Happy Birthday to my Nephew Chris

Pictured here maybe fifty-five years ago with my older brother Tom.

Today (and maybe a little bit extra into tomorrow) Chris gets to be my favorite nephew.  I'm celebrating his birthday by going to Connecticut to see The Celtic Women.

Sylvia Plath - Part V - Birthday Observance

Today is the birthday of the poet whose poems and whose life story have been primary obsessions of my own life. I could never pick a favorite poem, nor could I pick a favorite line, but her description of the moon: "It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet with the O-gape of complete despair." is one of several lines that cross my mind every day. In the photo I, on a Plath pilgrimage to her Devon home, which was adjacent to a church and its tomb-stoned contiguity, stand before a yew tree which might be one she viewed from the window of her writing room, the one which she may well have been gazing upon as she composed "The Moon and the Yew Tree".

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.

The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,

Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.

Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place

Separated from my house by a row of headstones.

I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,

White as a knuckle and terribly upset.

It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet

With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky——

Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.

At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.

The eyes lift after it and find the moon.

The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.

Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.

How I would like to believe in tenderness——

The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,

Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering

Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.

Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,

Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,

Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.

The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.

And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.

Another Favorite Postcard (#4 in series)

I once received a postcard from Loretta Lynn.  She was to appear at the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, Vermont, in August of 1987, and I mailed her a gift certificate from our restaurant for her and her band.  I love Loretta!  As it turned out her bus was hours late getting to town.  Some three months later she sent me this sweet card!  (Click on it to make it easier to read.)

I had been feeling lonesome this evening -- stuck out here in the sticks of the sticks, in the woods, up a long dark lane, alone except for the dog and two cats, but then I ran across this card and it made me feel good to think I had not been forgotten by Loretta "no matter how much time goes by."

Then the dog started her "danger lurks" barking.  I went to the door to check.  Coming onto the porch was a summer resident from further up the lane.  She gave me a loaf of Apricot Cranberry bread and a loaf of Blueberry Cranberry bread.  "I love to bake and I love to share," she said.

Feeling better now.

Two Ireland Photos

Memorial along Road 447, County Clare, near Funore Bridge.

Burial grounds near Funore Bridge, County Clare.

Surfing USA

The Chief of a nearby Law Enforcement Agency told me that if you put a surfboard on top of a vehicle the IQ of each of the vehicle's occupants is automatically lowered by ten points.  I think he was kidding.

Favorite Postcards #3

I've saved hundreds of postcards I've received over the years.  This one, from 1981, might be not just a favorite but the favorite.  I love the picture, I love the script, and the 36 words, combined with the photograph (both the work of  Duane Michals), manage to equal say a 30-page short story -- the longing and melancholy of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" come to mind.  And the sender of the postcard, a sweet friend of dear friends in Northampton ... well, I've not seen her since. 

(While in Montreal one weekend there was a show of Duane Michals' photographs at the Museum of Contemporary Art -- proof that, now and again, luck is bound to come your way.)

Tintinnabulations

TINTINNABULATIONS

I

On a Wednesday in forty-nine,

in a fierce mid-morning July sun,

my family is gathered

in front

of Sacred Heart Church.

The bell is ringing as it has rung

all the Sundays of my life;

but, as I said, this is a Wednesday;

my dad's funeral

has torn asunder

faith's firm schedule;

the bell is ringing on and on;

much longer

than a Sunday's bell,

on and on and still on

as if it will not be stopped.

I had seen the thick rope

that fell limply from the steeple,

down along the back wall

of the choir loft,

and then into an anteroom

off the vestibule.

I had liked it that when

we passed into church

I might catch a glimpse

of the campanologist

at work.

II

Now, on this funeral day,

I hear my older sister Martha

announce smugly:

"It's a-gonna ring

seventy-one times."

She had always been anxious

to let it be known

how much she knew

which you probably didn't know;

she was not one to miss

the opportunity

of a moment's

superiority.

"Why? I asked.

"Because Dad was seventy-one

when he died. It's a-gonna

ring once for each year

that he was alive."

Martha then jerked her head

slightly up and back,

and then to the left, and,

ever so briefly,

closed her eyes.

This was

condescendence.

III

Touched that all this pealing

was customized, personalized,

honoring my dad,

I adjusted my senses to receive

the blessed sacrament

of loss.

I tucked into my pockets

the melancholic echoes

of those peals.

