R for Robin

I walked in a different neighborhood last night. I had to do laundry and I figured if I walked while it was washing I'd get two things done at once! Anyway I found some more sidewalk art for my album. I'm becoming fascinated with all the stuff I find on the sidewalk. I especially liked this one because it's an R for Robin!

February/March Poet: Adrienne Rich

Storm Warnings

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things that we have learned to do
Who lived in troubled regions.

Adrienne Rich

Check your neighborhood!

I found an interesting site that I wanted to share. It's called CrimeReports. You can input your address and see what kind of crime is going on in your neighborhood. I found that I'm surrounded by sex offenders. Anyway maybe you'll have more interesting results. . .

Musical Monday

Silent Sunday

This is from my Sidewalk Art photo album. It's pretty cool the things you see if you look at the sidewalk!

February/March Poet: Adrienne Rich

From Atlas of a Difficult World by Adrienne Rich

X
Soledad. = f. Solitude, loneliness, homesickness; lonely retreat
Winter sun in the rosetrees.
An old Mexican with a white moustache prunes them back
           spraying
the cut branches with dormant oil.     The old paper-bag-brown
           adobe walls
stretch apart from the rebuilt mission, in their own time.     It is
           lonely here
in the curve of the road winding through vast brown fields
          machine-engraved in furrows
of relentless precision.     In the small chapel
La Nuestra Senora de la Soledad dwells in her shallow arch
painted on either side with columns.     She is in black lace crisp
           as cinders
from head to foot.     Alone, solitary, homesick
in her lonely retreat.     Outside black olives fall and smash
littering and staining the beaten path.     The gravestones of the
           padres
are weights pressing down on the Indian artisans.     It is the sixth
           day of another war

Signs of Spring

A few signs of Spring from my walk last night. Also a couple of reminders that it's still Winter! Oh yeah and a new sidewalk leaf print!

February/March Poet: Adrienne Rich

For the Dead

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight

By Adrienne Rich

This is how I've felt today

I'm being submerged in storm waters. Or maybe I'm just tired. . .

February/March Poet: Adrienne Rich

I've done a poor job with my poet of the month idea! Well actually I haven't done a lot of posting lately. I'm going to try and catch up a little and post a few poems over the next week by Adrienne Rich. She was February/March poet and I think I've only posted one poem. . .

At age 22, Adrienne Rich was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for A Change of World. She's been called one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. In 1997, she refused the National Medal of Arts, saying "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration."

Power

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

Adrienne Rich

Musical Monday

River & bridge pictures

These are pictures I took today by the Sacramento River. The river is almost at 25 ft and 35 ft is flood level so I guess I'm safe. I took some of the Tower Bridge also. It's one of my favorite views in Sacramento. There weren't a lot of people out as it was rainy and cold. I walked and took pictures and got wet and had a lovely time! There are plaques along the river walk that have information on them. Some have excerpts and drawings from The Wind in the Willows. That was one of my favorite stories but I haven't read it in years. I think I'm going to find a copy to read!

I've embedded a link to my Picasa album to see the pictures. Hopefully it works right - I've never done it this way before! Ok it worked! Click on the picture or the date and it will take you to the album.

2011-03-19

Oops

I haven't posted for awhile! Not much to say - it's a rainy, gloomy day here. I walked & took a few pictures so I'll post those.

Looking up at the tree - it looked pretty cool I thought!

This is a pretty tree!

This house is next door to where I work. It was built in, I think, 1921. I want to live there!

Despite the rain these tulips are looking fairly happy!

I liked the tree against the tower.

Sidewalk graffiti!

I always look for leaf prints on the sidewalk because I really like them. This is a nice one.

I also look for hearts when I walk. This one is on the door of a house that is being remodeled. It's not the best picture - I had to crop and lighten it so you could see the heart.

Just a thought

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. To stay with that shakiness – to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge – that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic – this is the spiritual path.  Pema Chodron

Just pictures

Some pictures from my walk this morning!