Saying yes...

If ZRM can post two or three times in a day... so can I!

Of course his posts consist of lots of writing. Mine, as of late, have not... and still won't today. I'll use someone else's.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
... You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

I think fish doth protest too much...

He claims to detest My Little Ponies, but then I happen upon this... a photo of fish in fully ponycorn regalia...

                                               

Photo borrowed from: http://poorlydressed.failblog.org/

Blogroll Addition

I meant to direct attention to this addition a while ago, but my mind seems to be a sieve these days...

While most of us might be familiar with his sillier side... this was one of the first sides I got to know way back when he was just a guest blogger. :)

 

 

Thought for the day... and any day for that matter...

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom; taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver

Friday Ramblings

Still trying to catch up from time lost last week. Somehow we've come to the end of another week... I'm not sure if ground was lost or gained.

Insurance has been a frustration this week. Not a surprise I guess. It was announced last December that our health insurance premiums would be raised 30%... They've gone up consistently over the past decade, but this was by far, the biggest jump. Our annual premiums are now solidly in the 5 figure range. Our annual family deductible is now definitely in the 5 figure range. All in all, we're a fairly healthy bunch, but we still keep paying more and more with less and less assurance that when it's needed, they'll actually come through.

We applied for a different plan, one that cut out some of the bells and whistles that Grizzled's employer had to offer due to size of the staff, but found out we were denied. Well, 3 of us were. Again, I wasn't totally surprised. The Eldest Lamblet has been dealing with a chronic issue for the past decade. I was pretty sure that one would get us tossed out from the start, but still, we tried. We filled out reams of paperwork, underwent very, very, very lengthy phone interviews that were incredibly frustrating in that the same question would be asked 7 different ways... usually for something that had happened 7 or more years ago, even though only the past 3 years were supposed to make a difference. It was exhausting and frustrating. I'll never forget hearing the interviewing Dr telling me that "idiopathic" was not on her list of words therefore it didn't count as part of a diagnosis, she needed a better diagnosis. Strangely enough, it turned up in the refusal letter...

Grizzled was refused for an out and out lie. Their reason for his refusal was 100% not accurate. The reason did not exist, but there it was.

I was refused because at some point in the past two years, I discovered my vitamin D levels were low. That was rectified by taking an over the counter vitamin D supplement. Extreme, I know. But there it was, "Applicant has had a vitamin D deficiency of unknown cause."  Unknown cause?? What's the big mystery? I live in a frickin' northern city that is lucky if it gets sun for half the year, let alone the proper angle of sun, the right amount of sun, etc. Also, I'm pale and have been warned about the dire need to slather myself in sunblock lest I get skin cancer.

The youngest lamblet was welcomed with open arms! If you want affordable health insurance, you need to be 9... although, convincing them she was healthy was also a work of epic proportions. She'd had an echocardiogram when she was younger... her pediatrician thought she heard a heart murmur. The lamblet was fine. The insurance Dr who was interviewing me said... in many ways... many times, "So, she's cured of her heart condition??" I said, "SHE NEVER HAD A HEART CONDITION!" And then said it every way I could so that test would not be a pox upon her life.

We're lucky though. We're still insured with Grizzled's firm. We'll just pay more... and more... and more... and more... And at some point, they'll probably deny me because I'm pale... a preexisting condition...

On to happier rambles...

--raw carrots still give me the hiccups. I love raw carrots. I chew my carrots carefully, but cannot get through a carrot without getting the hiccups. It usually only takes one bite. I probably shouldn't admit this. It can probably be used against me during future insurance interviews...

-- there was the vague pre-odor of spring in the air this morning. While spring is my least favorite season, I also realize it's a needed transition. If I get any say, I'd like a dryish, flowery, mellow spring... no endless gray, muddy, soppy spring. Please! Be gentle with me, spring!!! And even if it's a dryish, flowery, mellow spring, I know I'll still find the cold wafting off of the ground and surrounding buildings unnerving as it melds with warmer air. I prefer the cool air/warm buildings that fall brings. The reversal reminds me too much of a tomb... Yes, spring makes me think of death, whereas fall makes me think cozy, life-affirming thoughts. Go figure...

I could continue to ramble, but won't. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! If you get a chance, stop by Riddled, Another Kiwi has posted another of his wonderful poems. As usual, I liked it, and it didn't give me the hiccups.

Poetry is in the air!

Not sure what inspired Dr. Feesh, but he's got a poem up as well... and being one who believes in sharing the linky-love... I'm sharing... Gawd help us!

It appears that fish's ability to write poetry is thicker than water.

Another poem from Another Kiwi

See it here... yes, he's got his own place. So far, it appears to be spider-free.

Guest Poet: Another Kiwi

A week or so ago, when the normal filters were down, the sun was shining in, and I was revved up with coffee, I put up a post about artistic endeavors, failings, and victories. There were many wonderful comments with an unexpected one coming in from Another Kiwi.

AK said:

Great post Jennifer! All my life I have known that I could write and have treated as you describe, sort of a hobby that one has enthusiasm for intermittently. It is only in the last two years that I have started to do anything about it and by my standards I have been successful though it has cost my more money than it will ever make me, ever. But I have two poems that I wrote that I love and two short stories the same. Lots of wreckage in between them, of course.
Power to your painting.

I love comments like that and not just because it said, "Great post Jennifer"... I like it because I believe we've all got a hell of a lot more going on than we usually show.  I usually see Another Kiwi's comments over here (no, he doesn't have a blog, or if he does... he's not sharing)... he's bawdy as heck and I appreciate that, but who knew there was a poet lurking beneath the bawd and the quit wit?!?! I asked him if he'd be willing to share... said I'd post them if he liked. Well, what do you know... the poems arrived today. I'll save my commentary for the comments... He already saw my commentary in an email.

Power to your poems, Another Kiwi!

Unprompted poem 2.

 

Angles of incidence and reflection.

 

The light bounces off the film,

And is reflected cleanly away.

Or is absorbed.

Could not the light bounce off,

the film and carry some memory away?

 

And as it makes a movie, might not the lens,

change the light as it passes through?

Not hugely but enough,

So that the memory wasn’t true?

 

True to what?

Because what we see is reflected light,

maybe altered by reflection, yes?

Changed by incidents and reflection.

 

Unless there was another light,

Unfiltered, bouncing cleanly,

Unchanged by lenses,

Making images that are true.

 

Some sort of light

Like a memory ore,

Scraped clean,

illuminating the truth.

Prompted poem Unit 3

 

On Learning of the Death of an Old Friend.

 

It is high tide on the rocks,

of the headland.

Where the Earths broken brittle spine.

Spikes, shattered, into the sea.

 

The landscape here is recorded time,

rasped by sea and carved by wind.

With one gauntly ancient tree,

sharpened on the sky.

 

There are no paths to follow,

but we heard the locals say.

Spirits leap from that tree,

As they travel home.

 

This might be a portal,

between us and the other side.

Where travellers turn to look,

At those in the cold new day.

 

Yet out of all the times we stood here.

We only ever saw,

rusted coastal trawlers,

leaving from this bay.