So I’m lazing around this morning. It’s 9:30 AM and I’m just getting to blogging. This will be my only day this week I don’t have a morning commitment scheduled. Ballet classes are canceled for me today for one reason or another (They’re still having class. They just don’t need me.). This is a welcome reprieve in my relentless schedule. Saturday I have to be in Muskegon around 10 AM for Solo and Ensemble festiveal to accompany the violist I have been rehearsing with.
My silly Kindle balked this morning. I was trying to turn a page (touch the screen) and nothing happened. Again. Nothing happened. Again. Nothing happened. As I waited the screen went blank then went to the screen with guy sitting under a tree and one of those strips which indicates something (?) is happening.
Good grief. I put the dang thing aside and read a real book. Minutes later it still wasn’t done.
I get so annoyed when the designers of software interrupt me to update their stupid stupid software.
There has got to be a better way. It feels like I’m being naive to expect designers to factor in users in a realistic manner. When I’m doing something on the computer, I usually think it’s important. I might even be having a thought or two. When this gets interrupted so that some stupid stupid software has to update itself I’m sure my blood pressure goes up a notch.
(Blood Pressure note for concerned readers – Hi Sarah! – Today is the thirteenth day in a row my blood pressure has been good.)
I finished reading Lucille Clifton’s collected poetry yesterday.
It was a pretty wonderful experience. This woman could definitely write poems.
Here are a couple I especially liked.
*****
god
is
love
no
god
is love
is light
is god
no
place here
the name
you give
to god
is love
is light
is
here the name
you give
to
yes
*****
the angels have no wings
they come to you wearing
their own clothes
they have learned to love you
and will keep coming
unless you insist on wings
*****
The poems seem to be in rough chronological order. Lucille Clifton had a long life. Judging from her poetry it was a full one. Many of the poems are about her mother and father. They tend from the beautiful to the mundane to the disturbing. In other words they are poems.
The editors closed the selection (on page 727!) with this one.
*****
In the middle of the Eye,
not knowing whether to call it
devil or God
I asked how to be brave
and the thunder answered,
“Stand. Accept.” so I stood
and I stood and withstood
the fiery sight.
*****
This poem along with another entitled “God Bless America” were found in Clifton’s last “day-book” from 2010. It was “tucked in the short days of February, the month she would die in—“. Good way to go out.
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