The 13 Crosswalk
1. We passed by the Abbey Road Restaurant while in Virginia Beach this weekend and passed the place in Bethany Beach where the shop called Octupus’s Garden used to be.
2. My favorite Beatles’s line is probably “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” I once had a sign made saying that and it hung over my bathroom window for years.
3. The way to my heart is not diamonds, it might be flowers, but mostly it’s pie. See
4. We took a road trip over Mother’s Day weekend, spent some time with Joe’s mom in Bethany Beach, did some sushi feasting, pie eating and beach sunning. After Bethany Beach, we went to Virginia Beach, and then Norfolk to attend a poetry salon where I was one a several featured readers. We also squeezed in a post-op doctor visit at UVA in Charlottesville where we toured the site of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally/protest, and I got a clean bill of health after a recent laparoscopic surgery to remove some benign cysts on my liver.
5. The poetry reading I read at is called Fairmount Five, but because one of the poets wasn’t able to come, there were only four of us. “You can read a little longer,” the host told me. “To tell you the truth, I’m ready to sit, and sitting down is a compromise when I really want to lie down,” I answered. – More on the reading HERE.
6. Grief and loss and “apprenticing myself to my own disappearance” (as coined by poet David Whyte) were themes of some of the poems I read, published in my 2017 collection Packing a Suitcase for an Afterlife. After reading those, I noticed a woman in the audience looking pained. “I think you need some comic relief,” I told her. She answered something about needing a drink. So, I read “In Answer to How are You,” which always gets a laugh. See why HERE.
7. I’m so directional dyslexic (aka dyscalculic) that when I’m getting around places I don’t know, I grab on to Joe and let him lead the way. I recently referred to him as my “seeing eye dog.”
8. I’m more of a birdwatcher than a cat or dog owner.
9. Dyscalculia is a mathematical disability that can occur in people from across the whole IQ range – often higher than average – along with difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning… The term was coined in the 1940s, but it was not until 1974 when the word was completely recognized by the work of a Czechoslovakian researcher Ladislav Kosc. When his work came out he defined the work as “a structural disorder of mathematical abilities.” His research proved that this learning disability was caused by impairments to certain parts of the brain that control mathematical calculations, and it was not because these people were ‘mentally handicapped…”- Wikipedia
10. Did you know there’s a Beatles Reggae tribute band called Yellow Dubmarine?
11. Can you find the yellow submarine HERE?
12. I’d like to stay on the phone with my boyfriend / while my brother Jim poses in his army uniform / but I’m distracted by the turntable / playing something from the Beatles / and I have a new poem to work on now – from Ghost Poem – Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife
13. Whenever I can’t remember someone’s name and I’m vocalizing a list of possibilities, I like to include “John, Paul, George and Ringo” as part of my guesses.
__________Thirteen Thursday
May 16th, 2018 11:53 pm
It’s a good thing you’ve got Joe to grab on to.
May 17th, 2018 1:17 am
“Life is what happens while you’re making other plans” is my Fave John Lennon quote, n it seems to describe my life. adore Beatles, n would like to visit there.
May 17th, 2018 1:26 am
I always had trouble with doing math that wasn’t written. I needed a visual or couldn’t remember what I needed to do the next function, like in carry-over. But after working a drive-thru window with no register to figure change, I suddenly got much better at remembering! I am so much better than when younger.
I think it is because i can visualize the map of the numbers I would write. My brain needs a map to follow. Also I realized years ago, that the music I remember is all math!
So the poetry you write, is all math! You just do it in a different way. You just don’t call it math.
May 17th, 2018 8:26 am
I agree that poetry is not so unlike math with equations to solve, common denominators to work with and letters to add and subtract.
I also like: In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
May 17th, 2018 8:33 am
love my birds all day
May 17th, 2018 3:18 pm
Loved your 13, as always, CR! Finally, here, the field out back has become a sea of green and the band (The Songbirds) has begun to play.
May 17th, 2018 5:10 pm
Always intriguing, your TTs. I’m glad you did the poetry reading. Way cool.
May 20th, 2018 1:30 pm
Glad you got a clean bill of health … followed the links and remembered to come back and thank you this time. #8 me too, obviously. #7 me too although I am better than I used to be (and I hang on to my own ‘seeing-eye-dog). #9 me too …but I didn’t even know the word for my condition until now (so maybe I am slightly illiterate as well as totally dyscalculic). Really, thank you for the new word!