Colorful Carly Brown
I keep a tiny notebook on my bedside table and had two ideas before falling asleep. Wrote em down and told Carly I would work on em at that very moment.
The Well-Tempered Machine was fairly easy. I often listen to YouTube music and was listening to Glenn Gould play The Well-Tempered Clavier, or "clavicle" as Carly joked.
Everyone brot in a piece to share, which makes for the best group.
Martha brot in a wonderful religious piece, a chapter in her book "Woman at the Well."
"Yanny" is a believable character in this chapter. "The father wanted to name her for his grandmother whom he loved," said Martha. "But he didn't like grandmother's real name so he named her 'Yanny,' a corruption of' 'Granny.'"
"I chose that name," she continued, "because the Biblical woman I'm going to call "Yael" needed an unusual "Y" name," said Marf.
Every American knows what this is, our favorite addiction.
Linda wrote an amazing poem about coffee.
Like me, she takes it hard when people tell her her poem doesn't quite work.
"Happy?" I said, putting my arm around her. "People loved your poem."
Beatriz Moisset, shown here at her home, wrote another super-interesting piece "Of Bees and Honey: What is Honey?"
"In the beginning, there were wasps, no bees at all." She plots the evolution of bees. Wasps were insect hunters but evolved into vegetarians as they learned to gather nectar, "a rich octane fuel that gave them enough energy to do all the flying needed to hunt for prey."
Sugar! Energy!
"They became hairier and developed baskets to carry pollen home, thus a new creature was born, different enough from wasps to belong in a different category: a vegetarian wasp, the mother of all bees."
The prolific Beatriz published her first e-Book from Google only yesterday. Graphic designers will format it into an online book. For $1,000 extra, you can have a hard copy.
Her "Bees and Honey" story, she said, will comprise a new e-Book.
Carly, shown here when we met at Weinrich's Coffee Shop, wrote a promising poem-in-progress about her new calico cat, aptly named "Our Toots."
What a character! But, then, what cat isn't?
"Circle of Life" was the contribution from Donna Krause of the gorgeous nails. When we met at Weinrich's Bakery, she had no idea that within a year, her husband John would be dead of a massive heart attack.
Her poem discussed her healing. "Being alone" was not so hard anymore.
I'm sick of ordering bad coffee at the Giant, so I brewed some tea at home in my beautiful ceramic mug w/ tight-fitting plastic cap I bot when I visited The Cloisters Museum in northern Manhattan on one of my day-trips.
I asked Giant's Ann or Mercedes to please refill my cup with water, which they did with alacrity. How's that for a word I've never used in my life.
When returning to my table, who should I see but my friend Terry Farber, sitting with her husband. They were at the Giant, grabbing some lunch, a break from painting their house in Abington. I glanced down and saw Terry's healthy salad, overloaded with broccoli.
Terry Farber, photo from her website. She runs an elder law firm. Taking a big risk, she left a law practice where she was guaranteed work and money, but this was something she'd always wanted to do.
And.... she's doing really well!!!
When Terry left, she gave us a bag of
We each read our fortunes aloud. I said I couldn't eat mine b/c I have diabetes from taking Prograf and Prednisone, my kidney antirejection meds.
Give it to Scott, someone said.
He doesn't eat sugar, I said, and then guess who appeared at our table.
Hey, guess what they're playing on WXPN? Trini Lopez singing "I've Got a Hammer."
Donna, who's still griveing for her husband, said she only listens to XPN b/c other stations play music that make her cry, in remembrance of John.
Look! Trini aged like the rest of us.
Speaking of which, here are my two poems, written in an hour before group.
WE ARE NOT
IMMORTAL LIKE THE
CATHOLICS
Dear one,
yellow,
though you are,
you peel
revealing
rotting wood
I have
come to like it here
a
high-ceilinged living room
reminding
me of snow-covered forests
in Switzerland
a kitchen
where light floods in –
am I outside
in the backyard
with the
songbirds and crows? –
and an
upstairs office
where my
boy once slept
now
catching the curl of winds
that
rough up the house
and find
their way inside
to chill
my feet
I like it
here and want to stay.
My
borrowed body says
something
else
aging sans mercy
until the
world is
through
with me
Who will
buy my house?
The for-sale sign swings
The for-sale sign swings
with the
wind
turns hot
in the summer
and one
day
they will
fall in love
kick down
the sign
and watch
the daffodils
come up
in spring.
THE
WELL-TEMPERED MACHINE
Listen!
the soft
exhale of the basement furnace
the sigh
of the refrigerator
hum of
the desktop
lightning-fast
hall light
that
flips on with a chain-saw snap
the flush
of the pink upstairs toilet
that
takes its good old time to fill up
and, lest
we forget,
the black
Bic ready at midnight
for my thoughts.
Machines,
all of you
working
to please your
mistress,
a woman we call
Ruth Z
Deming,
and her
many manifestations
and
operations.
Eli
Whitney was one of your fathers
Grandpa
Harold, banker Emmanuel
and a
rabbi in the old country
were
mine.
We love
our machines
when my
rice cooker died the other day
I did not
bury it
- “it” –
but threw
it in the trash to be
burned,
then buried in the landfill
We don’t
think of machines
as having
a soul
but can
we be sure?
When I
lived back in Hungary
a mud-hut
my home
drinking
warm flasks of kefir
on our
sheepskin rug
I listen
for the sound of dad
walking
outside,
a wooden
stick, his cane,
as he
made his way home.
Arms
ready to embrace.
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