Dick Hunting

The wealth of delightful material assembled since word of our Vice President's unfortunate hunting experience is a testament to our nation's cultural resourcefulness. The sun may be setting on our empire, but the clouds are tinged with sublime color. My favorite response, predictably, was from The Daily Show:

The shooting was fertile ground for Jon Stewart, the host of "The Daily Show," the popular fake news program on Comedy Central. On Monday night one of the show's correspondents, Rob Corddry, introduced as a "vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst," said that "according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush," and "everyone believed there were quail in the brush," and "while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he would still have shot Mr. Whittington in the face."

I'm so proud today to be an American, where the right to bare arms and start wrestling is a cornerstone of our super-sized portion of freedom.

Two For Twoday

In class today, I finished by reading a poem I described as, "fitting for the holiday." I'm going to share it with you, along with my favorite love poem ever, because, well, because I want to share.

I've read this John Donne lyric hundreds of times over the years, often out loud. It captures the essence of life and love, at least as I see them, better than any other text:

Song

Sweetest love, I do not go
For weariness of thee,
Nor in the hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use my self in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today,
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to advance.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
But sigh'st my soul away,
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
Thou art the best of me.

Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill,
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil;
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep;
They who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.

The last four lines are my favorite. If you do what you can to keep your partner alive, you are there with him or her even when your body is not. I love that sentiment.

The second poem, the one I read in class today, is by Marilyn Hacker. It overlaps with the theme of Donne's poem, which it provoked me to reread and type out for you:

Villanelle

Every day our bodies separate,
explode torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate

us further from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we celebrate.

I love what Hacker does with the repetitions that the villanelle form requires, duplicating at the level of content the rituals of form. And all that missing language leaves me speechless.

Fear

I was just leaving the house to go run an errand when my peripheral vision caught a strange glint in the distance. Then I heard a pop, like the sort homemade fireworks make, and thought, "Why would anyone light them on Valentine's Day?" And then I saw the flames, shooting up much faster than they would have in an average fire.

I called 911 on my cell phone and got through immediately. I don't know if I was the first caller, but I was definitely one of the first, since the operator only began to realize the scope of the problem while I was talking to her, as other calls came in. I ran inside to close the windows and tell Kim what was happening, hearing a series of pops along the way. By the time the two of us got outside, the fire was spreading rapidly. We ended up standing to watch it for a while. It was truly horrifying to think how likely it was that someone was killed in the fire. It got too big too fast for anyone with a mobility issue or some other impairment to get out of the apartments you see in flames safely. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I fear the worst. I guess we'll find out tomorrow, though I'm not sure I can bear to hear the news. I've looked across the vacant lot between our subdivision and that apartment complex many times, wondering what life is like there, watching the silhouettes of residents passing back and forth in front of their windows, hearing their indistinct voices from their balconies. It's so eery to look at this photo and think how different the view will be in the morning. What a terrible way to end the day.