I was stashing melancholy,

making a deposit

into an account

from which I might

make withdrawals

for the rest of my life.

IV

Exactly forty years later --

but in the charmless new

round Sacred Heart

that had replaced the old one --

my mother's casket,

draped in a fine linen pall,

stood in the vestibule.

At eleven o'clock

the bell was sounded

eighty-one times --

or did I, remembering

Martha and the seventy-one

bells of forty-nine --

did I merely imagine

eighty-one peals

on my mother's funeral day?

I don't think I actually counted.

Today, twenty years later,

I'm not sure.

Memory fails.

And did I not hear then,

in nineteen eighty-nine,

electronic bells?

Had a switch

been merely flicked,

or a button

pushed cursorily,

to set off that day's

pealing?

Did I so want instead

for a man to be standing

in some side room

somewhere,

grasping a heavy cord of hemp,

counting carefully

to eighty-one,

taking pride in his

campanology?

Yes, did I so want this

that I imagined

eighty-one?

Did I so want this

that my ears

refused to hear

the true tintinnabulations

of modern times?

Did my imagination take over

to forestall distress

that yet another

mysteriously

meaningful/meaningless

ritual

had been dumped

into the landfill

where discarded rituals

are bulldozedly buried?

Did I merely want to forestall

an acute reminder that,

while I was not looking,

while I was not paying

certain attentions,

while I was not keeping

the sacraments,

the past, bit by bit,

had been stolen?

V

My brain is full.

Some things

have toppled out,

fallen aside, flown away.

I have retained, though,

the bells of forty-nine,

and the bells

of eighty-nine.

Every day I

pull them

from my pocket;

every day,

a melancholy racket.

Happy Birthday To My Niece Cindy

My older brother John, Cindy's father, very layed-back, was not one to show much emotion, but I happened to stop at his and his wife Helen's home the morning after Cindy was born.   John, just back from the hospital, was absolutely beside himself.  He could not stop expressing amazement at how perfect she was, at what a miracle her birth was, and how the world was entirely different now.  I'd not seen him so excited about anything prior to this.

Having known her now for 52 years I've seen time and again that his excitement was entirely justified.

Happy birthday Cindy with love from Uncle George!

Happy Birthday To My Nephew John (or John-John or Johnny)

That's him sitting on my lap.  Behind me is my sister Sheila, then her husband Tom Laing; to Tom's right is my mother; in front of her Tom and Sheila's daughter Mary Ann, then John's brother Robert with his brother Daniel leaning on a chair and waving Hi or hiding his face; and in front is Tommy Laing, Sheila and Tom's son.  I have lots of nephews and each and every one of them is my favorite but for today Johnny gets to be the favorite of the favorites.  And my constant reminder: click on the picture to make it larger.

Irish Whiskey

Flo, my long-time penpal from Ireland, visiting last week, brought me a bottle of Irish whiskey.  In its clever packaging it looks as drunk as I might be when I quaff it:

Unpackaged it becomes a soberly erect bottle of whiskey:

Having revealed itself to be not one bottle, but three.

I'll save it for some very special occasion, hoping I'll remain more erect than the bottle is in the original packaging, and that I don't disintegrate into a trio of Georges.  Afterwards I'll cherish even the empty bottles.

A Celtic Harp Event

Sometimes I treat myself well such as when a few weeks ago I went to the program below.  Mairead Doherty was beautiful, poised, and lovely.  Her between-songs stories, mostly about the history of the harp, were enchanting.  Her accent was charming.  The music was wonderful.

Penmanship

A man at work (now retired) sent me a post-it each week.  His handwriting was consistently neat.  Inasmuch as my penmanship is awful, I envied his.  (You have to click to enlarge picture to make it clearer.)  

Ireland

Autumn intensifies nostalgia.  Today my nostalgia is for Ireland.  I have company from there this week, including Flo, who became my penpal in 1953.  It was in the eighth grade at Mentone School that, for a quarter,  my classmates and I each could get an international penpal.  We were allowed to ask that our penpal be from a certain country.  I chose Ireland.  That quarter bought me such richnesses of friendship such as I could not have imagined, and I like to say, and it is true, that it was the smartest expenditure I ever made.

My company will be flying back to Shannon Friday.  I'll be wanting to go with them.

A cute bookstore in Kenmare, 1996; my sister Sheila & brother Bernard out front.