Happy Easter!!
And Happy Paysach too!
Church was especially nice today because they baptized two babies, too little boys of the year old category....very cute and sweet. One was a little younger, the other a little older. People (women) around me said, "Awwww...," softly as the babies were borne by in the arms of their fathers or another male relative. I liked seeing them kiss their babies on the top of the head. An irresistible impulse, that, isn't it, if you're holding one?
The flowers were all white, and my favorite thing is all white flowers. But this year I felt they were a little lacking. St Paul's has a number of great huge copper window boxes that go underneath the stained glass windows, and some years they have just been burgeoning with spring blooms of all kinds and all colors. This year, things were a little sparse. There were Easter lilies only, and not a huge lot of them. Perhaps it's the recession....
There were a number of strangers today, probably because it's Easter and because of the baptisms. Two elderly 'girls' came in and sat next to me and proceeded to chitter and chat and giggle at every moment of interval. I even thought we were having that Easter earthquake that I gloomily anticipate every Easter, as the pew shivered and shook under their spasms of merriment.
I almost assumed a proper Episcopal attitude to ask them to tone it down, but held back. When we passed the Peace, I chatted too. Turns out they were having a joyful reunion, friends from the seventh grade, and were so happy to be together. I am glad I didn't say anything snippish. Episcopal women are often held to be snippish, and sometimes are. Their happiness and rowdy joy were really more appropriate to the day than any comment I could have made on deportment.
I wore a skirt today. A skirt suit, of pretty grey material. As I sat down I had a Madeleine Allbright moment that made me remember why I think pants are really more graceful than skirts unless the skirts are long and full. Madeleine used to make me suffer in the nineties, there, where I saw her on the news amongst presidents and sheiks, her middle-elderly plump legs in their tight skirt barely making it for decency's sake. Short tight skirts are not made for legs and figures like mine nor Madeleine's. Happy Easter, everybody. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Good Friday
Good afternoon.
It's Good Friday so I went to church. Sat with three other hens. Made a lunch date with one of them.
The service was a wonderful one. It's odd that though I don't really 'like' Good Friday, I am always glad I went. The music was beautiful and the service, though it lasted for almost an hour and a half, simply sailed by in the lovely sounds of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ.
There was a choir of four and an orchestra of four. The singers were soprano, alto, tenor and baritone. The instruments were 2 violins, a viola, and a cello. Altogether they were a beautifully blended mixture of rich sound. All singers are excellent.
There were prayers, with enough standing and sitting to satisfy even my range-of-motion demands. And the Bishop gave four (or was it three) fine meditations at intervals.
The Seven Last Words of Christ by Haydn, though fraught with the stark tragedy of the worst day of the Christian year, is a beautiful piece of music to listen to. It is never lugubrious. And before you smile, believe me. It's possible for the finest intentions to become lugubrious. I have received many communications on the Internet regarding the nature of dogs, that were quite lugubrious. And if it is awful to be lugubrious about dogs and such, it is worse to be so about our Creator. And I get those too. I just don't send them on to other misfortunate readers with the threat of grave bodily harm if people don't send them on.
The Seven Last Words are quite brief, even as augmented by the librettist. I wonder if it was Haydn. The music--flows. That is the only word for it. It is just beautiful and the flow is not stopped by the glottals (if that is the word I want) of German. That is all imagined anyway, the glottal part. German is a beautiful language, and this piece couldn't have been written in a lovelier.
That is all I wanted to say. It isn't a requiem, so it is okay that I went to it. Yes. YAZZYBEL
It's Good Friday so I went to church. Sat with three other hens. Made a lunch date with one of them.
The service was a wonderful one. It's odd that though I don't really 'like' Good Friday, I am always glad I went. The music was beautiful and the service, though it lasted for almost an hour and a half, simply sailed by in the lovely sounds of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ.
There was a choir of four and an orchestra of four. The singers were soprano, alto, tenor and baritone. The instruments were 2 violins, a viola, and a cello. Altogether they were a beautifully blended mixture of rich sound. All singers are excellent.
There were prayers, with enough standing and sitting to satisfy even my range-of-motion demands. And the Bishop gave four (or was it three) fine meditations at intervals.
