reinvented, redefined

I could go for a ride on your sweet jelly roll... - Oh my.
Nina Simone, Jelly Roll
***
A phrase from a song has lodged in my mind -
the Fury got him
I don't even know from which song today.
I hadn't thought of it that way
But I think that's what happened to you
You seemed so in control
opanowany (in Polish) - in possession of yourself -
Because it was hard to contain the Fury.
The Fury wanted out.
You had to go far. Rhode Island wouldn't do.
You loved me. You knew you wanted to come back
Someday. But it would take a very long time
For the Fury to play itself, wear itself out
Beating you up in the process.
It's why you've kept yourself concealed - one reason, anyway.
(I didn't want you to see me when I was smoking too much,
and drinking - too much too - and so bad in combo.)
So there was no rush on either of our parts to see one another
Fallen.
But now - the future holds the possibility of something
quite, quite different.
Sweet jelly roll, and sweet potato pie when you eat from the pan.

Undermind

"Alice has slid down from a world governed by the logic of universal arithmetic to one where her size can vary from nine feet to three inches. She thinks this is the root of her problem: 'Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.' No, it isn’t, replies the Caterpillar, who comes from the mad world of symbolic algebra. He advises Alice to 'Keep your temper.'”

***
Undecided, undefined
Undisturbed yet undermined
Relocated not retired
Reprimanded and rewind
Mystified and misshapen
Misinformed but not mistaken
Reinvented, redefined
Rearranged but not refined
Unrelenting, understroked
Undeterred yet unprovoked
Reinvented, redefined
Rearranged but not refined
Mystified and misshapen
Misinformed but not mistaken
Undecided, undefined.

***
Finding a root of i.

***
... a positive times a positive is always positive...

Yeah, yeah.

Happy Happy Oh My Friend

In the email coal mine picking up diamonds...
30 June 2006, Belle to Kathy

... I am trying to figure out what to do with my life next, so I was thinking that maybe I could develop a research/writing project. Who has lived in this area? Whose archives might conveniently for me be located but a short drive away?

I discovered that Edna St. Vincent Millay lived at a farm-estate called "Steepletop," in Austerlitz, several miles east. I never read her poetry, and didn't know anything about her. But I have just finished reading one of her biographies - and I couldn't put it down. It's called What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, by a poet, Daniel Marc Epstein. Beautifully written, he tells the story of how her love life - which was prodigious - informed her love poems. She was quite a fascinating character. She had such personal magnetism that men (and not a few women, in her college days at Vassar) would instantly fall madly in love with her. Granted, perhaps this was the era when "a glimpse of stocking" might make a man swoon (she lived 1892-1950), but she was definitely ahead of her time in the Free Love area. Interesting relationship with her devoted husband too (actually they were mutually devoted). He understood that she needed to be in an "ecstatic" state in order to produce a great poem - so when he sensed some quivering going on, he would discreetly absent himself. He figured that if this produced but one great sonnet a year it was worth it!

Unfortunately I doubt I will be writing about her - I'm too late - her archives which used to reside at Steepletop are now at the Library of Congress. But one other tidbit: apparently there is a cache of artistic nude photos of her in the archives - that are embargoed from public view until 2011! (She died in 1950 - no direct descendants - so these must be some photos.)

Anyway - if you'd like a good read - I do recommend that biography.

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