why in tennis is zero called love?

Because love is more than zero, it is the opposite of zero, it is everything. When you love the world loves with you. Didn't someone famous say that? At any rate, I found something else to love. (Perhaps fickleness is a detrimental side-effect of love? And do you notice, as I did because I had to use spellchecker, that word det-ri-mental? It actually comes from the middle english/latin and means "loss" but as an adjective it looks more like a state-of-being, a place inside your mind.)

So here is where my fickle heart resides this morning:

Okay, my blogging skills are a bit thin - click to read this NYTimes blog

You rock, Maira Kalman.

I'd like to interview you and ask your favorite dessert and peek in your closet and run my hands over your paints and brushes.

Next Stop, Grand Central was a favorite of Wylie's for years. How could it not be? Rhyming, trains, New York?

Maira Kalman has an ear for the outrageous and a heart for the disenfranchised. There is nothing of loss and everything of mental spark.

Maira Kalman is the opposite of zero.

**I had forgotten that she redid The Elements of Style.

Is it possible to be in love with the comments on a strange man's blog?

Well? Is it?
Head on on over to the Postulant's site and scroll down to "On not immanentizing the eschaton" and read the comments.

Swooning.

Come on, he had me at "immanentizing"...

Poetry schmoetry

It fits the bill and we're goin'


Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul (Istanbul)
Istanbul (Istanbul)

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul

Istanbul (not Constantinople) can be found on the They Might Be Giants album "Flood"

Didja know that They Might be from Lincoln, Mass?

Ohhhh

NINE DAYS IN APRIL: VCCA
by Barbara Crooker

I
In Vermeer's paintings, light is always falling
just like here, in sweet Virginia, where spring's
already come, lilacs and phlox, soft air
on bare arms, descending. Peepers are calling
from the trees, there are dogwoods, white
and pink, everywhere, as if a cloud
of butterflies has come to ground. Haloed
in hazy green, the woods are coming back to life.
At twilight, the scent of lilacs drifts
through the open screen, the sky turns lavender,
and this first day's work is put away.
Nothing but false starts today,
first lines begun that simply go nowhere;
filling yellow paper with my erratic script.

II
Filling yellow paper, my erratic script
wanders over the blue ridges and green fields
where cows munch green grass, that yields
rich milk, like Vermeer's maid, whose hips,
wrapped in a thick blue apron, are rolling hills
themselves. The earthen jug, the crusty bread, the buttery
light glazes her face and arms, spills
onto the table and floor. The thing about memory's
that it's a thief, stealing what it should
preserve, the past, stop all the clocks.
I'm trying to remember what it felt like to be five,
first days of school, the smell of library paste, arriving
late, the stomach butterflied, new crayons in their box.
I'm trying to be good.

III
I'm trying to be good, write 500 words a day
even though outside the sun is streaming
like a thousand dandelions gleaming,
and the sky's the blue of washed chambray.
The purple prose of redbud trees is
scribbled and scrawled outside the lines.
Hidden in the grass, violets, buttercups shine,
but gosh, how hard this writing business
is--it's easy enough to just repeat, a slick
lyric, a villanelle or two--
What challenges are there that I've not tried,
that also calls to something from inside,
blends head and heart as Vermeer drew
the light? A crown of sonnets just might do the trick.

IV
A crown of sonnets sure would do the trick,
could capture this experience--away
from home, nine days to see if I could pay
attention to myself for just a bit.And so, today, I took a break and drove
to town, a thrift shop, bought a raw silk
blouse of Chinese blue, a tee shirt swirled in gilt
and glitter, earrings of gears and sequins that I love.
Came back, wrote for hours, went for a massage,
felt all the knots along my shoulder blades untie,
walked down the winding road, the mustard
blooming, thick as butter
spread on bread. All I
know is: a day like this is nothing but a blessing.

V
What a blessing it is, to be in this space,
no cleaning off the desk when school bus comes.
The only sounds, the birds and bees that hum
and dither-which flower should we light on next?
In the woods, light falls, reflects off dogwoods,
rafts of phosphorescence, illuminations, decrescendos
of lace. Each morning, I do yoga, get the blood
moving, then back inside to dig in memory's mine.
Each sonnet's getting harder now to write,
but the challenge has been thrown down like a glove
or crumpled petals littering the ground. I'd like to prove
that I can meet this task, and take delight
as one word, then another, falls in line.

VI
One word, and then another, falls in line
like geese wedging their way down the sky,
a vast scroll of paper yet unwritten. I
roll a sheet in the typewriter, and begin
again, to try and pin down what's elusive,
some insistent bird that whistles from a bush,
"Here, here, here I am," then vanishes,
while I am left to struggle with the narrative.
Like Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window,
I wish the light would flood in from the left,
paint me slickly gold, tell me what comes next.
But I am in the dark, no map, no text,
just following my heart as night falls soft,
covers us with her obsidian wing.

VII
Night covered us with her blueblack wing,
but now it is the morning, the last day--
here, the closest thing to paradise on earth. May
I be truly grateful for this stay, though squeezing
these last lines is getting tougher.
Last night, we had a concert, Brahms
and Currier on grand piano, wine on the lawn,
Caesar salad, grilled tuna, and strawberries for supper.
The lilt of southern vowels, drawling--
But this last sonnet's waiting to be woven,
threading the radiance of spring, memory's snapshots,
pictures at an exhibition, birdsong snippets,
into the poem's loom, the descant of love.
In Vermeer's paintings, light is always falling.

April is the cruelest...no no is National Poetry Month!!

Through an old, old friend, and in a roundabout way, I found a new poet today. Thanks to poets.org

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye
Albert Goldbarth

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.