Here's where I'm blogging these days. Feel free to visit me!

http://reticulatedwriter.blogspot.com/

........................

You can’t hold on to water.

It’s like your first kiss,

The perfect temperature of a cup of coffee—

just after it burns, just before it’s tepid—

the honey milk smell of a baby’s neck,

that last 10 pounds you lost again—and regained,

purple hyacinths pushing out of the snow,

a ripe, red
garden tomato.....

.. ..

All that is important drips, flows or floods from your life

Like water escapes your cupped hands

No matter how thirsty you are

No matter how much you need it

No matter how tightly you press your palms and fingers
together

And suck up what you can before it’s gone.

.. ..

Remember contests in the bathtub with your little sister

To see who could hold a handful of water the longest?

Over and over you tried

While soap scum cooled on lukewarm water,

Tiny waves lapped at the dirty tub ring

And your sister’s lips turned blue.

Just like yours, her life has slipped through her
fingers—

Like your grandmothers’ lives and your children’s lives

And the love you thought would last a lifetime.

.. ..

But water that slips away always comes back—

As the tears you shed at your mother’s funeral

Or the urine the determines your daughter-in-law’s pregnancy
test

Or the ice cube in the scotch your husband drinks

The day he knows the biopsy is positive

Or the moon-driven oceans that ebb and flow with the life a
blue planet.

You are as likely to hold on to love as you are to drink an
ocean,

Hold it in your full round belly and belch fishy burps.

Eventually you’ll have to pee.

I thought I'd cross-post this one from my blog, The Reticulated Writer, since it's about music and this MySpace was at one time a musicians' page.

I was out dancing the other night when the band started playing
"Brickhouse," a Commodores song from the 70's. I love how clever this
song is and how much fun I had explaining it to my kids in the van on
one of our homeschool field trips.

Brandon: What's a "brickhouse." It doesn't sound like a woman.
Me: The whole phrase is "She's built like a brick shithouse."
Sophie: What? A woman is a shithouse?
Me: No, it's a metaphor. It's saying she's built like a brick shithouse.
Brandon: How do you know that? They don't say that in the song.
Me:
No, but they leave space in the lyrics and melody. Listen to how they
say "brick....house." They're leaving out the "shit" because they
wouldn't be able to play it on the radio. But it's implied because of
the pause and the way they fill between the words.
Sophie: I still don't get what a brick shithouse is.
Me:
It's an outhouse. People used to dig a big hole in the ground and build
a small building around it. They called them outhouses or shithouses,
and that's where they went to the bathroom. We used to steal them for
our big autumn bonfire when I was growing up. Not many people had them
by then. When my dad was a kid everybody had them, and they used to
think it was funny to sneak up on people and tip the outhouse over
while they were in it.
Brandon: Did they build them out of bricks? How did you burn bricks?
Me:
No, most of them were wood, but rich people could build theirs out of
bricks. They would be much nicer than most people's. That's why it's a
bigger compliment to be a brick shithouse than just a shithouse.
(At
that point, I realized I wasn't going to be able to fully explain the
metaphor, because really, what woman wants to be called a "shit"
anything?)
Sophie: I wouldn't want anybody to call me a shithouse. That's not nice.
Me:
Well, if somebody was going to call you a shithouse, at least you'd
want them to call you a brick shithouse because that's the prettiest
kind.
Sophie: I guess so.
Brandon: (opens his mouth)
Me: Don't ever call your sister a brick shithouse, Brandon.
Brandon: (closes his mouth)

She's a brick...buh buh buuuuh buh.....house
She's mighty mighty
just lettin' it all hang out...

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.



(As if there were just one

of each word and the one

who used it, used it up).



In the history of language

the first obscenity was silence.



~~ Christina Davis

This is one of the most amazing plays I've ever seen. I laughed and cried all the way through it. These kids (OK, they aren't kids, but I knew Shaun when he was) are simply incredible. Come to it!

The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels

Saturday, January 17, 2009

8:00pm

Miami Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

..[endif]-->.. -->[if !vml]-->.... -->[endif]-->Abigail Nessen Bengson's The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels is the story of two American communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and a volcano eruption in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Nessen channels the voices of six good-hearted and passionate characters who dance, tell dirty jokes, weep, laugh, share their stories and sing music as diverse as Salvadoran hip-hop, zydeco and old-time 12-bar blues, all in a whirlwind one-act solo performance with live music by "one man band" Shaun Bengson.

The Artists

Shaun Bengson and Abigail Nessen Bengson, international artists and activists, are currently working on multiple theater and music projects in New York City, the Northeast, and the Midwest. Their theater projects include their original off-Broadway production, "The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels," which opened to acclaim at Eve Ensler's Women Center Stage Festival at the The Culture Project in Manhattan; creating and writing new theater and cabaret projects with David Eppel, acclaimed co-founder of South Africa's Market Theater; and preparing for an international tour that will include performances in South Africa, Scotland, France, and Germany. Their Brooklyn-based rock group, the Zombie Nationalists has two albums in production.

