Monday, June 10, 2013

House of Cards; her concentration


I love the light and her focus as she builds with index cards. It is such a pleasure to spend time with grandchildren! This child is particularly fond of office supplies, as I was also when I was young. I save envelopes and other items for her visits. As for myself, I still need extra pens and all different kinds of paper. And, waiting on a shelf, my beloved blank notebooks! And you always need index cards in both sizes and now they even come in colors! I don't like the lined ones, though, too confining.
Today I dropped by a resale store, while my husband was doing his physical therapy in the heated pool next door. I was looking for a small table to hold things he needed near his chair, while he heals from an injury.
I was the only customer, I saw one staff person, who was browsing the clothes and didn't seem to care if I had any questions. I asked her the price of a badly abused table, just the size I wanted, with a tiny rickety drawer. "There should be a sticker on it," she said, continuing to fuss with the racks of clothing. And then, from a dark cavity off to the side, came another voice. "I could give you 10 percent off on that," said the voice. The person never materialized. I moved the decorator items on the top of the table and found the sticker. It was round and green and said $45. (I'd have thought it might be worth about $10.) Then I fled. I haven't had such an unpleasant feeling in a store for a long time. And let's heal with a poem.

MAGIC WORDS

ESKIMO (anonymous) An Eskimo poet, who forever remain anonymous, composed a song based on a legend of origins from the oral tradition. (note by Czeslaw Milosz)

In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could
           happen---
all you had to do was say it,
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.

I found this on page 268 of a wonderful and uplifting, anthology, A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz. Many cheap copies are still available through Amazon. When my brother was dying, he got rid of lots of things, books, audiotapes, etc. But he told me he kept a few books near his bed. They were this book, and a privately printed book of short poems by my friend Pat Shelley, The Rice Papers, which is no longer available. If there was a third (which I seem to remember there was) I have forgotten the title. Important things we have forgotten: there is another blog post!

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