The Seven Last Words of Christ by Haydn, though fraught with the stark tragedy of the worst day of the Christian year, is a beautiful piece of music to listen to. It is never lugubrious. And before you smile, believe me. It's possible for the finest intentions to become lugubrious. I have received many communications on the Internet regarding the nature of dogs, that were quite lugubrious. And if it is awful to be lugubrious about dogs and such, it is worse to be so about our Creator. And I get those too. I just don't send them on to other misfortunate readers with the threat of grave bodily harm if people don't send them on.
The Seven Last Words are quite brief, even as augmented by the librettist. I wonder if it was Haydn. The music--flows. That is the only word for it. It is just beautiful and the flow is not stopped by the glottals (if that is the word I want) of German. That is all imagined anyway, the glottal part. German is a beautiful language, and this piece couldn't have been written in a lovelier.
That is all I wanted to say. It isn't a requiem, so it is okay that I went to it. Yes. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Just Dont Like Requiems
Good afternoon.
I am watching the end of Amadeus, where, dying, Mozart is pushing out of himself with his dying gasps his wonderful Requiem--in C, is it? Don't remember. It's magnificent.
But I dont like requiems. I just refuse to go to any, any more. Perhaps it's because to me they are a requiem for a civilization that has gone to the dogs, through stupidity and cupidity and greed at all levels. I know; that is very depressed and negative thinking. So I don't think that way too much; I don't let myself think it. I think of other things like animals, farms, music, all arts, books and reading, of food and cookery, some little bit of religion . I think of the goodness of Mexicans I have known, and that of some Americans (fewer). When I think of religion I think of Christianity as personified by the Episcopal Church, and how,even if it is all just a made up myth, what a fantastic myth it is, what a fantastic creation. Perhaps we made it up for our own consolation, or our own vindication, or our own--castigation. Nowadays, it doesn't work for that last phrase because the word from Above as I last heard it was that we were all already forgiven before we were born. We can't even commit our own sins nor suffer for them. Wait a minute--I am going too far. Better stop and go back to animals.
The other night I saw a beautiful special on whales. They are so fascinating. It is a bizarre thing to feel sympathy for a brother or sister whose eye, alone, is bigger than one's whole person. But there they were capering around in the ocean as free as birds, living life on such a large scale that it's hard to imagine that life. I wrote a poem about whales a long time ago, and here it is.
Sometimes at night I cannot sleep
Until I think of whales..
Out in the wet and dark and cold,
Rolling with the Grace of God
In vast and frigid cradles of the waves.
If there is a moon they're watching it.
Their blood is warm,
And oh, so long ago they left safe earth,
Dryness, and the comfort of warm snuggling,
The usefulness of arms and hands
To touch and work for one--
Their little ones bob at their sides,
Never to be grasped.
And the vast awe I feel at their bravery
In that tremendous dark water
Sends me off to sleep.
That is a very corny and incompleted poem but I have not seen fit to change it since 10-7-79 which is the date I wrote it on. Of course it didn't say one tenth of what I wanted to express, but it's all true anyway. YAZZYBEL
I am watching the end of Amadeus, where, dying, Mozart is pushing out of himself with his dying gasps his wonderful Requiem--in C, is it? Don't remember. It's magnificent.
But I dont like requiems. I just refuse to go to any, any more. Perhaps it's because to me they are a requiem for a civilization that has gone to the dogs, through stupidity and cupidity and greed at all levels. I know; that is very depressed and negative thinking. So I don't think that way too much; I don't let myself think it. I think of other things like animals, farms, music, all arts, books and reading, of food and cookery, some little bit of religion . I think of the goodness of Mexicans I have known, and that of some Americans (fewer). When I think of religion I think of Christianity as personified by the Episcopal Church, and how,even if it is all just a made up myth, what a fantastic myth it is, what a fantastic creation. Perhaps we made it up for our own consolation, or our own vindication, or our own--castigation. Nowadays, it doesn't work for that last phrase because the word from Above as I last heard it was that we were all already forgiven before we were born. We can't even commit our own sins nor suffer for them. Wait a minute--I am going too far. Better stop and go back to animals.
The other night I saw a beautiful special on whales. They are so fascinating. It is a bizarre thing to feel sympathy for a brother or sister whose eye, alone, is bigger than one's whole person. But there they were capering around in the ocean as free as birds, living life on such a large scale that it's hard to imagine that life. I wrote a poem about whales a long time ago, and here it is.