Reviews

"(Abigail Nessen has)…not only a tremendous musical talent, but also a raw honesty and sincere righteousness." –George Hunka, New York Times

"Abigail Nessen, also a funny comedian, took the honors as the best singer in the bunch. Her strong and precise voice will be right at home on Broadway." -Broadway Blog

Nessen's work is..."inspired...worthy of Bob Fosse's Cabaret work, as funny as it is horrifying." EDGE Entertainment

"Nessen has a rare gift and a maturity beyond her years...she's meant to be a star." Jim Russek, Broadway and Off-Broadway producer

Tickets: $10 in advance or at the door (Contact Carol Narigon at narigonc@aol.com for more details.)

I created a new blog this week called The Reticulated Writer. I explain the way the name came to be there, so I won't do it here. As you might guess, it's a writing blog. Feel free to drop and read or share your writing. I hope you find inspiration.

http://reticulatedwriter.blogspot.com/

Carol

I'm putting together a Yule ritual for tomorrow night and I thought I would share this poem. It's one of my all-time favorites, not just because it's beautiful and evocative, but also because Sophie memorized and recited it for a talent show at our church when she was four years old. I ask her to read it at our winter solstice ritual every year, although she's much shyer and more cantankerous about it the older she gets. I wish I could share with her my memory of her up on the stage all those (13) years ago, in her blue velvet dress, hands clasped in front of her, reciting this poem in her small, clear voice. Since I can't, I'm glad it's mine to keep.

....................

Catechism for a Witch's Child

Judith (Stanley) Powell

 ....

When they ask to see your gods

your book of prayers

show them lines

drawn delicately with veins

on the underside of a bird's wing

tell them you believe

in giant sycamores mottled

and stark against a winter sky

and in nights so frozen

stars crack open spilling streams

of molten ice to earth

and tell them how you drank

the holy wine of honeysuckle

on a warm spring day

and of the softness

of your mother

who never taught you

death was life's reward

but who believed in the earth

and the sun

and a million, million light years

of being.....

I was at the commissary (grocery store for you civilians) today. Lots of people retire here at Wright Patt, so the commissary is pretty well populated with elderly patrons. At one point I excused myself to a 70-ish couple so I could slip between them, dive down to the back of the bottom shelf and grab a big box of Ralston Foods oatmeal--that's the cheap brand you've never heard of. The woman said--not in a whiny way, but in a friendly laughing way--that I was lucky I could get down there to the bottom shelf like that. Her husband agreed. They both seemed to be looking at me with some admiration for my youthful gymnastics. He said we're too old to be bottom-shelf shoppers anymore. I said I'm just a cheap-shelf shopper, and I asked if they needed anything from the bottom shelf. No, no, they said. I rolled on, thinking about what it means to be a privileged bottom-shelf shopper.

The way stores market their products makes it harder for elderly and handicapped people to save money by buying the cheaper, unadvertised brands. We all know stores put the most expensive brands, the ones they make the most money on, at eye level. And the cheaper stuff is often on the bottom shelf or out of reach on the top. I can't blame them. They have to put something on the bottom shelves. But it seems like the people who are likely to have the least disposable income are the ones who are most negatively affected by such marketing practices. Imagine trying to shop for deals from a wheel chair or one of those motorized shopping carts.

Granted, I'm poor too, but I can still (knock wood) dive down and grab my oatmeal from the back of the bottom shelf. What happens when I can't? Will I too have to eat Quaker Oats at 1/4 more the price? Will I have to wash my hair with L'Oreal instead of Suave? And is the expensive Iams dogfood that much better than the cheap store brand? Because if I have to pay a lot more for everything, I may have to resort to eating dogfood. At least I'll be getting the good stuff.

I don't know what the answer is, but the experience stuck with me because this is one more thing I didn't know about getting older: that someday I probably won't be able to be a bottom-shelf shopper. There are other things that have surprised me even at my youthful age, like that I've been tempted to keep a pair of reading glasses in the bathroom because that's where I keep my Reader's Digests, on the back of the toilet. And that I got an invitation to join AARP before I ever even turned 50.  That sometimes I get carded when I buy wine and sometimes I'm asked if I want the senior discount. (Which was just rude, but she said they have to ask everybody. My daughter has never been asked if she's eligible for the senior discount, and she laughed at me when it happened, the brat. I digress, as usual.)

Things happen that divide your life into befores and afters. After my high school graduation, after I got married/divorced, before I had kids, after I got bifocals. Now I can look forward to one more before and after: after I was a bottom-shelf shopper. When my kids look in my pantry for chips and soda and all they find is Iams dogfood and Quaker Oats oatmeal, I'll just say to them--not in a whiny way, but in a friendly laughing way--sorry, kids, I don't have any chips or soda. Now that I'm no longer a bottom-shelf shopper, I can't afford such luxuries. How about a nice hot bowl of oatmeal or a tasty can of Iams chunky sirloin stew?