Look!

Look!
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

It's trash night tonight, and we have wheeled big recycle can and small garbage can out to the curb. Where they'll be picked up by the giant tongs on huge noisy trucks in the morning,
Big news today is that you cannot fly with liquids, or gels, including contact lens fluid, prescriptions like insulin, or baby food. No cola bottles. Nada. My new blog name might be GladToDrive.
But this one blog is enough for me. That's my grandchild; she's a talker! She calls us both "Grandpa" which means, I guess, that she understands we visit together.
We start work on this year's haiku anthology in a week. It looks like we have some good poems. It's very quiet outside tonight. And so to sleep.

Misty mountains of the sages

Misty mountains of the sages
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

Another airplane photo, from a trip to Utah to visit Mom. I love taking these, but don't fly much now. If we gp anythere, we usually drive.
Kitchen update: the water is back on. There was a moment of terror when the disposal wouldn't fit, but our clever guy came over and cut a square hole in the hardboard next to the dishwasher and solved the problem, Eveyrthing works without leaking: dishwasher, disposal and refrigerator water. The stove is also in, but the installer didn't have the microwave yet and will come back. Once the cabinets are rebuilt, we still will have to put in new flooring and paint. Sometimes I wish we hadn't started, but I think it will be very nice. It seems too self-indulgent. The stove looks like it will be a genuine pleasure to cook on. Well-marked controls, and abilities far beyond anything we have ever used.
I have 945 books entered in Librarything now. And patterns are beginning to emerge, which is very ineresting. I found another duplicate today--that makes five in the living room alone, Sigh. But I also found a lot of forgotten books that I want to read or page through the illustrations again; that is a great pleasure.

The infinite variety of clouds

DSCN3534 mod squ
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

I'm still dreaming about travel; this is from that snowy trip through Donner Pass.
Went to the Main Gallery (it's in a yellow house) in Redwood City to see the encaustic collages and print work by a friend. They were small, delicate and very lovely. Then we had a Chinese meal, salad and chicken with orange and ginger. From the taste of it, quite a bit of sugar, too. Good.
This morning on Book TV, an In Depth with an author named Gallagher, a Civil War historian. The Civil War is fascinating, it's true, and there is plenty of documentation. It made me wonder if I would really want to spend my whole career studying one war. I don't think that I would.
Inspector Morse was resureected to solve a murder tonight. We are enjoying it. He's solved it now, and he is being quite wonderfully crabby.

Another road trip coming up

Saint Saens Organ Symphony
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

We are still hoping to make one this summer. It's looking good for the end of this month. More repairs done today: dryer vent, mailbox and retainer board in the front yard.
I've been thinking about poetry and the writing process. Here is something that Brenda Hillman said after a reading at Black Oak Books several years ago.

"What starts a poem is a tension
a sort of generalized ganglion of wierdness . . ."
I wrote it down at once!

Mr. Van Vranken taught me about the ganglion in high school science class. I have often wished I had ever told him how much I learned in those classes. He was a very good teacher and I rarely encountered any better ones later on.

Looking for the color yellow

My daughter's cat
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

The Wild Thyme Unseen . . .

This is a philosophical cat. She lives on a farm in Michigan and enjoys springtime, as we all do. She is the music and doesn't think about it lasting. The lines below are from The Dry Salvages, No. 3 of Eliot's Four Quartets. This is poetry for grownups--sometimes I think I understand it--yet often parts seem very mysterious to me. Pat Shelley was very fond of the Four Quartets; she was the music for me--I still miss her.

"For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. "
T.S. Eliot

I don't wear yellow; I don't decorate with it. Still I notice that it is the brightest and lightest color, film loves it and yellow often makes paintings sing. Nature loves it too, as shown by the great numbers of yellow flowers. And many little birds are yellow, wholly or in part, flitting through the spring woods.
Now here we are in high midsummer. Tonight, crickets keep up a metronomic rhythm outdoors. We have the windows wide open to catch the summer air.
I found two books I have had nearly forever, one since I was three, a Mary had a Little Lamb which my parents bought as a souvenir of our trip to New England. I know about this trip only because of the photographs. I don't remember anything about it. I've had the other book, a laarge blue one, since I was ten or eleven. It is called No. 12 Joy Street and is an anthology of poems and stories. The ditty about the Five Tarakans has been running through my head ever since I found it again last night. Tomorrow maybe I will share it with you, weblog buddies. Good night.

Sea forms and Proust

Sea forms
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

Investigating my books to enter them on LIbrarything, I found the three volume Proust, which still stands as a reproach to me. I've always been such a serious reader, but this has stopped me cold several times. The last time (after a hip replacement) I marked this passage on page 20. (I did get some further, but not even halfway through the first volume.)
It is really very intelligent and has made me plan to try again.
* * * *
“Even the simple act which we describe as “seeing someone we know” is to some extent an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him, and in the total picture of him which we compose in our minds those notions have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice as if it were no more than a transparent envelope, that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is these notions which we recognize and to which we listen.”

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way,
translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p. 20

That last sentence is SOME sentence! But I think this is really a very acute perception.
This picture is of the Chihuly glass on exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Tomorrow, I have some T.S. Eliot for you . . .
No kidding!

The sunstruck western land

The sunstruck western land
Originally uploaded by jhhymas.

I love the shapes and the colors in this--I didn't alter it in any way; I don't think I even cropped it. I hope to be traveling across these American expanses again in a few weeks. Tile Man began his work today and should be through on Thursday. Then only plumbing and stove installation. Wow . . .
Up to 702 books entered in Librarything now. I am finding some weird stuff that there is no point in keeping, some good old friends, two duplicates, and a bunch of stuff I haven't read yet. S. makes fun of this. A book came in the mail today. When he brought me the package, he said I should be sure to enter it quickly . . .
What would we do without those three little dots . . .