not waving or drowning
Oct. 29th, 2008 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeCan't quite manage anything it seems, not even LJ posts.
My grandmother is 102; she broke her hip and is recovering. I went to visit her on Monday. We held hands, and she told me over and over what a wonderful day it was, how she was going to remember it for ever and ever and never forget, how people never forget things. She has senile dementia and is troubled by forgetting, but I knew what she was saying--she was glad not to have been forgotten in the hospital and wanted always to hold this moment.
Me too. It feels so strange to be smiling and to feel full of love and to be constantly blinking back tears. I wanted to hold her tight and make the whole world disappear; we could just be sitting somewhere Else, in the sun, just chatting. For ever and ever and ever.
I haven't been up to much since then. When I came home, the double CD Awake My Soul/Help Me To Sing was waiting for me, and never has shape-note singing felt more right. These hymns know all about loss and suffering and mysteries. One day maybe I'll post a review, but at the rate I'm going, maybe not.
Oh but that little girl on the cover (this little girl)? Her name turns out to be Lorraine Miles. The liner notes said so.
I have a short Halloween story for you all, but at the rate I'm going, that will not see the light of day either.
Also, the youngest of the forest creatures is plagued by a high fever, and in my dark mood this worries me, though we've done all the precautionary things we normally do.
Also, family obligation. My sister practically airlifted me a birthday present, and the message I got from that was that I had jolly well better not neglect hers, since these things mean a lot more to her than to me. I've made her a little something--dried apple slices, including from Golden Russet apples, that, my apple book tells me, are especially prized by a cider mill near her place--and so now I had better airlift them to her or they won't make it in time.
And work, yes, that... must get to it.
What shall I do? Shall I lie down
And sink in deep despair?
Will He forever frown,
Nor hear my feeble prayer?
No; he will put His strength in me,
He knows the way I've strolled,
And when I'm tried sufficiently
I shall come forth as gold.
--from "Columbus," no. 67; Tune: Columbian Harmony, 1829; Words: Anon., found in Mercer's Cluster, 1823
My grandmother is 102; she broke her hip and is recovering. I went to visit her on Monday. We held hands, and she told me over and over what a wonderful day it was, how she was going to remember it for ever and ever and never forget, how people never forget things. She has senile dementia and is troubled by forgetting, but I knew what she was saying--she was glad not to have been forgotten in the hospital and wanted always to hold this moment.
Me too. It feels so strange to be smiling and to feel full of love and to be constantly blinking back tears. I wanted to hold her tight and make the whole world disappear; we could just be sitting somewhere Else, in the sun, just chatting. For ever and ever and ever.
I haven't been up to much since then. When I came home, the double CD Awake My Soul/Help Me To Sing was waiting for me, and never has shape-note singing felt more right. These hymns know all about loss and suffering and mysteries. One day maybe I'll post a review, but at the rate I'm going, maybe not.
Oh but that little girl on the cover (this little girl)? Her name turns out to be Lorraine Miles. The liner notes said so.
I have a short Halloween story for you all, but at the rate I'm going, that will not see the light of day either.
Also, the youngest of the forest creatures is plagued by a high fever, and in my dark mood this worries me, though we've done all the precautionary things we normally do.
Also, family obligation. My sister practically airlifted me a birthday present, and the message I got from that was that I had jolly well better not neglect hers, since these things mean a lot more to her than to me. I've made her a little something--dried apple slices, including from Golden Russet apples, that, my apple book tells me, are especially prized by a cider mill near her place--and so now I had better airlift them to her or they won't make it in time.
And work, yes, that... must get to it.
What shall I do? Shall I lie down
And sink in deep despair?
Will He forever frown,
Nor hear my feeble prayer?
No; he will put His strength in me,
He knows the way I've strolled,
And when I'm tried sufficiently
I shall come forth as gold.
--from "Columbus," no. 67; Tune: Columbian Harmony, 1829; Words: Anon., found in Mercer's Cluster, 1823
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 08:56 pm (UTC)Working in the frosty weather when the stones are stuck togehter
Lifting divots, soil and heather as I prise them off the ground
And little work is done until the weak and wintery sun
Loosens up the icy grip and I can lay me hammer down..
and then, come spring...
Stones taken from the land are warm under the hand
Bok as in one of the trio who sings "John Barleycorn"?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 09:05 pm (UTC)The same. I grew up on his records. To this day, I don't own most of his music on CD. At least in the case of Turning Toward the Morning (1975), I should amend that. He's a lot like the folksinger laureate of Downeast Maine and the Maritimes.