December 9 2012 Journal. Dorland. The end..

Sunday morning   9^{th December}

Woke at 5:30 Too early and too cold to rise…read two Orientations articles, one on Qianlong who imitated and improved on the stone drums, which he placed in the Confucian temples and in Jenghe outside Beijing.  Read  about the deer at Nara..and the perfect examples of the sacred deer – it is a beautiful article done by the collector with help of the art historian experts.

Josie called but missed it, as I could not distinguish it appears between it and the microwave, etc…or I had just stepped out for my walk, not taking my phone. She called 5 x but I could not reach her when I called back.

 An enormous raven just flew by!    I had an invasion of ants this morning, which skewed my original plans…and required me to do the silverware drawer…and insulate all the foods even more!   Then, I cleaned out the closet and the bedroom floor, in order to get the boxes out.  Box with memorabilia is ready to go…to Joan, I guess, where the other HS stuff is – and then another box to Susan to store for me, as I pack up…I have no place to live in January…I probably needed to leave this week in order to find a place…costlier in the end, and I would have had my holiday celebrations…I am pretty fnished here. 

 The Shooting has nearly made me suicidal today.  I feel like I am in a firing squad and feel my rights are being violated…they are being violated and this is America and there is nothing I can do about it.

True to the end, Mark Strand, Pulitzer Prize winner,  is still writing about absence, what is not said what is not there…I liked “Almost Invisible” very much…  The poems are really beautiful.  They are his last poems.  But he seems to be anticipating his own absence...He is now at Columbia University.  I remember him distinctly from Breadloaf and then from the Poets Academy in NYC.  Here's one:

 

"Once Upon a Cold November Morning".   I left the sunlit fields of my daily life and went down into the hollow mountain, and there I discovered, in all its chilly glory, the glass castle of my other life.  I could see right through it, and beyond, but what could I do with it?  It was perfect, irreducible, and worthless except for the fact that it existed." 

 

What more can we say?