FROM OTHER PLACES

Photo by Janie at Photography with a Southern Accent---her pictures are just breathtaking.

This year's first little jottings from my journal; when words strike me, I write them down to savor and to remember:


I’d rather have thirty minutes of Wonderful than a lifetime of Nothin’ Special.
Shelby Eatenton Latcherie Steel Magnolias


"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall use my time." ~Jack London

And, even in the rock-and-sing cadence of this old poem, the one we learned by heart in our first Literature classes, the one in which we were learning da-da-DA, da da da DA da on our way to all the enrichment of rhyme and meter, beginning with this ancient saw---I wonder what Longfellow would have thought of a whole mixed class of Mississippi third-graders, reciting and rocking in time like a shul of kippahed boys:

Lives of GREAT men all re-MIND us,
Let us MAKE our lives subLIME;
And dePARTing, leave be HIND us,
Foot prints ON the sands of TIME.

And it concludes, with a hum and a haw and a homily, one that will out itself at the strangest times and places---over the dishpan or trying on shoes:


Let us THEN be up and DOing,
With a HEART for any FATE;
Still aCHIE-ving, still purSUing,
Learn to LAbor and to WAIT.



Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
Victor Hugo

On singers who sing themselves, not the song:

As for Christina, what a disgrace. Our anthem is beautiful as it is... it doesn't need to be dragged around by its hair! A Comment on Tom and Lorenzo








The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away - Joy J. Golliver


"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." E.M. Forster

The cake has a wonderful rainy afternoon quality; the crumb of a great pound cake but multiple times more moist. Smitten Kitchen.

Sweetpea's first marmalade pound cake.

On returning from a trip:
. . .home with new memories, carefully folded and put away in the drawers of sweet yesterdays. KELLE HAMPTON of Enjoying the Small Things

Kelle's blog is a wonderful mix of the extraordinary and the everyday---thoroughly lived, thoroughly enjoyed, thoroughly enchanting. Once you go there, you'll keep going back.

It feels like Spring here. like Warm and Cool have exchanged vows in a beautiful blue-skied ceremony and have brought forth a love child who dwells right here, right now. She is splendid, this love child, and she brings with her breezes that send our curtains fluttering and call the babies outside. KELLE HAMPTON

I live my life in exclamation points. Connie @ Living Beautifully

Exclamation points it is---as much as Spring, I think we all NEED some Exclamation. Let's go have some!!

OTHER FOLKS' WORDS

You know, this little Southern wisp of Hey, Y’all has been going on for more than two years now, and some days, there seems to be TOO much to say. I post one thing, and then happen across a picture, or remember a moment, or think of someone long gone whose words or life had meaning for me, and I want to dash them down RIGHT NOW and send them sailing out into the world.

Then I think---You’ve already posted for today. Give it a rest.

Other days, I just let things “rock on,” as my Mother said about times you just let things be, or the order of things unfurls of its own accord, folks-be-damned and torpedoes ahead, as status stays pretty quo. I do little things around the house, spend twelve hours on the roller-coaster which is Life with Sweetpea, collapse with a tray of thrown-together supper in front of equally-cobbled TV, and start again tomorrow. And somewhere along the way, every time, I come upon a thought or a quote or a way of phrasing things which just captures me in the grace or the grit or the glamour.

Those, I jot down, sometimes in the dark-of-night, before they escape like fireflies winking out in the dark of my flitty mind. My shelf of journals reaching-back-years is always near to hand, and I fumble for the right one, hoping not to lose the page forever in some late-night haze when need for sleep and need to commit the words to paper fight their battle with my senses, scribbling my spider-tracks all down through the lines, and at a loss to read parts of it in the fresh light of day.

Occasionally I’ll hear or see something that I just HAVE to save, out and about, and I’ll scramble for a pen, pad, a folded scrap of paper, a grocery list---just to get those words down before they’re gone like one of those dreams your slippery fingers just drop like vapors into the abyss as you struggle to hold on.

Later, some of them weren’t quite so earth-shaking or worth remembering as I’d thought, but usually, I’m glad I kept them.

There are several lately from Barbara Ueland, a wonderful writer of the past century, whose adventures have captivated generations. Her view on writing, itself, just makes me glad:

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten---happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

And another of hers reminds me of the people in my life who make me laugh---notably Chris and Sis, whose wit and mere voicing of the laughter serve to make us all exponentially more witty and smart:

"Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter--making us think of funnier and funnier things."

She was a prolific and wonderful writer, and is well-remembered by legions of readers. My very favorite words of hers are a parting wish, a cheer before battle, a toast, and a prayer:

STRENGTH TO YOUR SWORD ARM!

That one could stand us all in good stead, whether we’re girded for the fray, or just facing another Monday.

Then there’s one I grabbed from that fount of wisdom, TRUE BLOOD:

I never thought I was smart enough to get depressed, but . . . here I am.
Jason Stackhouse

And from another blogger, whose prose and photos never fail to captivate:

Generosity of spirit is the little red pill that gets you out of the Matrix. The epiphany that frees us. LUCY VANEL

And just a small comment, passing like a refreshing breeze:

Nice thing to do, blessing people. I think suffering some makes people good blessers.
Alison Veres on maggiedammit

One in a long line of comments-on-a-blog---the wistful, longing memory filled my nose with remembered scents of hard work and making-do:

I dreamed of retail store shopping. Money was tight, and we were smart enough not to ask for things. My mother shopped at Paddy's Market before it was fashionable to thrift shop...and the hand me downs were plentiful. To me poverty smells of washing powder, hot irons and the ubiquitous spray starch.

DEBORAH ON DERFWAD MANOR

And from somewhere, I jotted this down, thinking of the arcane truth of the small four words:

Mythical as Maris Crane.

She was never seen, only spoken of, but in such tones of awe and sometimes fear, even by her own husband, that she carved her own invisible niche into a rich, hilarious, touching story with such smart, witty, sharply-characterized people that they kept us coming back for years.

And some of the most-often seen “quotes” appear as little quick reads as we pass other ships in the night or day, for they’re affixed to the bumpers of passing cars.

I think one of the cleverest I’ve ever seen was on the tiny vehicle belonging to the free-est spirit I’ve ever known personally---she travels the world at whim, trekking great chasms and air-cramped trails of Nepal, flying into tsunami-blasted areas to render aid, and is right now in Goa, I believe, just drinking Life to the proverbial lees.

Her sticker reads: MY KARMA RAN OVER YOUR DOGMA.

I’ve seen a few others over the years which come to mind, but my very favorite thing ever said in reference TO a bumper-sticker came from Chris, not long ago as we drove along behind a car which was covered in so many bright patches of words, it resembled a travelin’ quilt.

I asked if he’d ever thought of putting any bumper-sticker on OUR car---political or otherwise.. He didn’t even blink.

“Well,” he said."Whatever you blast into the world on a bumper-sticker, you’re either Preachin” to the Choir or you’re Drawin’ Fire, and either way, why bother?”