thunder in praise of:

- Knowing what makes me come alive and doing it. 

- Mining the wisdom of elders, of grandmothers, in association with other grandmothers who bring their voices to the issues of the day, who say what they see, who are the solution we're looking for.

- Working to increase real respect for women and children, to make the world better, healthier and happier for our grandchildren. Love is the way.

- The beauty of art and being near artists who present what is beautiful and true.

Who is my sleeping giant? She likes:

- To move, to hike, to run, and to live in a beautiful place.

- To read and have some people with whom to discuss what I read.

- To write and be in community with other writers, including poets, who like to share their work.

- To raise plants, care for them, propagate them and learn more about local ones.

- To eat local food raised organically and sustainably while living lightly on the land.

- To walk a spiritual path in fellowship with other seekers and to find ways to be of service.

- To gather the young women of my family yearly to foster deepening bonds, family healing and remain a part of the lives of these amazing Dear Ones.

- To love John in new ways and enjoy the company of others in long-term committed relationships who share and encourage one another.

- To live in a community of people who are awake, aware, alive. A community characterized by respect, kindness, attention and courage, who share resources in some way, and where individual strengths are enhanced. A diverse community, multi-racial, multi-cultural, men and women, old and young (lots of kids), gay and straight. A creative community.

- To have more contact with Kelly, Carl and the grands. To live in community with them. To have their strengths, skills and perspectives in my community. To help home school the grands.


Some of what emerged surprised me (like the last two), some is familiar but comes together in a new way. I'll sit with it and let it percolate some more. I've summarized here but there are pages of writing. My friend, Nancy, over at Life in the Second Half who agrees the revolution is love, has been asking for awhile about drawing together a community and I was intrigued but didn't feel the tug toward it until now. I have no idea how this will manifest but the energy is flowing.
What if we all woke our sleeping giant and stirred our dormant magnificence?                                                        

TEDxSF - Gratitude

For this Thanksgiving weekend, I offer this gorgeous video containing so much that I'm grateful for and some amazing time lapse photography for your viewing pleasure. Take 10 minutes and enjoy.
I'm ever so grateful for this blog world I've discovered and for each of you. Grazie mille.

The Kiss

We dressed for our day, the air
between us thick with thrown words,
they loomed, suspended from then to now with no
bridge back. He turned,
just that. Longing jolted through me

for contact, even clothed contact,
us coiled, whorled, my head wreathed in his hands,
touched lips tried upside down like us,
a kiss to map a new way back, to rebuild what was lost
one kiss at a time.


I love that these lovers, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, were long- term marrieds.
This is in response to the visual prompt at Magpie Tales #92
And for dVerse Poets Pub, open link night #19