Yesterday I was early for a meeting with a friend. Decided to walk around the block when a building caught my eye that had huge photographs of seniors mounted against its facade. Mind you, I have walked down that street many times, since I often go to Fleur de Lis, the cafe where I was expected. It’s strange how attention waxes and wanes.

Turns out it was the Hollywood SeniorCenter that I consciously perceived for the first time. A window display spoke of a project that paired middle schoolers with seniors for photography, one, as I was told when I entered the halls to inquire, that had happened years back.

The friendly manager, apparently not bothered by my curiosity disrupting her work, told me of something more current which I thought I’d share.

This Friday, June 28, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm – 1820 NE 40th Ave, Portland, OR 97212 – they have an event that introduces a topic even richer than the mouthful of a title: The Grandma Reporter Intimacy Issue Magazine Launch Party.

It might be late(r) in life but the issue of intimacy remains a focus, particularly in a world preoccupied with body image and visions of eternal youth. The Grandma Reporter seems out to crack stereotypes, provide pragmatic advice and encourage fun. How can you not adore a Manifesto like this?

The Grandma Reporter (TGR) is a publication committed to the subculture of senior females and their rich worlds existing across the earth, where elderly women have lived forever. TGR aspires to be accessible to young and old but especially to elderly women. We hope to energetically connect our readers, contributors and interviewees in a senior female culture movement. We believe in: proudly declaring your age and keeping it a mystery; dressing up, down and from the heart; talking about death and thinking about past and future lives; walking sticks, wheelchairs and flying in your dreams; wrinkles, bulges, spider veins and bunions; ‘old’, ‘elderly’, ‘senior’, ‘nag’, ‘ageless’, ‘prune’, ‘sage’; discussing disease, incontinence and great television shows; sharing stories of crime, adventure and nonconforming genders; considering the struggles of growing old in a young, technology-focused world; food, genes and other things passed through generations; uncovering long loves, heartbreaks and sex that evolves with age; swimming as a magical way to keep fit in spite of on-land mobility challenges.

– TGR editor, Xi Jie Ng

Ok, those of us personally familiar with a variety of concepts mentioned above, surely will.

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It was time to visit with Judith Arcana, so back to the café I went. We met during the making of a documentary where I photographed her, and have had many thought-provoking conversations since. The poet, writer and activist just published a new edition of her book Grace Paley’s Life Stories, an unusual literary biography based on countless interviews with Paley during the 80’s. From feminist consciousness to political activism of Paley, Arcana’s perceptive narrative triggered a spontaneous “It takes one to know one…” in me. Folks around here can pick up the book at: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, 523 SE Morrison. Other wise you can order it here.

I wanted to close the arc back to early, though. Here is one of Arcana’s poems that struck me for both (familiar) content and (unfamiliar) form.

Eight

Awake and asleep or both or between I traveled
in my bed, voyaging grey waves and storm foam
under black skies ripped by fierce winds, or

The bed bobbed and eddied in slow breaking circles
of sunlight on flat green water; or rocked
on smooth blue pools, riding slow swells easily.

And every time, great sharks swam round my bed:
I saw their strict fins, saw they were not orcas
marked like magpies, mimes and clowns. Not dolphins.

I would lie rigid under the sheet: to stay alive
I must not move, not stand up against
the headboard, brace muscles for action,

Raise the sheet into a sail; I must not sit up
when they swim alongside, toothed skin raking
the mattress, gill slashes red above the water line.

From the smallest corners of my eyes I’d see them
thrust their thick torpedo snouts from the water;
they rose with gaping gullets, baring mythic teeth.

But the bed did not grow sodden, capsize, slip
below the surface and slide me paralyzed
under water to the circling sharks’ open throats.

In the darkened theater of childhood, I turned away
from the screen, from the shadow of danger. Closing
my eyes, I learned nothing of death, only of fear.

And here are slightly fearful variations on a nursery tune by Donanyi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhvcFmb9EKs&feature=youtu.be&t=10s

You may choose today between a poem by a man who prefers to be a mystery and a man whose wife descended into madness. How is that for an offer on a dull Wednesday morning? My way out, of course, given that I am busy with a larger writing project and so need to borrow others’ words.

Both poems made me think (one of them I liked), and each offered an opportunity to be paired with some of the pictures I recently took at a barbershop window and a market stand (Grindstone – Knife and Tool Sharpening), respectively.

When I saw the knife sharpener he was too busy to talk to me.

His partner did instead, revealing that that trade had been handed down for several generations. Her grandfather’s picture – he was an immigrant from Italy – was among the display in front of her.

She expressed deep reverence for tradition.

