The Daily Crisis

"Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."

— Anton Chekhov

Which will it be?

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

— Edith Wharton

Me, too, Edith. Me, too.

In Slovakia

Can we deny what the tea leaves say? Or other signs?

In Slovakia they grow potatoes
and cabbages
and women with strong backs and hearts.

The gypsy woman with her breasts pushed up pale
through a baggy dress printed with flowers
and a faded fringed shawl
takes his hand in hers and spreads it wide.
Her crooked finger traces his lines.
From underneath the knotted scarf
(that holds her golden hair off her
pale aquiline face and the gold hoops
of her earrings;
odd
this gypsy milky white and fair-haired)
her eyes narrow and she sighs.

It is not quiet here. There are
night noises, insects, dogs,
and on the other side of the wooden wagon
near where the horses are tethered
laughter and singing and a mandolin.
The fire crackles, too, nearer, and casts an unstill
glow in the gypsy's eyes.

"What?"

Her eyes look into and through him and then,
away.
Almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head.

This ending isn't quite right yet, I know, though I've tried several things. I'll keep working on it.

Prostrate in Prayer

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

— Rumi

Speak in Me

Speak in me this day, God
Echo in my heart
And resound through all creation:

Voice of Love
Voice of wonder
Voice of praise
Voice of thanksgiving
Voice of kindness
Voice of patience
Voice of encouragement
Voice of blessing
Voice of truth.

Snow

IV.

No sound
Where sound always is
Snow falling.

Double-Good Day!

What could be better than a no-drive day, except a no-drive day spent watching six inches of snow fall?

This town is beautiful, and strikingly so in the snow. I walked up to the cemetery to watch the snow and the night fall. Deliciously quiet. I could see the lights of Taneytown, and Oz (the Lehigh plant in Union Bridge), but not the trails at Liberty.

The darkness descended ever so quietly — there was no space between the day and the dusk and the dark — even as the snow stopped falling.

You Go, Girl!

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

— Maureen Dowd

I, Slovak...

Interesting (from The Writer's Almanac, where else?)...

It's the birthday of novelist, short story writer, and playwright Karel Capek, (books by this author) born in Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia (1890). A writer of novels, visionary romances, travel books, stories, and essays, Karel is best known for his plays, especially R.U.R. (1921), which introduced the word "robot" to the world. He got the idea when he was reading while riding in an automobile. He looked up from his reading and suddenly the crowds looked to him like artificial beings. At the premiere of R.U.R., audiences and critics were both fascinated and terrified by its vision of a technically advanced society unable to control its ultimate labor-saving creation, the robot.

Why, why, why?!?

"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order."

—Eudora Welty

Happy New Year!

Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power —

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

—Kalidasa
India, 4th century A.D.