13 Take a Seat
1. “In memoir the heart is in the brain. It’s the Geiger counter you run over memory’s landscape looking for precious metals to light up. A psychological self-awareness and faith in the power of truth gives you the courage to reveal whatever you unearth, whether you come out looking vain or conniving or hateful or not.” – Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
2. “Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.” – Head of CBS records to singer songwriter Leonard Cohen, who passed away last week.
3. “I did my best. It wasn’t much. I couldn’t feel so I tried to touch. I told the truth. I didn’t come to fool ya. And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but a broken hallelujah. …” – words by Leonard Cohen, and recently sung by Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton in a poignant opening of Saturday Night Live HERE.
4. “It is not intolerance to be intolerant of intolerance. Don’t let the bigots and bullies tell you otherwise. Opinions that may lead to harm of others are not worthy of respect.” – My Facebook friend Russell
5. I feel like Dredman rather than Redman today.
6. Sometimes it feels like I’ve had 100 people in my house because of Facebook.
7. My driving is getting to be like my handwriting, kind of wobbly and all over the place.
8. Someone is always left out / in the game of musical chairs / and we are as exposed as the naked emperor / who thought he was dressed in the fine clothes – From Flying Dreams, a poem I wrote in 2013. Read it in its entirety HERE.
9. I was working at a boutique in Boston in 1969 and listening to the very hip WBCN radio station when I first heard Leonard Cohen sing Suzanne. It’s the song that made me want to be a poet (that and my Donovan album). I wrote more about those times in Hippie Flashback HERE.
10. When I lost two brothers a month apart in 2001, the grief was complicated because of the double loss. This year we lost our older sister and mother four months apart, and so the grief, once again, is compounded. It’s been a slower and harder process, which is why when my knee went out, the pain gave me a very real metaphor for some poem therapy and some delayed concrete empathy for my sister and mother, who both had bad knees.
11. The poem, called Survivors Guilt, starts “My knee went out / bringing bone to bone pain / with no cushion to soften the friction / My mother and sister / both had bad knees / invisible irritations / they quietly carried …” and ends with “Why aren’t more people limping?” Read the whole poem HERE.
12. Hear what kids say about Donald Trump as president HERE.
13. Check out some very cool woodpile stacking art HERE.
____________Thirteen Thursday
November 17th, 2016 2:03 am
Russel has it exactly right. Now if half the nation can figure that out….
November 17th, 2016 2:24 am
13 woodpiles have me wanting to do same
November 17th, 2016 8:38 am
By the end of the next four years, most of the world will be limping, I’m afraid.
Lovely TT as always. (Did you add a line to the Thursday 13 post? Because if you didn’t I am definitely losing my mind. I don’t remember ever writing “Ta Da!”)
November 17th, 2016 9:22 am
I didn’t add that, Country Dew but I noticed it and remembered when my grandson first used the potty and he showed me and said, “Ta Da!”
November 17th, 2016 3:05 pm
I don’t usually watch SNL anymore, but happened to catch last week’s opening. McKinnon did a beautiful job, though I wonder how many viewers actually got that it wasn’t just a swan song for HRC, but a tribute to the last Cohen. I’ve had the song in my head for the past week, though I much prefer this version by Straight No Chaser. Loved the kids’ comments. My T13
November 17th, 2016 7:56 pm
I just watched slow TV of wood piling in Norway, 5 hours of it. Now I’ll go look to see if any of those made it into your woodpiles. lol One looked like a shaggy little weeble.