Liturgy

In the wind they heard
The three graces chanting soft
A summer None song

Times 4

Vesper tagged me and so I'll cooperate, but in order not to perpetuate this any further than it already has to be, I'm not tagging you! But feel free to just do it if you want to. No strings attached.

Four Movies You Can See Over and Over

Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet
The Wizard of Oz
Jesus Christ Superstar (please stop laughing, it was imprinted on me when I was 12, I can't help it!)
Passion in the Desert (it's about a man and a leopard and their cross species love)

Four Places You Have Lived

San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Greater San Diego, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
Asheville, NC


Four TV Shows You Love(d) to Watch

American Idol
Ugly Betty
Gray's Anatomy
Six Feet Under


Four Places You Have Been on a Vacation

Europe
Thailand
India
Nepal

Four of your favorite foods

Berries off the vine
Peas in the pod, off the vine
Grilled salmon
Maple syrup

Four Websites You Visit Daily

Facebook
Google
Amazon
As many blogs as I can

Four Places You Would Rather Be
(Sorry Vesper, for ripping you off here, but these top three are also true for me)

The seaside
Manhattan
At home, writing
Swimming in a fresh clear lake

Four Things You Hope to Do Before You Die

Successfully write and publish a novel
Live abroad
Have a wonderful love affair that works well and nourishes us both
See the USA successfully adopt a compassionate system of National Health Care


Four Novels You Wish You Were Reading for the First Time

My own yet to be written novel
My blogging friends' soon to be released novels
Anything not read yet, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (due out in 2010, the short story in The New Yorker a few weeks ago was awesome, yes, once again it relates to cats).

A Bridge

I stood at the sea,
Looking skyward at bridges,
Unfinished, empty

No permit issued
To put supports in the sand,
They rusted away

Sand backfilled the holes,
Somehow this is a good thing,
A new day, fresh start

Strung above me now
An engineering wonder
Has started anew

How far must I dig
Beneath the unstable sands
To find bedrock?

How strong are the strands?
Cars might fall into the sea!
Paralyzing fears

Before I build it
I kneel down and pray to You,
Help me find the rock!

I see the city
Shining there across the sea,
And now I must build.

This Senryu cycle was inspired by a dream I had last night.

Happy Father's Day

One day I argued
Culture isn't dead at home!
Then you showed me this.

Happy Father's day Pappy du bois

Paper Candy

Spring rolls into summer
On thunderheads that wear your face

You appear,
Wrapped in paper candy,
A ray of opiate dreams in distant lands

I long,
To touch your skin

I cry,
Torrents, as the rain cries,
Washing a promise of you
Into yesterday

A War of Thoughts

On the battlefield
Neutron explosions
Of planted mines
In neuron tunnels
Leave gaping holes
Where roses and lilies
Once grew, and thrived.
Alas, even icy waters
Of a glacier stream
Will not cool the fire.

A Song from the Sea

On the shore,
I stared, facing west
As you erased the sand
Away from under my heals
And I lost my balance
Falling backwards
To the ground

I jumped rope
With seaweed grass
You spat out to dry upon
The shore, and yelled, yee hah!
Whipping and whirling the strand
Snapping in the air, it wrapped
My ankle, black and blue
Bruised, I fell, laughing,
Your mouth cooled

For an eternity
You came and went
Raging against the rocks
Sending your frothing spittle
High into the air, mist covering
My face, I smiled as the sun
Burned colors in clouds
Pink, orange, golden
Sunk away now

I’d take you
Willingly watch your
Rages, comings and goings
If you’d soften my hard edges
Make me forget the ground
Winds caressing once
Rocks now sand
I’d take you

Summer Dreams

Lazy Summer dreams,
Pillow tufted heads of pink
Ice cream licked slowly

Crystal candy tongue
You stand and salute me
Liquid languid lilt

Goodbye Grasshopper

Grasshopper is dead.

It’s funny, the people I’ve been in love with in my life. For those of you who read my response to Jason’s post of last Sunday, you know that I can get a little, um, obsessive. It started a long long time ago actually. As a Myers Briggs INFP, apparently it’s normal for me to do this. And I’m glad to say that I don’t buy into the fantasies anymore; there is a little wisdom that comes with age. (Although it really hasn’t been THAT long.) In the past, I have whipped up dream lovers who are perfect in every way. No one can compete, really, with my perfect fantasy lovers. (No one, that is, except Marlow, my cat. He is truly a perfect companion.)

This made me into a groupie at one time, this tendency to obsess. My first true love was Paul McCartney. I had our wedding all planned out, I was devasted when he left me and married Linda. I think I was 10 at the time, and I had already been in love with Paul for many years. So, I left him for Donny Osmond. He was too teeny bop to keep my interest however, so I had to ditch him for Elton John. I had a lot of company in my adoration of Elton when I was a freshman in high school. Me, Janice B., and Diane M. formed the core Elton John fan base in freshman glee club, and I’m sure we drove poor Mr. Faulk up the wall with our glasses and constant singing. Elton even taught me how to sing! In fact, Ted H. could play Elton like nobody’s business, and so I’d come into the choir room at lunch time when Ted was banging away on the piano and I'd wail away at the top of my lungs (Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Burn Down the Mission, Love Lies Bleeding, etc, were all among our lunchtime repertoire.) In 10th grade, I dated an Elton look alike, but he was clearly not the real thing, so I dumped him too. (My first REAL boyfriend Mark, reminded me about that the other day, and the sparring that went on between them over me. Mark won that little battle. ;-)

That’s when I met and fell in love with Kwai Chang Caine, the gentle Shaolin warrior who fought evil racist bastards in the 19th century American west. As an Idealist, he was the perfect idol for my young forming self. Not only was he beautiful in a kind of Asian way (which he wasn’t BTW, he was totally Caucasian), he had wisdom, and strength. I never had TV before those years, because my mother didn’t believe in it, but right around 1975, when I was 15, my mother allowed my aunt to give me her old black and white TV and I got to have it in my room. By this time, Kung Fu was already old news, but for me, it was new and I soaked it up like water. I watched every episode several times in reruns. I craved each new ‘teaching’, and was thrilled by the flashback scenes when Caine would be receiving a lesson from the wise Shaolin priest (who happened to be blind, and yet could see better than most).

Grasshopper, as he was called by the priest, became a name that I used time and again when imparting wisdom to my children, although they probably were clueless as to the origin of the name, or why I was using it as I gave advice with my pseudo Chinese accent. (Which was clearly pseudo to them, being half Chinese and having many real Chinese accents around them constantly.) But to me, although in jest when I used it, there was something about the wisdom in those TV teachings that always stayed with me, and perhaps helped to mold me into who I am today. Perhaps it influenced my interest in Asian cultures, and maybe even in Asian men, since I married one. Not sure about any of that, and I don’t really want to speculate too much. (Although my ex did become a double blackbelted Kung Fu master, and, by the way, just successfully summited Mt. Everest, and though we’ve had our differences, some of them disastrous, he is still my friend and the father of my kids and I’m very proud of him and glad he is home safe.)

I never did outgrow Kwai Chang Caine, and perhaps it is for that reason that I shed a tear today when I found out that David Carradine purportedly hung himself in a Bangkok hotel room closet. Maybe we will never know why, or even if David Carradine killed himself, but I, for one, am sorry to see him go. Goodbye Grasshopper. I hope you find peace.