Sometimes at night I cannot sleep
Until I think of whales..
Out in the wet and dark and cold,
Rolling with the Grace of God
In vast and frigid cradles of the waves.
If there is a moon they're watching it.
Their blood is warm,
And oh, so long ago they left safe earth,
Dryness, and the comfort of warm snuggling,
The usefulness of arms and hands
To touch and work for one--
Their little ones bob at their sides,
Never to be grasped.
And the vast awe I feel at their bravery
In that tremendous dark water
Sends me off to sleep.
That is a very corny and incompleted poem but I have not seen fit to change it since 10-7-79 which is the date I wrote it on. Of course it didn't say one tenth of what I wanted to express, but it's all true anyway. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Lazy Coral Tree
Good afternoon.
That is the one blossom squeezed out by my large, professionally pruned coral tree. For years, it has managed to put out one flower about the time the leaves came out.
Coral trees are bare in winter, and before their leaves come out in spring. they are supposed to be covered with a glorious garment of red flowers. My tree would not do that. For years, it was kept in a pot and dutifully filled its job as a small tree in a pot in my front yard in Misson Hills. Then it did the same down here until finally I decided to put it out in the front yard, upon which it obligingly grew huge. I assumed that when it had done that it would cheerfully bloom for me. The most it ever put out was one flower lost in the early leaves in early spring. I thought this year, being pruned and rejuvenated, it would bloom like everything. It didn't.
Next year, starting in January, I'll fertilize every week without fail. Surely then it will show us everything it's got. I hope. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Flashback--or Flash Forward?
Good morning!
I have a recurring vision of Brownsville, Texas, my home town.
I don't know when I saw it. Possibly I saw it many times. It's a simple picture, in the poorer part of town. A simple lot in the town, with a humble unpainted residence on it. Lots of greenery, trees, bushes, grasses. Yellow sunshine, lots of yellow morning sunshine, and overhead a huge sky of perfect cerulean blue with white cumulus clouds. But the focus is on that spot on the ground, that little house, those plants, that greenery, that yellow sunshine.
The sunshine was truly yellow in those days, there in Brownsville, Texas, in the morning. The first thing that struck me upon waking up in Berkeley, California, was that the colors of California were very different. There is a lot of orange, and the shadows are blue and purple. The shadows of Texas--well I don't know what color they were then. The color of welcome shade. True yellow would have true violet as its shade but it seemed to me to tend to brown.
I don't know how or where that vision was fixed upon my brain, that particular moment in time and space lodged in my consciousness. But it's just there, ready to pop up out of its own volition once in a while, when I think of "home." How pretty and how nice.
There are other visions, like down around the area back of the Missouri Pacific station near the river and back of the El Jardin Hotel at night. It's dark (there were not as many electric lights in those days) and it is a little misty, and there is a mystery there that I have envisioned a thousand times as it came to me. That's beautiful too, if a little scary. I probably saw that sight out of the window of a car as I was riding around after sunset, propelled by my unthinking parents into a vision I'd not forget. I wonder why I kept these things, or why I was given them in the first place. Haunting scenes that are just there within me, that come back to visit me now and then. Does everybody have them? I think they must. YAZZYBEL
I have a recurring vision of Brownsville, Texas, my home town.
I don't know when I saw it. Possibly I saw it many times. It's a simple picture, in the poorer part of town. A simple lot in the town, with a humble unpainted residence on it. Lots of greenery, trees, bushes, grasses. Yellow sunshine, lots of yellow morning sunshine, and overhead a huge sky of perfect cerulean blue with white cumulus clouds. But the focus is on that spot on the ground, that little house, those plants, that greenery, that yellow sunshine.
The sunshine was truly yellow in those days, there in Brownsville, Texas, in the morning. The first thing that struck me upon waking up in Berkeley, California, was that the colors of California were very different. There is a lot of orange, and the shadows are blue and purple. The shadows of Texas--well I don't know what color they were then. The color of welcome shade. True yellow would have true violet as its shade but it seemed to me to tend to brown.
I don't know how or where that vision was fixed upon my brain, that particular moment in time and space lodged in my consciousness. But it's just there, ready to pop up out of its own volition once in a while, when I think of "home." How pretty and how nice.
