Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Notes on My Mother 1: Who's the grownup here?




A few weeks ago my ninety-something mother and I got into an argument, and she said, “You don’t like
me.  You never have liked me.  You disapprove of everything I do and I try so hard to get your approval.” 

Ouch!  That sounds like something a teenager might say to a parent.



Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Rat's Country: "Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave"

"Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave"
Charlie Rich

Those of us who have come lately have come to stay.  Don't ask why.  Don't believe our explanations.  We might not say it, but maybe it's to be close to the Tuscarora cemetery.  Everybody in town has friends or relatives there.    Long ago Milt told me he's going no further from his doublewide than "over there," he says giving the cemetery a nod.

Tour guides name Tuscarora a ghost town.  I say the wind blew the ghosts away long ago.  When I wander among the headstones, the wrought iron fences and weathered crosses, the new slabs of decorated concrete, I think of the named and the nameless as the same.  Gone.  

Monday, June 20, 2011

Rat's Country: Misogamy Monday

Misogamy  Monday

I’m suspicious of women
who marry impossible men,
but then,  the opposite
is  true—the hapless gent
who chooses a shrew.

Yet those cloying teams,
“He’s the man of my dreams"
Fill my throat with  nausea
thinking of that  devoted old goat
and nanny goat, too.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Poems by Other People: "Hay for the Horses"

     Hay for the Horses

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
   behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
     sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
--The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds--
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

      Gary Snyder

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Other People's Poems: "Poem about Morning"

          Poem About Morning

Whether it's sunny or not, it's sure
To be enormously complex--
Trees or streets outdoors, indoors whoever you share,
And yourself, thirsty, hungry, washing,
An attitude towards sex.
No wonder half of you wants to stay
With your head dark and wishing
Rather than take it all on again:
Weren't you duped yesterday?
Things are not orderly here, no matter what they way.

But the clock goes off, if you have a dog
It wags, if you get up now you'll be less
Late.  Life is some kind of loathsome hag
Who is forever threatening to turn beautiful.
Now she gives you a quick toothpaste kiss
And puts a glass of cold cranberry juice,
Like a big fake garnet, in your hand.
Cranberry juice!  You're lucky, on the whole,
But there is a great deal about it you don't understand.


          William Meredith

Monday, June 13, 2011

Rat's Country: "You can't always get what you don't want..."

"If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want."

     Oscar Wilde

 This quote from Oscar Wilde reminded me of an observation from Stumbling on Happiness to the effect that the New Yorker doesn't pay attention to how many times the pigeon doesn't shit on his head.  He only notices how many times it does.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Rat's Country: Put your characters in a predicament and watch them squirm

..."my books tend to be based on situation rather than story...I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free.  My job isn't to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety...but to watch what happens and then write it down."

                        Stephen King, On Writing

Friday, June 3, 2011

Rat's Country: Perspiration and ecstasy...

"The practice of any art demands more than mere savoir faire.  One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love.  In love self is obliterated.  Only the beloved counts.  Whether the beloved be a bowl of fruit, a pastoral scene, or the interior of a bawdy house makes no difference.  One must be in it and of it wholly.  Before a subject can be transmuted aesthetically it must be devoured and absorbed.  If it is a painting it must perspire with ecstasy."

          Henry Miller, To Paint Is to Love Again

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Rat's Country: Keeping Your Distance

You can see who's coming as they turn north from the county road and up the two-mile incline to Tuscarora.  In the daylight, it's hard to be taken by surprise.  Of course, someone could sneak into town at night, but the moving headlights would show on the road; town dogs would bark; some insomniac would peer out the window at midnight and watch.

No, it's a great place for keeping your distance, for guarding your misery.