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| teh read-a-thon b over 2 daiz but ebrting still b topsee turvee |
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
This is not a review exactly. I just finished this story not an hour ago and even if it weren't too soon to write a coherent review, I'd have to pry one eyelid open while typing one-handed. Let's just say it is so good I gave up my night computer session in order to finish it. Now I must sleep or be useless to my sister and mother tomorrow.
The reason I am featuring it on Poetry Train is that the story is like a poem in its use of image and metaphor and the nesting of symbols inside symbols. The themes of friendship, betrayal, redemption and courage could so easily become cliche in inept hands but Hosseni is deft with language and plot, with character and setting, weaving a glowing tapestry that unrolls like a prayer rug across continents, across time, across the spaces between hearts and across the space within a single heart.
I don't have it in me to do poetry right now, having just received the news that my 77 year old mother has fallen and broken her hip and will be having surgery around noon today.
So I'm going to do a little photo essay with some of the pics of my Mom I have on my hard drive. I don't seem to have any more recent than August of 2005 from the last family reunion 7 weeks before my Dad died. I'll post the reunion pics below since I've not posted most of them before but for the other pics I'm just going to include the links to the two photo essays I did featuring Mom this past year.
Click here for the photo essay with poem that I did for Mother's Day.
Click here for the photo essay of Mom's life which I did for her birthday last January.
Please send blessings to the surgeon's hands and mind that they be steady and sure.
This is my Mom and Dad on their wedding day, August 7, 1955. It was a double wedding with her twin sister but I don't have a picture including both couples.
Below are the two couples about a week before their 50th anniversary. This was the last one for both couples as my Dad died September 24th and my Aunt (in the polka dot blouse) the week after Thanksgiving. Both after several years battling cancer.
The twins Maurine and Margaret
My parents on a different day of that same reunion. We spent a three-day weekend in a vacation house near Bend Oregon.
Mom and Dad on the road towards Bend that week.
>>>>>>>>>>
OK now that is beginning to look and feel like a memorial and I don't want to leave it with a morbid tone. So I'm going to tell the story of how Mom fell. She (77 mind you) was showing off to her big sister Catherine how she exercises with her balance ball. I'm not clear what move she was demonstrating but it involved a chair and since this was at Catherine's house in Rocklin California, it wasn't the chair Mom was used to using and something went wrong. Catherine says she fell hard and then couldn't get up.
Now I guess to those who don't know my Mom that doesn't sound amusing but my sister could not erase the amusement in her tone as she told the story to me on the phone. I hope we are still able to feel the amusement a few days from now.
My sister reminded me that Mom is a trooper and told how she had learned of Mom's fall of 2001 when she tripped on some stairs exiting a building and broke her knee. She had called Carri from the hospital and broke the news with a perky "Guess what?" Like a kid about to announce her acceptance on the cheerleader squad.
I could not help but remember when she allowed herself to be coaxed onto a the neighbor boy's skateboard when I was about nine and then fell and broke her elbow. She had to wear a sling and was not allowed to lift my baby sister--then about 9 or 10 months--I learned to fold diapers and change them that spring, among other things to do with laundry and meal prep and housework.
The point being: my Mom loves to tell these stories ever after. Not as from the woe-is-me standpoint but from the 'let me tell you about my wonderful adventure'. Here's hoping she is telling this story in her perky, bright-eyed wonder-filled voice this time next year.
They were supposed to pick me up on their way back through the Rogue Valey on next Monday and I was planning to spend a couple weeks with them and continue work on scanning the family photos into my computer in preparation for creating a digital ablbum for the entire extended family. I started this project last December and that is where most of the pictures in the photo essays I linked to above came from. The reunion pics on this page came from my sister-friend Jamie's cell phone.
Assuming all goes well, it is still unlikely Mom will be able to travel by car inside of two weeks so I probably won't be going up there to visit until after Christmas now. Since Ed wants me here for Christmas. Which is only fair since his family celebrates Xmas and mine does not.
The Measure of an Ego
by Joy Renne
Gustav was a downright gusty fellow,
arriving on the coat tails of August,
carrying tornados in his pockets,
turning his fickle gaze on the waters,
his eye churning wave and wind into tears
and sending telegrams of fear ashore.
He came storming through our dreams strewing
debris about with busy abandon.
Birds and fish congregate in each others
parish learning the nature of no-name
--the new being nameless is thus blameless.
Rainbows noose the sky and news pelts the face
of land and sea with stinging seeds, sowing
wet and windy demands for attention.
Soon distracted he will burst out a door
his own flailing fists knocked through tomorrow
trudging with heavy thighs across time
leaving behind many sighs and sorrows.
Overflowing Light
by Joy Renee
There is a place within my mind
where every flicker of my thought
casts wavery images on walls
of white
as I
down memory's long halls traverse
reciting lines of ancient verse.
There came a time when lingering long
and wandering far into the maze
that light flared bright and overflowed.
I saw
In awe
as memories mixed with lore of old
and bright reflections of my dreams
were etched with lightning dipped in inks
whose bottomless wells fill with hues
drained from the rainbow's jeweled veins.
My self
must melt
or be consumed by bright untold
stories wove of flame; yet untamed.
######
Well, I said in yesterday's post that I just might have to write some posts designed to feature pictures off this site. As before the picture is linked to it's page on fromoldbooks.org.
A Bear Ate
by Joy Renee
A bear ate a
vibrator
scavenging a garbage bin
and went galumphing
through the suburbs,
and berating
the moon
met up with
a beret attired
vibrato
scarfing a garbanzo bean
and lentil soup singing
to the burps and
beer attending
goon.
A bear ate a
vibrato,
a beer attired
goon
and slurped garbanzo bean
and lentil soup, slinging
a beret at
the moon.
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I've no idea where this came from. Except that I couldn't keep my eyes open last night as I started to work on this post and I closed them and lay down without even closing the laptop lid, turning off the lamp or the TV tuned to XM 7 playing 70s hits. I remember thinking it was no use berating myself and besides I'd just write garbage if I tried to think with such a fatigue vibrated brain.
I woke at 4AM from a dream in which someone, laughing hysterically was saying "A bear ate a vibrator...."
OK, so sleeping on it didn't help much.
70 Days of Sweat
Epic Kindle Giveaway Jan 11-13 2012
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