“The wheeze of progress.”

One line today jumped out of a poem I was reading – Minor Seventh by Jeffrey Bean:

“The wheeze of progress.”

Indeed, “wheeze” seems to be the correct word.  Not “flow” or even the more neutral “occur.”  Progress seems, by nature, to be full of fits and starts, of frenetic activity that results in the “wheeze.”

The more things change…

From Jane Steger, Leaves From A Secret Journal:

There is a wide other world within, deep harbors of thought, marvelous seas from contemplation, waiting to be explored. It is well that someone should explore in this cheap and surface age, when most people are running over the ground as fast as they can in motors, listening over radio, and rarely take time to think about anything for themselves.”

In the “the more things change, the more they remain the same” category, Steger wrote that around 100 years ago (the publication date is 1926).  Well, okay, we aren’t “listening over radio” so much anymore. But beyond that…

Something Pleasant

From Jane Steger, Leaves From a Secret Journal. That this book (1926) is nearly 100 years old is of no significance – it passes along wisdomm for the ages.

“…something pleasant happens every day, something to make one really happy…. All the years of my life I have let this fact blow about, as it were, on the dust heap of my mind, unnoticed, and now suddenly it has risen up as a thing which is amazing…. [O]ften it {is} not one treasure ship, but a whole lovely fleet of them sailing in….

Life is full of these pleasant truths, which we all really know, but which are so common that the wonder of them has worn off them, and so we do not take them in. I suppose we fail in this respect becuase we let ourselves become encased in a sort of dull hard shell of everydayness, through which it is hard for the “gift of wonder” to penetrate.”

Just while typing this I noticed that the potted yellow lantana outside my window has survived the winter freeze. And while taking in that resurection a squirrel jumped onto the patio and looked in at me while I at it, and somehow, there was a connection.

And as I write this it isn’t even 8:00.

A Better World Somewhere

Discourse: A Better World Somewhere

A friend sent along B.B. King’s blues classic — There Must Be A Better World Somewhere

After a listen, and adding it to my playlist, I replied:

“But it begs the question – “Must there be?”

To which he replied:

“There is always a choice between two correct answers to that question – which might be the point.”

Indeed, it might be.

There must be a better world somewhere.

Dance

A convergence today. Meaedowbrook Nursing Home, a poem by Alice N. Persons, and I Hope You Dance sung by Lee Ann Womack and written by Mark D. Sanders and Tia SillersWomack. The first made me think of the second.

Meadowbrook Nursing Home

Alice N. Persons

On our last visit, when Lucy was fifteen
And getting creaky herself,
One of the nurses said to me,
“Why don’t you take the cat to Mrs. Harris’ room
— poor thing lost her leg to diabetes last fall —
she’s ninety, and blind, and no one comes to see her.”

The door was open. I asked the tiny woman in the bed
if she would like me to bring Lucy in, and she turned her head
toward us. “Oh, yes, I want to touch her.”

“I had a cat called Lily — she was so pretty, all white.
She was with me for twenty years, after my husband died too.
She slept with me every night — I loved her very much.
It’s hard, in here, since I can’t get around.”

Lucy was settling in on the bed.
“You won’t believe it, but I used to love to dance.
I was a fool for it! I even won contests.
I wish I had danced more.
It’s funny, what you miss when everything…..is gone.”
This last was a murmur. She’d fallen asleep.

I lifted the cat
from the bed, tiptoed out, and drove home.
I tried to do some desk work
but couldn’t focus.

I went downstairs, pulled the shades,
put on Tina Turner
and cranked it up loud
and I danced.
I danced.