Jen,

I understand what you are saying. But be happy for your own situation. Pio and I would agree that our sitch's are independent variables.

I am happy that your family is together. At least my sons are grown. I underestimated the difficulty for them, but nonetheless, I am not in Pio's situation. But Pio's DD's will be okay because of Pio's steadiness. He is a good man. Pio may come across in his logic as cold, but trust me, after sharing a few hundred emails with him, he is anything but.

Picture Maynard G. Krebs: Work!!!!


Well, if you work, then it settles it that you are not French with their per capita productivity so low and all.

Defending the French, no. Merely correcting a falsehood posted.

Doesn’t the public suffer enough already with the American media? We cant have contortions and misrepresentations printed up everywhere, can we?

Joyce Kilmer park is located in North Carolina in the western mountains. Very beautiful area. My middle son, who is a spitting image of me, is a scientist and studied trees and other plants. He has been to the park many times. Joyce Kilmer park has the largest variety of trees anywhere in the world. It is naturally an old growth forest and he swears nothing quite like it exists anywhere else on Earth.

Gosh, what a small world. I used that Joyce Kilmer quote at the start of my speech in a public speaking contest at school.

I don't think Pio sounds cold. A tad sarcastic sometimes but very funny. My course (the bit I actually got to) taught me that analytical people have very dry senses of humour. My personality type came out as friendly facilitator. What a surprise - not.

I don't think most Americans spend that much time studying world events. I am amazed how little time is devoted to them. Since I have been in Arkansas, I am fully up-to-date on the area lake bass fishing forecast though.

It is funny because I was talking to my mother a couple of days ago about the Middle East and I was amazed to learn she had no clue as to the history of Israel. She thought it was a country that has been there for thousands of years - like Egypt. I explained the Balfour [sic?] debacle to her. Total surprise.

I have told and will tell gemela that she can have her place back in the family but then it will be up to her to get it. It all depends on what she wants. I can go either way at this point. I would like her to come back but not at any cost. If she does come back, I have already told her that she doesn't need any more shoes, for example. Things will have to change on a fundamental level - for both of us. She may not like that - she may prefer new shoes. Her call.

a crystal willow, a poplar of water,

a tall fountain the wind arches over,

a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,

a course of a river that turns, moves on,

doubles back, and comes full circle,

forever arriving


Octavio Paz
Nobel Prize 1984
Piedra de Sol (The Sun Stone, fragment) ,
translated by Eliot Weinberger

Can I use that and write it on a card to gemela? I am sure she would fall in love with me if I did.

BTW, for world news, I really like www.bbcnews.com. They have a lot of news about the USA too although they don't devote too much time to things like Tom Cruise and Paramount parting company. I have yet to find any news on foxnews.com - strange. I get annoyed by cnn.com because of their clever method of delaying their page loading forcing you to watch banner ads. I just avert my eyes. I show them, don't I?

We are driving back to Houston today. The DDs have some new DVDs that they can play in the SUV so they should be happy.

I just read in the Weekly World News that French scientists have discovered a tree that uses one-hour photosynthesis.

.

Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?

Pablo Neruda
Nobel Prize 1971
Train Standing in the Rain

wow, thank you for sharing it here Todd.

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larousse,

Glad you enjoyed the poem. Pablo Neruda was incredible. The first book of poetry of his I read was "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair". I think I remember the title correctly. Anyway, the love poems were so sad, I dreaded the despair at the end.

My favorite poem of his used to be "Tonight I Can Write". No more. Hits home way too hard these days.

I don't know if you know the pop musician Jackson Browne but he is easily the most intelligent pop songwriter. His literary idol is Neruda and you see influences in his songs.

Here are the lyrics to one of Browne's songs, "Linda Paloma". The phrase "endless sky" is directly from Neruda. This song is a little too personal these days also.

At the moment the music began
And you heard the guitar player starting to sing
You were filled with the beauty that ran
Through what you were imagining
Dreaming of scenes from those songs of love
I was the endless sky
And you were my mexican dove

Now the music that played in your ears
Grows a little bit fainter each day
And you find yourself looking through tears
At the love you feel slipping away
Though its not the kind
Of love you might hope to find
If tears could release the heart
From the shadows preferred by the mind

Like a wind that comes up in the night
Caressing your face while you sleep
Love will fill your eyes with the sight
Of a world you can't hope to keep
Dreaming on after that moment's gone
The light in your lover's eyes
Disappears with the light of the dawn

But the morning brings
Strength to your restless wings
And some other lover sings
To the sun's bright corona
I know all about these things
Linda paloma
Fly away
Linda paloma

I'll answer to your post in some minutes.

How are you feeling today?

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Todd, I really think you should buy some pink shorts. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yes, how are you feeling? Are you still suffering the side effects from being microwaved?

Neruda is great and the poem you mention is perhaps the most well known, next to...

Me gustas cuando callas

Porque estás como ausente

y estás como quejándote

mariposa en arrullo.

I'm quoting* by memory, I'll seek it in English.

I can see what you mean. The presence of the ausence?


I don't love her any more it's true,

but I loved her so much.

::::::::::::

Ouch Todd.

Such a big love, a life as it is said. Once someone told me that people that love each other and keep together for years keep seen each other physically as when they met. I mean, like if the old image always lived in the present. I hope it makes sense.

I feel your pain.

I feel the impulse to say something silly to cheer you up but maybe sometimes it's ok just to leave the feeling flow for a while. Then you go to kick some bad French chef or any bad chef, or any or... I digress.

((((((((Todd))))))))))

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I hadn't heard of that pop artist, he's talented. Today my boyfriend goes to a Bob Dylan concert in Masachusset (sp) and he was singing to me a little of the lyrics of Billy the Kid (?) There is a border and a cantine and a male arm around a Mexican woman waist... but I keep digressing.

Let's sigh and then dust off.

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Honestly, I am depressed. I don't know why but woke up depressed. Very unusual for me. I have unlimited alone time and it gives me too much time to check, I suppose.

I miss my wife. I miss my life. I can never have it back. It is too late. She has changed. The sweet girl I used to know is now a monster. This is the same woman who told me that she cheated because she "thought I was dying". I am reasonably intelligent, but honestly, I cannot connect the dots on the cause/effect of her statement and actions.

I need to get my driver's license back, get a car and get a real place to live. I have been in limbo too long and I am sure that doesn't help. I have no roots, no anchor.

I hate feeling sorry for myself. I haven't done much of it but today - today - I wallow in self pity and cannot pull out of it.

With that, what the he!!, here is "Tonight I Can Write". I cannot feel any worse than right now.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

. [color:"white"] [/color]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near


your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully, mysteriously)

her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what is is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands


e.e. cumming