Talking about face

There were once two young friends (a boy and a girl) sitting across from each other at a table, in a class. Although they were normally accompanied by others, today its just them. The girl thinks she would not mind for it to be this way more often. Although it would probably be too bad for him if he didn't share himself with everyone, since he is an outgoing person. But, for today, she enjoys it. Also, they were also very cultured individuals; they enjoyed discussing art.

She said: "Like, it was fun when I drew that one picture of your face."
"Oh," he said, "my face is not that remarkable. I mean, I'm not saying that theres anything wrong with it, but, I always thought that an artist would want to draw a face with more interesting features."
She said, "No, you really do have a remarkable face."
"Oh, its not that great."
"Yes, it is. Its a very remarkable face!"
"Oh, stop it."
"It is a remarkable face."
"You're making me feel like I was fishing for a compliment."
"But it really is a very remarkable face," she said. "It is."

His eyes communicated a look, like, "Thats enough," and he became very quiet.
Then she noticed that people all around them, who normally would be talking, have all grown quiet for some reason. The two who had been speaking at the table became quiet, also. She thinks, "Now we are listening to the sound of people listening."

singing

There was once 3 young friends of different faiths and they were also individuals with different talents. They could make each other laugh. And they could (possibly?) all sing. For their faiths, the initials are: J, C & M. J & C liked each other, but, perhaps, each one liked M just a little better. There were once two girls and one boy, all sitting at a table. The two girls liked music a lot and were fans of mixed tapes and etcetra. One especially always liked to sing, and sometimes both of them would sing. And the boy would rather make fun of the singing but he did it in a relatively good-natured way, and it was funny.

Stories, etc.

I'm going to be off and exploring more of the city of Chicago soon as a result of attending the IRA conference next week...that will be fun...

I have been thinking that maybe I will be writing some stories in this thing. I feel a bit inspired, recently. I have begun to contemplate: suppose you had a friend once, who did not have a remarkable face. (It was a just reasonably attractive face. But the person had, nonetheless, a remarkable soul. To you.) How could you recognize the face after a decade had passed? It would be so much easier, if the face had had something remarkable about it. A hooked nose, perhaps. But alas, there had been nothing of this in the old friend's face. But the soul had seemed remarkable. And because of this strange window of time in which you and the other person had met, there would be, less than any judgement, mostly a feeling of interest on your part, with regard to whatever had occured to this person on their path of life. It would be difficult to recognize the face but enjoyable to see it again after ten plus years. If it were ever possible.

Another children's book I have read recently: The Second Mrs. Giaconda by E. L. Konisburg. Its all about Leonardo da Vinci and Beatrice and Il Moro (Ludovico Sforza) as told through the eyes of a young assistant to Leonardo. I can't help but like the way Beatrice is portrayed, in that book. Its part of a Barnes and Noble endcap about Leonardo Da Vinci. Borders, for all their Da Vinci Code paraphenalia, posters and such, has no copies of it...

Also, maybe one of these days I will post some pictures in here. But I don't know if I can post any right now, because I still use the internet in the library and not at my apartment!

Now I feel like I should post some words of wisdom or a special quote, but none comes to me...so, perhaps another time...

It is not impossible...

that a variety of circumstances could conspire to create a new and strange incidence of something else. And all the little unspoken rules that conspired to keep something as whatever it was could be forgotten and then come back to you and arrange themselves into new and strange forms. And this goes on daily. Under a multitude of roofs and skies and in the name of millions of varieties of religions.
Some "memories" come back and they could be stories and perhaps not provable facts, and yet these stories could be the fruits of a portion of reality that once was, which for some reason has come flooding back into your present, and has wormed itself strangely into your brain, is turning into something else in your heart or psyche, and is part of a remembering of what you once were and then you take that and another self is born out of that.

poems and old pictures

Yesterday I went to a poetry thing and actually read some poems. (They were from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.)Some good poems (including one about having German heritage, and a satirical one about T.S. Eliot's Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock ) were also read. And a guy did a spoken word poem he'd written in Harrisburg, PA which was really good.

