Follow her train of thought...

Friday, February 16, 2007

3:07 PM

"I am not being trivial. Your separateness could kill you unless I take it from you as a sickness. What if you get stranded in the town where pears and winter are variants for one another? Can you eat winter? No. Can you live six months inside a frozen pear? No. But there is a place, I know the place, where you will stand and see pear and winter side by side as walls stand by silence. Can you punctuate yourself into silence? You will see the edges cut away from you, back into a world of another kind—back into real emptiness, some would say. Well, we are objects in a wind that stopped, is my view. There are regular towns and irregular towns, there are wounded towns and sober towns and fiercely remembered towns, there are useless but passionate towns that battle on, there are towns where the snow slides from the roofs of the houses with such force that the victims are killed, but there are no empty towns (just empty scholars) and there is no regret. Now move along."

-- from "The Life of Towns," Anne Carson

(art: "Envious Pear," by Charlene Winter Olson)

* * *

My dad had a stroke last Wednesday night, Valentine's Day. He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, with skyrocketing blood pressure levels and a clot in his cerebellum. He's still in the ICU, but is lucid and getting better and wondering when/if he can still drink beer. Prayers and positive thoughts for a full and speedy recovery would be greatly appreciated.

Labels: family, poetry, winter

Comments:

<$BlogCommentBody$>

# posted by <$BlogCommentAuthor$> : <$BlogCommentDateTime$>

(0) comments <$BlogCommentDeleteIcon$>