There are other visions, like down around the area back of the Missouri Pacific station near the river and back of the El Jardin Hotel at night. It's dark (there were not as many electric lights in those days) and it is a little misty, and there is a mystery there that I have envisioned a thousand times as it came to me. That's beautiful too, if a little scary. I probably saw that sight out of the window of a car as I was riding around after sunset, propelled by my unthinking parents into a vision I'd not forget. I wonder why I kept these things, or why I was given them in the first place. Haunting scenes that are just there within me, that come back to visit me now and then. Does everybody have them? I think they must. YAZZYBEL
Monday, April 2, 2012
Monday, Monday
And there below is the hero of the driver's license struggles, looking chipper. He looks good enough to have gone to Early Church with me, but of course he would not go. He rushed right up to get his picture taken when I got home, though.
Well, c'est la vie.
And that's the way it is, this morning of Monday, April 2, 2012. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Happy Birthday, Frank!
I know I said I wouldn't do it this year, but--it is April Fool's after all. So, Happy Birthday, Frank Parker--guess it's your 83rd. Wonder how I knew that? So, April Fool's,--and forgive me.
Yesterday I talked on the phone with Gwen L. there in Denver, CO, also a long ago Brownsville-ite whom I hadn't spoken with in ages. We had a wonderful laughing chat of remembrance. One of the best things about being old is that your friends are in the same boat and you find that you STILL have a lot in common, just like the olden days.
This morning going to church I decided to emulate the fashion magazines and see how many different patterns I could put together successfully. I wore tan pants, brown tee, desert-sunset horizonally striped vest, Ralph Lauren plaid blazer of dark olive, dark blue, and wine, and to top it all off a silk scarf with black and white leopardish design and those gold medallions etc. that were fashionable not so very long ago. Piled it on together. Think I 'll take a photo to see how it all came out. Oh , and on my dainty feet were gray socks and Mexican looking sandals like huaraches of the lowest order.
Today is Palm Sunday and church was different but the same as always, just like always. We all had a piece of palm leaf to hold up at the appropriate moment. Thank goodness I was aware enough to leave mine at the door when I left rather than bring it home and see it wither away for fear of throwing out. They supposedly collect these leaves and burn them for next years Ash Wednesday ashes, so perhaps I'll see my leaf again. Transformed.
On the way home I bought a raisin pinwheel doughnut from Sunny Doughnuts, the best doughnut shop around. And I stopped at the Goodwill to look for the random VHS tape, getting harder and harder to find. There at the Goodwill were racks and racks of new clothes. NEW clothes, I tell you--from Coldwater Creek, Chicos, and upscale dept. stores..I got a suit and a dress and nobody will know. Since nobody reads my blog.:( except for a faithful few whom I appreciate for sharing my life.) YAZZYBEL
Yesterday I talked on the phone with Gwen L. there in Denver, CO, also a long ago Brownsville-ite whom I hadn't spoken with in ages. We had a wonderful laughing chat of remembrance. One of the best things about being old is that your friends are in the same boat and you find that you STILL have a lot in common, just like the olden days.
This morning going to church I decided to emulate the fashion magazines and see how many different patterns I could put together successfully. I wore tan pants, brown tee, desert-sunset horizonally striped vest, Ralph Lauren plaid blazer of dark olive, dark blue, and wine, and to top it all off a silk scarf with black and white leopardish design and those gold medallions etc. that were fashionable not so very long ago. Piled it on together. Think I 'll take a photo to see how it all came out. Oh , and on my dainty feet were gray socks and Mexican looking sandals like huaraches of the lowest order.
Today is Palm Sunday and church was different but the same as always, just like always. We all had a piece of palm leaf to hold up at the appropriate moment. Thank goodness I was aware enough to leave mine at the door when I left rather than bring it home and see it wither away for fear of throwing out. They supposedly collect these leaves and burn them for next years Ash Wednesday ashes, so perhaps I'll see my leaf again. Transformed.
On the way home I bought a raisin pinwheel doughnut from Sunny Doughnuts, the best doughnut shop around. And I stopped at the Goodwill to look for the random VHS tape, getting harder and harder to find. There at the Goodwill were racks and racks of new clothes. NEW clothes, I tell you--from Coldwater Creek, Chicos, and upscale dept. stores..I got a suit and a dress and nobody will know. Since nobody reads my blog.:( except for a faithful few whom I appreciate for sharing my life.) YAZZYBEL
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