I remember that I used to listen to the Cats poems a lot in highschool. I listened to a lot of musicals. I used to go into art class and sing them and annoy people. Especially this one from West Side Story. "I am pretty, Oh so pretty..."B ut there was a friend I had who didn't seem to mind being annoyed ;-)

His name was Umar, and he was one of the first people I met. We lived in the same townhouse complex. In retrospect, I thought I was maybe meant to meet him, too. Before I'd left Vashon and moved to Virginia, I'd been told (by a certain source) "there will be one you will know immediately who will bring much laughter to ye, and this is a promise." And thats exactly what happened on many of those days in art class. He had a gift for making people laugh.

On the first day of art class, I sat across from him and drew his portrait by looking upside down into the mirror. First, the chin, next the nose, etc...it was pretty good, I must say. He drew one of me but he wasn't impressed with it. I looked like a "cave woman" or something, I think he said. But he looked at mine and said "its like I'm looking in the mirror!" Actually mine was not technically that great but for some reason it did end up looking a lot like him.

I think he was one for whom I felt agape...but there is not much of a language for that in highschool. I had not thought about him in quite a while but when I went home to Virginia, I found that old picture I'd drawn of him. I looked at it for a long while, and then I threw it out. But...perhaps I should've kept it.

Walk. Book.

Its interesting to walk around this area. I can see the kids playing in the parks around small ponds and lakes. There are birds and big airplanes from O'Hare and small airplanes from Schaumburg and, well, the sky never sleeps, so thats what you get when you walk in the suburbs around Chicago.

In bookstores with many Da Vinci Code posters in the windows, I've been reading Scent of God: A Memoir by Beryl Bissell.

April Days

Sumer is i-cumen in, lhude sing cucu etectra.

Taxes done.

Visited Michigan and also the farm "up north" ("Isn't this an empire? I mean compared to the livingroom?" my grandfather asked us).

Weather was stormy on the way back on Sunday. Nothing was open. It was more like 6 hours from Ann Arbor (as opposed to the more usual 4 1/2). Changed cat carrier paper in electrical rainstorm at a Cracker Barrel in Indiana.

Maybe I should photos of my sister ripping apart an old fainting couch to get at a musty old 1925 newspaper stuffed inside of it.

And of her dog, whose fur matches the feather of red chickens.

Impossible

Some definitions, as given by children.

Impossible--Something-somebody is the same as you.

Impossible--You do something you are proud of.

Impossible--It's impossible.

Impossible--If somebody says their baby brother is psychic or can jump all the way to the sky.

I really hope I get to go here again some day:

Ten Thousand Waves

She was Scottish, rather.

A book I liked very much at age 12 is: Shadow in Hawthorne Bay by Janet Lunn.

I tried to reread it. Was not the same. Oh well. I guess I'm no longer 12 or living on an island in a house surrounded by Scotch Broom. But it is still good. I might've been influenced by the book cover, too. The copy that the Schaumburg Public Library has a different version. I favor the cover on the copy I owned, which is at my mother's house in N.C., and it is also the one featured on the author's website.

I was always rather into the book's cover, actually. I was a visually oriented person. I always tried to be an artist. In all of my favorite books, I would draw many clumsy (but heart-soaring!!!) illustrations inside of them.

She's very interesting, this author (Janet Lunn). She sets her books around her own home. The Root Cellar was another good one.

Also really liked Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery, around this time. Here again, I think I was very interested in the book cover. The only version of the book cover that I can find on the web is athttp://skins.perildeity.net/lmm.php It looks all scrambled up.

It would be fun to collect various esoteric book covers and frame them. Well maybe.

Next, I want to figure out the author and title of another good book I read back when I was about 12. It was set in medieval times (in France maybe?) and the main character was a young woman whose uncle was an inventor of a new kind of clock. She goes to live with him for a time. There was kind of a lot of violence in this book. I think it opens up with her family getting killed, for example, and she does not escape unscathed. Oh yes...and she had a little brother who was different--like a mute or an albino or something, and she has to watch out for him.

Cloze Procedure

"The word cloze is related to the concept of closure, the human tendency to complete a partly finished pattern, to pick out key words and rely on language repetition in English discourse. The theory originated in Gestalt psychology and assumes that in figuring out the missing word, the mind goes through a process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming the appropriate word choice."