I expressed awe at these two:

Here is the poem by Kotaro Takamura ( 1883-1956 / Japan) who documented his wife’s descent in much agonizing poetry.

A Man Sharpening A Knife

In silence a knife is being sharpened. 
Though the sun is already sinking, it is still being sharpened. 
The back and the front tightly placed, 
the whetting water changed, it is being sharpened again. 
What on earth is intended to be made? 
As though without knowing even that, 
concentrating the mood of the moment in his brow, 
behind green leaves, the man sharpens the knife. 
Bit by bit this man’s sleeve tears. 
The mustache of this man becomes white. 
Resentment? Necessity? A vacant mind? 
This man is simply endless. 
Is he pursuing the nth degree?

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Well as you know I am interested, to the nth degree, in linking topics together, and since in my mind a barbershop needs knife sharpeners to deal with dull shears, scissors, razor knives etc. I found the connection. In truth I REALLY wanted to get the photos out from this window, which held strong visual interest for me.

On offer, then, is this by Larry Bradley, who is something of an enigma, with only three poems online and a bio that stresses achievement and is silent on anything else.

Barber

By Larry Bradley

Learn from the man who spends much of his life speaking
             To the back of your head knowing what it means to follow

The razor’s edge along a worn strop or random thoughts
             As they spring so invisibly from the mind to a mouth

Who shouldered soldiers in two wars and fled fire fields
             Undecorated who fathered once but was fatherless forever

And who works his sentiments in deeper into your scalp
             Under a sign on the knotty-pine walls whose rubric reads

quot homines, tot sententiae which means he sees
             In you his suffering smells of horehound tonics and gels

Pillow heads and powders and a floor full of snippings
             Swept neatly every evening into a pile for the field mice

All those roundabout hours only a man who fixes his tie
             To clip crabgrass crowding a lady’s grave could believe

With a certain clean devotion and who would never for one
             Moment dream of hurting you when your back was turned

Choices, choices. Barbershop Quartett or Barbier of Sevilla? I think we’ll go with Rossini!

And here is an old German version with Hermann Prey who I believe thought he was singing a Wagnerian role…..

Today’s blog serves as a Thank You note to a dear friend who invited us to a splendid dinner on Saturday. I chose a poem from Ben Jonson (1572-1637) because he, like our host, was a purveyor of literary criticism and known as someone who put an emphasis on critical learning.

For one like me who hates to cook and loves to eat, these occasions are blissful. Cold fennel soup, rack of lamb with asparagus and potatoes, and a divine Pavlova with raspberries were to the the belly what the table talk was to my mind: stimulating, satisfying, and ultimately providing sustenance extending beyond the evening.

Inviting a Friend to Supper

BY BEN JONSON

Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I 
Do equally desire your company; 
Not that we think us worthy such a guest, 
But that your worth will dignify our feast 
With those that come, whose grace may make that seem 
Something, which else could hope for no esteem. 
It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates 
The entertainment perfect, not the cates. 
Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, 
An olive, capers, or some better salad 
Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen, 
If we can get her, full of eggs, and then 
Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony 
Is not to be despaired of, for our money; 
And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, 
The sky not falling, think we may have larks. 
I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: 
Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some 
May yet be there, and godwit, if we can; 
Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe’er, my man 
Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, 
Livy, or of some better book to us, 
Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat; 
And I’ll profess no verses to repeat. 

To this, if ought appear which I not know of, 
That will the pastry, not my paper, show of.
Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be; 
But that which most doth take my Muse and me, 
Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, 
Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine; 
Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, 
Their lives, as so their lines, till now had lasted. 
Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring, 
Are all but Luther’s beer to this I sing. 
Of this we will sup free, but moderately, 
And we will have no Pooley, or Parrot by, 
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; 

But, at our parting we will be as when 
We innocently met. No simple word 
That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, 
Shall make us sad next morning or affright 
The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight.

Source: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1974)

Since the decor of French posters was catching my eye, we shall have some French music that celebrates the senses: it’s actually a sweet little film

Merci beaucoup!

Yesterday I learned that Joy Harjo has been appointed as new US poet laureate, the first Native American to fill this role. If you are a regular reader you might remember that I linked to one of her deeply moving poems in an earlier blog this year, which I am attaching below.

For today, I’ll let her do the talking – or the singing as the case may be: the recitation of her poem towards the second half of the clip is literally through song.

I have no photographs of Oklahoma where Harjo is from. But I learned that the state generates more than a third of its energy with the help of wind turbines. So images of them, photographed in WA, have to stand in.

There is a bit of music by Muscogee/Creek Indians and a fascinating discussion about politics in this archival video – long though, only if you have time..