Love to faults is always blind...

"... Always is to joy inclin'd,
Lawless, wing'd and unconfin'd
And breaks all chains from every mind."

William Blake
Poems from Blakes Notebook (1791-1792) 'Love to Faults'

March 1, 1969...

I was 19 and T was 21.

The world was ours in all our ignorance and youth. Now it's ours with all our wisdom and age. (see? some things never change!)

Happy 41 years, dear one....

The Pleasures of an Ordinary Life

Sometimes you just have to stop and take stock of things, and recognize how fortunate you are...

The Pleasures of Ordinary Life

I've had my share of necessary losses,
Of dreams I know no longer can come true.
I'm done now with the whys and the becauses.
It's time to make things good, not just make do.
It's time to stop complaining and pursue
The pleasures of an ordinary life.

I used to rail against my compromises.
I yearned for the wild music, the swift race.
But happiness arrived in new disguises:
Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace.
Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.

I'll have no trumpets, triumphs, trails of glory.
It seems the woman I've turned out to be
Is not the heroine of some grand story.
But I have learned to find the poetry
In what my hands can touch, my eyes can see.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.



Young fantasies of magic and of mystery
Are over. But they really can't compete
With all we've built together: A long history.
Connections that help render us complete.
Ties that hold and heal us. And the sweet,
Sweet pleasures of an ordinary life.

Judith Viorst [Ms. Viorst was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1931. She is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, for children as well as adults.]

~~~
I love this poem by Judith Viorst. I'd forgotten it and accidentally stumbled across it this morning. I figure it was well worthy of posting, so that anyone who read this could share in the simple pleasure.

Poem: Chicago by Carl Sandburg

CHICAGO

HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

by Carl Sandburg (1878- 1967)

Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. He became an editorial writer for the Chicago Daily News. Sandburg was recognized as a member of the Chicago literary renaissance, which included Ben Hecht, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Edgar Lee Masters. Sandburg became known for his free verse poems celebrating industrial and agricultural America, American geography and landscape, and the American common people. In the 1930s, Sandburg continued his celebration of America with the second part of his Lincoln biography, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939), for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He received a second Pulitzer Prize for his Complete Poems in 1950. Carl Sandburg died in 1967.

~~~

I am here safe and sound and getting my bearings. I will update soon. Welcome to Chicago!

The Song of the Seven Islands

I came across this poem, on the way to looking up something entirely different. I guess that's the beauty of the Internet... anyway this is excerpted from near the bottom of a rather long page.

"Kostis Palamas once wrote a poem called "Song of the Seven Islands", which was translated by Ian Scot-Kilvert and quoted by Arthur Foss at the beginning of The Ionian Islands. I've always liked it:

"Song of the Seven Islands"

by Kostis Palamas

"Your waters dazzle like a floor of diamonds

Westward your tides

Grope and caress the shores of Italy.

In a circumference of blue the seven islands

Foam-chiselled, rise, dissolve,

Join hands and dance upon the waves.

Zakynthos drowned in flowers

Cephalonia seamed with toil

Kythera and Paxoi

Corfu the enchantress of the mind and heart

Ithaka a mariner's ryhme in stone

Levkas the watch-tower of the Armatoli.

From the Ionian shore

From the Ionian sea

Since Homer, since Solomos,

The poet's song, the statesman's art

Haunted these islands like sea-birds......................."

To The Lifeboats!

from Summer Solstice

The white sheet of paper, harsh mirror,
gives back only what you were.

The white sheet talks with your voice,
your very own,
not the voice you'd like to have;
your music is life,
the life you wasted.
If you want to, you can regain it:
concentrate on this blank object
that throws you back
to where you started.

You traveled, saw many moons, many suns,
touched dead and living,
felt the pain young men know,
the wailing of women,
a boy's bitterness -
what you've felt will fall away to nothing
unless you commit yourself to this void.
Maybe you'll find there what you thought was lost:
youth's burgeoning, the justified shipwreck of age.

