I'm watching the 1951 Disney cartoon and immensely enjoying it.While I'm watching it with my adult mind, a second mind is viewing it along with me: the mind of a child.
She pops through and is delighted by many things. But she's also very afraid of all the strange things that befall Alice such as her indiscretion in eating things that say "Eat me" or drinking things that say "Drink me."
And all the frightening characters. I certainly don't like the White Rabbit, nor Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. And that fat manly-looking Queen who cries "Off with her head" whenever something disagreeable comes along.
Mercy me.
Do you think we should ponder The White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane? Certainly that was my first thought when I met the hookah-smoking Caterpillar.
Is there a lyric about the Cheshire cat?
The voices in the cartoon are spectacular! Sterling Holloway plays the Cheshire cat. Ed Wynn the Mad Hatter.
And who is Alice?
Why, she's Kathryn Lambert and alive today at 72. Walt Disney thought she had just enough of a British accent - she was born in London - to please both the Brits and Americans for the movie's release.
She is also the voice of Wendy Darling in Peter Pan.
I do my homework on Wikipedia and I'm not even in school anymore.
Would you mind terribly if I talk about my back now?
It doesn't hurt at the moment. But earlier it was so bad I almost took a Percoset. It waxes and wanes.
Standing is the worst, esp. when I cook meals or do the dishes. I tell myself it's only temporary and distract myself by listening to the radio and all the terrible things that are going on in the world: the fall of Syria, diverting of the mighty Mississippi, the Republicans messing with our Medicare and Social Security, and Mitt Romney - the perfect fake American - trying to figure out how to damn Obama's healthcare plan since it's the same one Romney introduced in Massachusetts.
And, oh, here's a new horror that just came in at the Times. "Health Insurers Make Record Profits." But, of course, they're still gonna raise rates, which they have the nerve to brag about, the greedy bastards.
I returned to PHYSICAL THERAPY at Willow Grove Physical Therapy, ground floor Regency Towers.
Since Margaret had no appts today, I saw Julie.
She taught me some exercises for my weak hands. Ever since the surgery, I can barely write, tho I can type like a fiend.
We also went over sciatic exercises. She was surprised how I couldn't find any relief for it but then I told her I had stenosis so that complicated the picture.
I find relief the same way her 91-year-old grandmother does: she sits in a chair and twists her leg up and toward her stomach. I only do this when I lie in bed, which is quite The Excrucating.
On to more pleasant topics.
Are there any?
Oh, this is certainly not pleasant at all.
Ron Springs has died. He's the Dallas Cowboy who got a new kidney from an unrelated donor, his teammate Everson Walls. Sarah went to Dallas and interviewed Walls for our kidney book.
Ron was doing very well w/ his new kidney for eight months. Then he needed minor surgery. After they put him out w/ anesthesia, he never woke up!
He was in a coma for four years.
Today he finally died at age 54. Read about it in the Times.
Since my upstairs computer is on its last legs, I'm transferring stuff, via email, onto this computer, an Acer laptop.
I transferred a bunch of poems and now for your delectation, or not, I'll find one of them poems and print it here.
SONG OF THE CRICKETS
This time last year
when the poppies burst on their stems
the three of us went to Maine.
You could say we took Maine by storm
but that wasn’t quite it, driving up the coast
that never did appear
for the new road swung back too far.
But we knew it was there,
the coast, somewhere.
My son told me later
it was only on my account,
that he and Sarah decided
to come along at all.
I unlocked the door of the motel
and put away our things,
our hairbrush and deodorant,
contact lens case and tour guides,
laying them on the dresser
and television set,
opening the blinds so we could see
what Maine looked like.
It was the dinner hour.
They were ready to start watching
television right away,
as soon as they’d checked the drawers
for things left behind.
There were about a hundred channels up for grabs
and they wanted to go through them all,
all one hundred,
to find a movie that
suited them both,
I was like that once.
They were tired and bleary-eyed.
I put the key in my pocket
undid the chain
and went outdoors into the state of Maine.
A car whizzed by on some road out front,
a road we’d turned onto from the larger road,
the road that never did meet the sea.
So much for picture postcards of
lighthouses and lobsters.
Then I heard it,
the cry of the woods,
a trembling rising roar
that soared toward the darkening sky,
like a switch turned suddenly on.
I stood at the door,
the white washcloth smell of the room
clinging to my hair.
I listened to what seemed to be
the first crickets I ever did hear,
ancient, spindly, gathering in prayer
from vast empty spaces
impossible to get to,
impossible to find.
I went in to get them,
the boy and the girl,
serene and barefoot,
their hair illuminated by the glow of the screen.
They were watching as two men in a bar
clinked glasses, neckties loosened,
while the two of them, the children,
hooped with their quick, you’ll-see laughter,
a knowledge of plot complications
I never could grasp,
certainly not now,
wanting so bad to break into their blue martini heaven
their barefoot bliss
to tell them of my find,
nothing more than crickets
chirping in the field beyond,
crickets chirping in the night.
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