Writer's Group - Linda - Rem - Beatriz - and moi with my Airstream story - Ode to a Painful Foot

We stretched out in B's condo and talked about many things.

Including Matthew Arnold, whose Dover Beach0 is one of my favorite poems. Very short. And set to music by Samuel Barber.

Found a recording of this most melancholy of songs by Dietrich Fischer D

 

Let's see if it works. I'd like YOU to hear it. If not click here.

The left is my bad foot. My sister Ellen was sposed to bring me a cane but she's always late, so I had to hobble out of the house, wearing my big fat diabetes sox. Then Beatriz gave me one of her two canes. It's definitely helpful. I'll use it on Monday when I go run a group at SM.

ODE TO A PAINFUL FOOT

Ah, lovely five-toed nymph
who bounds within forest green
which god is angry at you
bringing down the most
horrid pain, wanting to
hear you scream?

Scream I shall never
though foot tries to
escape itself, tiny arrows
plunking the upper, the
lower, the inner

See that yonder stream ahead
where Narcissus met his doom?
I circle around it, fancying
the cool waters and dancing
fishes drowning out my pain. 

Linda's short story GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER is ready to submit to Twisted Sister.

At the last minute, Martha wrote and said she wasn't feeling well after having a great b'fast at the Hatboro Dish, one of my fave Hatboro 'diner' type foods.

B/c I had taken so much Tylenol for my bad foot I told the group I might doze off when they read.

Sure enuf, that's just what I did when Rem was reading "CHAPTER 45 .... I GOT STONED AND I MISSED IT."

The above is a song Rem likes as recorded by Jim Stafford.

Dyou miss getting stoned? Oh, you still have a toke or two a week?

Rem shared a lot of his knowledge of literature. He's got a master's in English from Temple, I believe.

Lotsa good lines in the story. Our hero and his friend smoked so much weed they locked their keys in the car. Oh, we can walk, they said. Lansdale is not too far away from Roslyn. Two hours tops.

It was already 1 am.  Got worse as they walked as it began to sleet. Remarkably, they got home by 4 am.

His continuing saga is always funny, but this was really hilarious.0

There's a religious website PGM.org in Chicago. His late wife Valerie was mentally ill and very talented and the two of them wrote a segment that was broadcast in 2002.

We all listened to it through B's speakers. The radio station had been in biz some 38 years and this was the first time they addressed mental illness.

Actors spoke the parts. The website doesn't work.

  Rem was discussing the magical realism films - made from novels - of the 80s and 90s from South American writers such as Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm gonna check out the film he mentioned. My library website, tho, is blocked due to an 'insecure' connection.

Well, I AM a bit insecure with my bad foot.

He gave us a copy of Matthew Arnold's Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse.  What a title!

Ever heard of poet Anthony Hecht? Me neither. But he wrote a poem he wanted us to read. Hecht lived from 1923-2004.

All I can say is I hope Tony Hecht had a better death than those in Unshackled.

Death is also a frequent - and laffable - topic in a film I just finished on Netflix.

  Ellen Page, who starred in "JUNO" played a woman who stole a child. In a way she had to do it.

I only had 45 minutes to begin my short story Tales we Told on the Airstream, tentative title.

  A station wagon is toting it along. This is in my neighborhood.

A year or so ago, a psychiatrist was disgraced by fondling his young patients.

I wrote a story about it called Seven Lean Years.

Twisted Sister said they loved it. Thank you so much, Ursula.

Read it here.

   When I was working on the story I called the prison and asked what color uniforms they wore.

I recently went on their website. They've been having a bit of trouble there, but you know what?

Let's not worry about it.

READ MY STORY!!!

We all thanked Beatriz for hosting us.

And gave her

a big hug goodbye!   Cute haircut, B.