Your life is what you gave,
this void is what you gave:
the white sheet of paper

George Seferis

Complete Poems: translated and introduced by

Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Greek poet, essayist, and diplomat who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. Seferis is considered to be the most distinguished Greek poet of the pre-war generation of the 1930s. In his work Seferis combined the language of everyday speech with traditional poetic forms and rhythms. Seferis spent much of his life outside Greece in diplomatic service. Recurrent theme in his poetry is exile and nostalgia for the Mediterranean and his birthplace, [Izmir] Smyrna.

~~~

The "justified shipwreck of age" seems to have stopped here in Corfu. And I feel like I'm buffeted by the winds of fate. Where oh where, did I put "the voice" I'd like to have???

MY dear T is dealing with the aftermath of a car accident that happened on Friday. Everyone is fine. (As T said, "It's a good day when you can say, I didn't die and I didn't kill anyone...")

The accident involved a motorcycle and our stationary little car- but for the damage to our car (broken tie rod and three days of a rental car at exorbitant high season rates) it would seem that everything is fine. As T's car was coming out of a parking lot into the main road, even though the motorcycle hit our car- T is "at fault". It's especially galling as the motorcycle turned in towards the car to hit him.

Our insurance agent said that of all accidents that happen in Corfu, the majority - more than the whole rest of the year- happen the first 15 days of August. That should tell you something. When T asked the agent what could he have possibly done to avoid the accident, the agent shrugged and said that HE makes NO left hand turns the month of August, and he sends his family elsewhere on vacation.

The first person the motorcyclist called was his lawyer, then his parents and his girlfriend. The police tactfully did not fine him for not wearing a helmet. (Yes, it could have been horrifically a lot worse.) Due to what looked like the remains of a previous accident- he was missing a mirror and had a scrape on the other side of his motorcycle, I am guessing he will try for a replacement from the insurance company. T will be visiting our lawyer tomorrow to confirm that when our insurance company refuses to fall for that, he will protect us from any other attacks.

~~~

All this is happening on top of the regular insanity plans that we are coordinating with our son in Chicago to book his grandmother's flight from New Mexico to Corfu--- so we could then arrange our travel lives around that....

(why? you may ask is our son in Chicago doing all this? You would have to know my 84 year old mother for a better understanding of the answer. My mother's first choice of travel arranger was T... As T is almost as helpless online as she is, she feels he best understands her frustrations with travel booking now-a-days.)

The silver lining in that whole ball of mess, is that Bright Son (the middle child is SUCH a good organizer) has a marvelous travel agent who did all the work! So, Ta-DA! We have an itinerary and -as of two hours ago- it has been deemed acceptable by 84 yr old mother.

So T has now made plans for returning to the States to visit with his gi-normous and loving family of brothers and sisters (he's the youngest of 6!) as well as visiting our sons and grandsons for 15 days in September. He has carefully planned his trip so he will arrive in Athens the same day - and only mere hours before my mother arrives for a month long visit. (he better not have a delay!)

During my mother's visit, we plan on taking a "long weekend" to fly to Brussels so my mother can visit her sister and brother in law, and nephew and family. (her last visit to Brussels was two years ago, when we three DROVE from Corfu to Belgium! OK, hairsplitters, we took a ferry to Venice and drove from there. Shame I wasn't writing a blog then, such a madcap adventure into insanity.)

As with each visit of my mothers , there are many sighs and long looks into the distance with the remark "It will probably be the last time we see each other..."

We are all going together for that visit. (Yet to pin down: exact timing of Brussels trip! and tickets of course. the good news is that the "season" charter flights direct Corfu-Brussels/return are still flying. That service ends the last week of October.)

Last but not least, tentative plans are in motion for me to fly back to Athens the same day as my mother. When she leaves, in October, I fly with her and can get her established and checked in to go for her flight back to the US, (she's flying wheelchair assisted). Then, I can board a flight of my own to fly me to Chicago to visit the sons and loves of sons and grandchildren who didn't visit this summer (as well as the one who did!) This may involve a visit to South Carolina to visit favorite precious granddaughter in University of SC.

As I haven't been back to the US for a couple of years, it sounds sort of nice to just visit with the family for a while.

Basically we are going to be a bunch of jet setting old people from about September 15th til November 15th. (Why am I filled with trepidation???)

After my return, we will no doubt need to live like church mice.

Thoughts on Medusa

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 1979 / Massachusetts / United States)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; In 1976, She became both the first American and the first woman to win the Books Abroad/Neustadt Prize for Literature.

[The picture above is of the pediment of a temple found on Corfu. It's the only one of its kind and was dedicated to Medusa. I love this poem by Bishop and they just sort of came together in my thoughts this afternoon. It's found in the Archaeological Museum in Corfu town, Her myth: Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was raped by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone.]

a poem by Cavafy

Ionian

Just because we've torn their statues down,
and cast them from their temples,
doesn't for a moment mean the gods are dead.
Land of Ionia, they love you yet,

their spirits still remember you.
When an August morning breaks upon you
a vigour from their lives stabs through your air;
and sometimes an ethereal and youthful form
in swiftest passage, indistinct,

passes up above your hills.

Constantine P Cavafy (April 29, 1863–April 29,1933)

Greek poet, published only about 200 privately printed poems.
Cavafy has come in recent years to be regarded as a the greatest Mediterranean poet of modern times.