("Assessment Report, Communications Discipline", by Roslyn Dixon, Communications Assessment Coordinator, Douglas College, June 1, 1989)

"There is controversy regarding the use of cloze procedure in determining the readability of written materials. This controversy is based on the fact that cloze is a subjective evaluation that mirrors the language ability and background of information of the person taking the test."

(Annette T. Rabin, "Determining Difficulty Levels of Text Written in Languages Other than English" in Zakaluk and Samuels, p.46-76)

From a section entitled "What is Cloze procedure?" at http://www.gopdg.com/plainlanguage/readability.html

"IN childhood I had a friend, -- not a house friend, domestic, stuffy in association; nor yet herdsman, or horseman, or farmer, or slave of bench, or shop, or office; nor of letters, nor art, nor society; but a free, friendly, youthful-seeming man, who wandered in from unknown woods or fields without knocking, --
'Between the night and day
When the fairy king has power,' --
as the ballad says, passed by the elders' doors, but straightway sought out the children, brightened up the wood-fire forthwith; and it seemed as if it were the effect of a wholesome brave north wind, more than of the armful of "cat-sticks" which he would bring in from the yard."

From Preface to Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend by Edward Emerson.


http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/youngfriend.html

Robert Herrick. 1591–1674

259. Upon Julia's Clothes

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free, 5
—O how that glittering taketh me!

http://www.bartleby.com/101/259.html

Mary Rowlandson

"I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other wayes with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but his who ever waketh', my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awfull dispensation of the Lord towards us; upon his wonderfull power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety and suffering none to hurt us. I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies and nothing but death before me: It is then hard work to perswade my self, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the Wheat, and as I may say, With honey out of the rock:"

Quote from Soveraignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson

http://narcissus.umd.edu/eada/html/display.jsp?docs=rowlandson_narrative.xml&action=show

Book

I just got an e-mail from an old friend in Virginia who says she has 4 different boyfriends right now. FOUR. Good lord.

Right now, I'm looking for a book I read when I was younger. I'd really like to find it. It was about an Irish girl named Mary (it was something like Mairie but it gets changed after she immigrates to Canada) who is haunted by the ghost of her deceased cousin, Duncan. She lives by a lake in a cabin. In Canada. She's about 16 in the story, I think. I was very in love with this book when I was about 12. Now I can't even remember the name of it. Or the author. I went on Amazon.com and was trying to find it. I didn't. I did find some old books by Mary Stoltz that I liked when I was about 12. Cat in the Mirror. Pangur Ban. There are no photos of the books' covers. Thats rather sad.

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

(Anonymous guy in medieval Ireland)

Okay. So, I am 12, I live in that house on the bluff on the South of End of Vashon, I am vegetarian, the wind howls by my room, which is next to a massive bunch of scotch broom, which gets all bent over (by the wind), I have the same cat that I have now, and in the morning, after I cook my oatmeal on the woodstove (instant oatmeal and water that is) I walk exactly a mile to the bus, but I miss it (oops) and stay home, and hang out in the woods, or read my book...WHAT IS THE NAME OF IT???

A belief in transmigration is like thinking that...

Fathers have sons who become fathers who have daughters.
Some women have been fathers. Some sons became sisters.

On a radio show, a man said, if you don't sit around the table with your family and thank God for them, then your children will grow up to seek "amor en la calle!" Amor en la calle. Isn't it what writers have celebrated for centuries? Oh, I grew weary listening to him. "Hay caminos, hay piedras en los caminos" he was saying, to the woman, who barely spoke. "La vida no es facil." His voice was powerful, strong, and chastising. Oh he is just playing God! I was frustrated. I switched it off. I had to remove a heaviness from myself. I said "Ah..." It came out sounding like "Abba."
I also thought today, I could imagine a man mournfully paddling away his existence in the face of denied paternity. I don't know if I like how that sounds though. I mean the latter part. I mean, its not the same as the whole, I'm just a human being on a lake. When you throw words like "denied paternity" into it. Then it becomes all one thing. To the mind...

Wouldn't it be great if the worst could never happen. Only almost the worst could happen. Then all you'd say is "Thank god, it didn't. Let's just put bread on the table."