Pig and farm report
Advent poem December 6, 2020
Patty Hearst daughter of the bountiful deities of banks was taken to the underworld changed into her every her and so the earth burst with all the wrong assorted flowers the robbery of color poor Olympians Persephone of the yelling Persephone of the beret and of the rifle on the wordless television the pretty girl with a gun shouted pomegranate! pomegranate! motherfuckers!
*
I am here present as we said in elementary school I am here but I am reading reading returned to me like a lightning bolt to the brain the day the power went out all over the island and I was alone in the pitch black dark call me if the power goes out my son told me so I called him and said the power is out are you going to come here now with coffees and oats and ropes and batteries or what but nope so I crawled under my covers and started reading Atwood’s The Testaments with a flashlight I read straight through the night then I read Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials all three books and was into the second book before I realized it was a YA novel and I don’t care it was magic then Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower but only halfway through because it was too grim and scary then I read Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore which stunned me now I’m reading Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend I will never take reading for granted not ever again I know it can go out like a flame
I’m back where I was as a young woman when I left the commune inside of words and reluctant to turn on the television or look at a screen reluctant to surround myself in noise
I brought a tree into the house today from a Christmas tree farm ripe and green and pitchy I wrestled it into the stand and tightened the bolts with pliers I have done new things recently I replaced both the air filters on my car under the hood and on the passenger side so I had to figure out how to open the glove box by pressing in on the sides then sliding the connector tube up which involved me getting on my knees on wet leaves but I decided I didn’t want to pay $120 when I had YouTube to guide me like Jesus unfortunately there is no YouTube to tell you how to get a dead wood rat out from under your house but eventually the smell got to me and once again I knelt on the forest floor this time armed with my shop vac heavy gloves a long stick and a pair of barbecue tongs and managed to wrestle it out then fling the poor thing into its foresty grave
Ew
I read this tonight in My Brilliant Friend
“We lived in a world in which children and adults were often wounded, blood flowed from the wounds, they festered, and sometimes people died.”
It reminded me of growing up in Spokane
I saw four tiny goats balancing on a round bale of hay I gave myself a YouTube haircut that is not even on both sides but it looks much better and I baked some Japanese milk bread and made old fashioned fudge and now the scent of the tree is waking up everything in my head and my stupid heart
Hello Darklings hello
8 Comments:
I love you for getting such a round, sweet Christmas tree, a tree that could well have been fed with milk bread and homemade fudge. Your house must smell better than any house in the Pacific NW.
Isn’t that just the roundest tree ever Mary? This morning it is lit. 🔥
The return of your able and joyful reading is the very best news I’ve heard in a while. That’s a gorgeous, fat tree. Much love.
Xoxo
Barbara
Barbara I managed to fling some lights on it today y literally had to toss the end on the top branches it is taller than I am and I am tall. XO
I love every word of this post and your round round tree. Everything all rounded out. The Ferrante novel is my favorite -- I never did get into the others. The tv version (when you're ready to watch) is incredibly beautiful. My father is southern Italian and I feel all of it my bones. Tonight I've been reading about trees and an Irish tree alphabet and apparently the underworld or Persephone or anything myth or fairy tale is meant to be lodged in my head because it's coming from everywhere, now at Summer's End, too.
Elizabeth it is such a good book I do hope the television version rolls around again. Thank you for being here I think now that I can read again words might wake up in my head. Maybe. In the meanwhile trips to the underworld are right on track for the now. XXOO
The return of reading is the great gift of quarantine. I am so happy for you, and also for me, as I have found the stillness within to read again also. I love you.
There you are, how did I miss this post? asleep I guess, anyway, wonderful little chub tree! My Brilliant Friend!
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