Photography, Part Four

Closed. Permanently.

Dead Volkswagen

Photography, Part Three

Sacred Heart Cultural Center

Photography, Part Two

Inside an abandoned carpet plant.

Photography, Part One

The next few posts will be photographs from a recent trip over to South Carolina.

Something beautiful.

A friend of mine keeps the mixtape tradition alive, from time to time burning me a CD of various random tracks that she thinks I would (or at least should) like. Sometimes she gets it right, turning me on to something I've never heard before or reminding me of something I'd loved but forgotten. Sometimes she gets it terribly wrong, causing me to wonder if she chose to slip something horrible in to make sure I'm listening, but it doesn't matter; it's the friendship, the care the goes into the choosing, that makes each one a precious gift.

I still make "mixtapes"occasionally: for my special friends, or new friends, or for people who simply want to know me better. The pleasure of looking for the right song and putting it in the right order for the right person is itself a pleasure. I try to imagine their faces as they listen to it, wondering if they'll get the connections between the songs, or understand why I chose it, or even if they'll like what I've done.

My friend put the song below on a CD for me. I'm not a fan of the song, and had never heard of the singer, but I was spellbound, then moved almost to tears by the end of her rendition of it. The late Eva Cassidy, singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".



Rob Sheffield, a writer for Rolling Stone, recently published a book about his relationship with Renee, the woman who became his wife, and who died too soon, in a book titled Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. It's a poignant, sweet, and funny book. I highly recommend it.

And speaking of things I highly recommend and mixtapes, I can't not put in a word about one of the best musicians you've never heard of - Butch Walker - and his song "Mixtape" from his album, Letters. This is one of his ballads, but let me assure you, if you like the rock n' roll, you need to get you some Butch in your life (also look for recordings by Marvelous 3 and 1969, bands that he's been a part of).





If you're interested in any of the stuff mentioned here, you can find it by way of my Amazon widget. Enjoy!

for Mother's Day

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

- Billy Collins

National Poetry Month comes to an end

I'll post poems from time to time going forward, but today marks the last day of April, and the end of National Poetry Month.

Eating the World

I was born with my mouth open...
entering this juicy world
of peaches and lemons and ripe sun
and the pink and secret flesh of women,
this world where dinner is in the breath
of the subtle desert,
in the spices of the distant sea
which late at night drift over sleep.

I was born somewhere between
the brain and the pomegranate,
with a tongue tasting the delicious textures
of hair and hands and eyes;
I was born out of the heart stew,
out of the infinite bed, to walk upon
this infinite earth.

I want to feed you the flowers of ice
on this winter window,
the aromas of many soups,
the scent of sacred candles
that follows me around this cedar house,
I want to feed you the lavender
that lifts up out of certain poems,
and the cinnamon of apples baking,
and the simple joy we see
in the sky when we fall in love.

I want to feed you the pungent soil
where I harvested garlic,
I want to feed you the memories
rising out of the aspen logs
when I split them, and the pinyon smoke
that gathers around the house on a still night,
and the mums left by the kitchen door.

I want to feed you the colors of rain
on deserted parking lots,
and the folds of delirious patchouli
in the Indian skirt of the woman
on Market Street in San Francisco,
and the human incense of so much devotion
in tiny villages in Colorado and Peru.

I want to serve you breakfast at dawn,
I want to serve you the bread
that rises in the desert dust, serve you
the wind that wanders through the canyons,
serve you the stars that fall over the bed,
serve you the Hopi corn one thousand years old,
serve you the saffron in the western sunset,
serve you the delicate pollen that blows its lullaby
through each lonely wing of flesh;
I want to serve you the low hum of bees
clustered together all winter
eating their honey.

--James Tipton