excitement!

Isn't this amazing? It's by Rochelle Donald. Check out the rest of her beautiful work here.

Yes, tonight I am going to see Harry Potter. (How did you guess? :) I have high hopes that it will be wonderful and dark and brilliant and witty. Because Harry deserves nothing less!

In other news:

I won the poetry contest!

I'm awfully excited about that, too. This is shaping up to be a pretty good weekend. :)

there's autumn in your eyes

Will this be the last plane ride in your swing?

The harvest moon has come

And with her sadness brings

My mom says it's too cold to play

So I'm just waiting here

Thinking on our sunny days

But now there's autumn in your eyes

I just wanted a chance to say goodbye

A final burst of summertime

I just wanted a chance to say goodbye

There's nothing quite as hard

Or easier than time

My world is coming down

And no one seems to mind

Where I once played there's no sound

And all your pretty leaves have fallen to the ground

And now there's autumn in your eyes

I just wanted a chance to say goodbye

A sad farewell to summertime

I just wanted a chance

to say goodbye

From the north the icy breath is all around me

Blowing and snowing

Changing you

~ "A Chance to Say Goodbye", Children 18:3

no words

{No credit, unfortunately}

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{again, no credit}

{this is my favorite. I want to be the girl with the pretty blue umbrella.}

{Credit Here}

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the problem with poetry

Camping was lovely. I wished on a shooting star at 2:30 in the morning as I laid awake. :) And I saw this terrific piece of graffiti on a huge boulder:

It must have taken someone a long time to carve this into solid rock. That's a lot of luv.

On a completely different note, I'm thinking of submitting some poetry to a contest the library's holding. It isn't really blog-worthy material, except that it's made me think about the problem with liking poetry. My conclusion is this: The problem with liking poetry is that no one else likes it except other poets. Being a poet isn't like being a musician, because no one dislikes all music. But if you tell people you write poetry, they say, "Oh, I hate poetry," not realizing that they've just shaken the foundations of your dreams. Or else they're nice enough, but they don't get it. So you feel kind of dumb because you like the way that what the poet didn't say means just as much as what he did, or the way the words skitter across the page and paint pictures in your mind, and when you say the opening words out loud you really understand how the poem is supposed to feel - and when no one else understands, it feels as though maybe there's something a little dumb about it, after all.

Not that this has ever happened to me. ;)

But anyway, that's my rambling on poetry. And I'm going to submit something! This is a big deal, because I never show anyone what I write. So be excited for me. :)

later days

"Granted, fate and tragedy, aimless and just-missing-by-a-hair are part of human experience, but they are not all, and I'm not sure they are a major part, even in the lives of men who know no Designer or design. For me, I have seen a Keener Force yet, the force of Ultimate Good working through seeming ill. Not that there is rosiness, ever; there is genuine ill, struggle, dark-handed, unreasoning fate, mistakes, 'if-onlys' and all the Hardyisms you can muster. But in them I am beginning to discover a Plan greater than any could imagine. "

-Jim Elliot, 1951

Oh, October!

How I love you! You are beautiful! October is most certainly making up for the letdown of September. The leaves haven't turned yet, but the sky is the perfect smooth blue oval that it only can be in the Fall. The air is crisp, like the apples we picked Saturday.  sixty. five. degrees. Perfection. :)
 I went for a walk today in the woods near our house today, and saw four deer bound away into the trees. Something about Autumn seems to make nature feel so much closer. The sky is a little lower; the trees make themselves conspicuous. I'm going camping tomorrow, because there couldn't be a more ideal time. 

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe

"I thought you'd never say hello," she said

"You look like the silent type."

Then she opened up a book of poems

And handed it to me

Written by an Italian poet

From the thirteenth century

And every one of them words rang true

And glowed like a burning coal

Pouring off of every page

Like it was written in my soul from me to you

Tangled up in Blue

So now I'm going back again

I got to get her somehow

All the people we used to know

They're an illusion to me now

Some are mathematicians

Some are carpenter's wives

Don't know how it all got started

I don't know what they're doing with their lives

But me I'm still on the road

Heading for another joint

We always did feel the same

We just saw it from a different point of view

Tangled up in Blue

~Bob Dylan,  Tangled up in Blue

Hopefully I'll have some adventures to relate when I get back from the Great Family Wilderness Excursion :) Until then, happy, happy, happy autumn! 

Love is not a victory march

I've been reading Edna St. Vincent Millay lately. Despite her scandalous private life, her poetry is brilliant.

The Concert

No, I will go alone.
I will come back when it's over.
Yes, of course I love you.
No, it will not be long.
Why may you not come with me? --
You are too much my lover.
You would put yourself
Between me and song.

If I go alone,
Quiet and suavely clothed,
My body will die in its chair,
And over my head a flame,
A mind that is twice my own,
Will mark with icy mirth
The wide advance and retreat
Of armies without a country,
Storming a nameless gate,
Hurling terrible javelins down
From the shouting walls of a singing town
Where no women wait!
Armies clean of love and hate,
Marching lines of pitiless sound
Climbing hills to the sun and hurling
Golden spears to the ground!
Up the lines a silver runner
Bearing a banner whereon is scored
The mild and steel of a bloodless wound
Healed at length by the sword!

You and I have nothing to do with music.
We may not make of music a filigree frame,
Within which you and I,
Tenderly glad we came,
Sit smiling, hand in hand.

Come now, be content.
I will come back to you, I swear I will;
And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I went.


First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light!

There are more, of course. But these two are the most memorable, for me. This one's excellent too. :)

The first day of Fall was last week. It was 96 degrees. It's about time for this extended summer to die, I think. I'm ready to break out the jean jacket, but the weather isn't cooperating. Oh, well. Autumn can't be long now. Right?

I'm really feeling this song right now. And this version is gorgeous and perfect.

Stay tuned for a hilarious series of observations about my new town; also featuring some deep philosophical ideas, reflections on various adventures, and some geeky artsy stuff as well. :)

Fall and Fog

Somehow, while I was getting lost in the back roads of my brand-new town and meeting neighbors and talking to strangers, September slipped in and was halfway gone before I realized it was here. I love September. It's the last hurrah of summer, but it's promising Fall.

Courtesy here. This is how I picture September, in my head. Gray, and a little melancholy. This is Big Sur, California, one of my favorite places. Fall there isn't colorful, but it's gloomy and chilly and mysterious.

Nothing much more to say now, except that football season has started! Go Broncos! :)

FOG

THE fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

-Carl Sandburg