Thursday, May 31, 2007

Busted Flat in Baton Rouge

I have a good post or two I'd like to put up at Gates, but unfortunately my mind has gone on strike. There's one on the fate of Christian converts in Germany, and another of the U.S. Fifth Fleet exercises in the Straits of Hormuz.

God, I love pictures of ships moving in convoy. Must be a left-over from my childhood days of watching them come in at Mayport...which is in Florida and I don't know if it's a carrier basin anymore. Back then it was palmetto scrub and ships. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, and those hunking big carriers. Delightful for a child who loved orderly mayhem.

I'd also like to do some gardening but it's too hot. Florida has come to Virginia, only without the thundery afternoons that made everything lush. How can this be June when it feels like August? I been cheated. I have some rose bushes the children left at Shelagh's grave for Mother's Day but I can't find the courage to plant them.

And the future Baron's belongings accompanied him home from college. They sprawl in heaps here and there, proving that bodies at rest tend to gather cobwebs. I doubt they will move unless my inertia is somehow overcome...fortunately I have barred the door so it won't be necessary to shove boxes off the couch were someone to show up.

Yesterday, in a small, controlled fit of desperation I went to see this MD who is also a homeopath. I hope his remedy cures me of Shelagh's death but somehow I doubt it. On my way home, I noticed a headline that said Casey's mother -- I have honestly forgotten the woman's name already* -- is retiring from her anti-war duties. Poor wretch. Now the whole façade will come tumbling down. I'll invite her to join me in my dark hole here. We can argue politics and throw clods of dirt at one another.

Beats crying all by yourself, I should think.


*Cindy Sheehan, that's her name...Welcome to the pit, my dear. Have a mud pie?

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Happy Birthday to Me!

It is my birthday. Coy youth is gone – gratefully, most days—and I’ve taken to flirting with eternity, which as you know is so much vaster...and yet takes up no room at all.

But who can get out of the grip that time has around our hearts? It’s there like a pickpocket, till the last breath is gone.

So I wrote my own birthday song…sing along everybody:

EVERY LITTLE MOMENT COUNTS

Every little moment counts,
They’re all adding and subtracting,
Piling on conventional wisdom
But taking away, taking away
With each breath you’re breathing
Stealing a leaf from your measured days

It’s all we have, this time right here
It’s all we have, there’s no way to save it
Time slips through your hands
There goes one less remaining

Don’t divide what’s left but
Begin with reclaiming:
Reclaim the sky,
Sunshine and twilight
Reclaim the past
Every lonely midnight.
Reclaim the joy, the smiles you’ve been given
Reclaim it all, know you’re forgiven…

‘Cause time’s all you have
So give it away, spend like a sailor
Spread it around, it’s not about failure
Let everyone play
Give it all away…

‘Cause every little moment counts
Every last single one
Spend them all on love
Till you’re finally done…

Every little moment
Every little moment
Every little moment…counts