Running in Circles

Don't.

I read this on the Alcoholic Poet's blog this morning. I keep thinking I should stop reading her poetry. It is sometimes brilliant, but never uplifting, never hopeful. Then, when I am about to erase her from my blog roll, I find another grain of
truth in the sand box in which she plays.

Here, from her poem about wicked witches ....

The dog chewing its tail. Caught at last. After years of running in circles. It's such a terrible disappointment. To get what you want.


So stop running in circles.

I think that is what despair is ... it is running in circles ... it is chasing problems around in mazes rather than seeking solutions.

Kenya runs in circles sometimes ... and sometimes she too catches her tail ... and cleans it of burrs. But more often she chases her tail when I don't respond quickly enough to her pleas to go outside. The message is very clearly, "I really, really have to go out NOW!"

She has also checked out her hind end when someone has farted. She always assumes it might have been her.

On Sunday might she and Shea lay near us while we ate Tamarak's dinner. We were all ankle deep in water ... and the two dogs foolish enough to stay close were lying in a few inches of water. When Kenya got up the water poured out of her luxuriant bush of a tail and sounded for all the world like someone peeing from a height into a pool. It startled her so much that she immediately turned toward her tail, mortified that she might have lost control of her bladder.

It was one of the lighter moments on Sunday night.

Today before the rains start again, Kenya and will go up and try to clear the stream above the road so that the water stays in the creek bed. If it tries to come straight down my hill it could flow over the retaining wall into the area in front of the front door.

Tea Cozies and Poetry

Not sure where this idea sprang from ... or why ... but I decided a way to create a series of tea cozies that were related but all different would be to seek out simple images like the balloons from Tamarak's painting (ones that can be cut from felt) and include with each tea cozy some lines of poetry about balloons or kites or butterfies or whatever.

Some interesting snippets I gathered as I researched balloons:

"Even lead balloons float if the magic is strong enough."

"I hate letting my mind wander.
I'm afraid it won't come back."

The balloon seller is seen metaphorically as a "dispenser of joy; a harbinger of spring."

"Our papas have formed a poetry club ... poems have balloons and sex and giraffes in them."

I began with a memory of a poem about an old woman selling balloons but I couldn't find it on- line. I did find 99 Luft ballons, and I discovered several other poems about balloons, one by Sylvia Plath and one by Carl Sandburg.


Then I went looking for poetry about kites. I was able to find Leonard Cohen's "A Kite is a Victim You are Sure of", and discovered some new ones as well.

Another series I would like to do is based on Tamarak's Arctic paintings. The colours are strong, the shapes simple, and the lines bold.

And then there could be a very open-ended series based on nature which would go well with these lines by William Blake. ("Auguries of Innocence")

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand
And Eternity in an Hour

Of course, how many people actually use tea cozies? I keep running into people, even tea afficionados, who dip their tea bags into mugs instead of making tea properly with fresh boiling water in preheated pots left to steep the requisite period of time. Coffee, which I can no longer tolerate much of, is given far more respect these days.

I guess maybe the idea of tea cozies married with poetry comes from my own practice of bringing a tray with tea pot, cup and milk jug up to my den where I reflect on things first thing in the morning.