Monday, December 21, 2015

Poetry Monday: The Hanged Pigeon

OMGYOUGUYS. Favourite day of the week. POETRY MONDAY. This will be the last one of 2015 and it couldn't be a better finish. It's so, so fitting for this year.

Then go and buy Jo Brandon's newest poetry collection because it will give you all the feels, with all the words, that build and make and do.

The Hanged Pigeon, by Jo Brandon

You are more stark even
than the tarot card I turned at fourteen:
the Hanged Man, macabre and ridiculous,
his strangled leg, ankle noose, freefall of hair,
the hard jewel colours I still associate with death
though the book said it represented rebirth 
I heard the elliptical Chorus whisper-sing
first-death, first-death.

I flipped your card walking through the park
on a day when the sky was too blue
to be anything other than an illusion;
you hung like a bauble on a tree, a faded Robin maybe
whose claws should fold easily over the branches, rigid as tradition,
but has slipped upside down – and now nothing looks right 
strung up with tangerine mesh you were an omen
of something.

You wished so hard to avoid the predictable
that your wings had started to come away,
and all the vinegar and glue and brown paper
salvaged from those park bins
couldn’t have put you back together again.

You might have appeared to me as Icarus or
a penny dreadful, but you struck me as the Hanged Man;
not so serene, not so willing to give yourself up as deeper meaning.

As I spoke to you, tried to soothe you up in your tree
I could have been in a fairy-tale asking boons
of any unbelievable creature; you might transform,
burst from your pigeon chrysalis or you might grow still
and provide a medieval spectacle for nine-to-fivers on lunch.

A comic strip of heroic deeds ran through my head; ladders,
broken branches, clambering, soft landing, gasps, free-flight

–  I left unsure of what I did and didn’t do to rescue you.

---------


Big hugs and lots of love,
Essss

Monday, December 14, 2015

Poetry Monday: Istanbul

OMGYOUGUYS. It's another Poetry Monday! I can't get enough of these. I don't want to sound like I'm mad bragging or anything, but I know some insanely talented people and their genius has got to rub off on me at some point so REMEMBER THIS FACE.

Today's work of art comes from the indomitable Claire, professional writer, cook, and karaokyer.

Istanbul, by Claire Bullen

We wake sucking on the milkfat mornings,
the hour in its last stage of night-bruise.
Like emperors, centuries ago,
who woke to find their jaguars and take 
them strolling through the rosebushes.

Now the city wakes with a riot of sheep
in the basement, a dusty football, and
taxis that speed up the uneven hill.
We breakfast like emperors: sucking on petals
in tea and cakes and smoke.

On a ferry over bright-dark Bosphorus,
we fly faster than emperors could dream, 
savouring the word like rose candy: Bosphorus, 
Bosphorus, Bosphorus, past the blooming
buses that drop their sweating cargo into Asia.

In the evenings, campfires spill across highways
and birds wheel, crazily, around the minarets.
Like emperors, we sharp-laugh into the night 
from the vantage of our temporary palaces.
First we are timeless. Then we are cargo.

-----



Big hugs and lots of love,
Essss

Sunday, December 13, 2015

On France and all the noel

OMGYOUGUYS. We came down to France for the weekend and it turns out it is crazy beautiful in the winter. Who even KNEW. This time last winter we were knee-deep in reno work and dust so we pretty much slept in coats fully clothed and it was all What on Earth Were We Thinking Oh God It's Never Going to End Oh Whyyyy, so there was certainly little to no gallivanting around or enjoyment of the surrounds. But this year the work is nearly done and we have the freedom to beauty that only quiet allows.

When we woke this morning, the back fields and gardens were covered with frost, and in the minutes before the sun crested the hill with all the glorious saturation at its disposal, the world was black and white, glow and shadows. 

Speaking of reno work, we officially installed our wood burning stove yesterday! We got one with some magic level of efficiency and once you get it going, the heat it produces can be felt in the cheeks and toes and you start to get all pink and ruddy like some ice skater in a Dutch children's book.

Not pictured: ice skates, children. Tulips.


Curtains finally up! We're no longer a show for the neighbors!

Yesterday we took a walk around the village and this is the view from the front of the mairie. See the little house immediately to the right of the church? That's ours! 


I like to think before we had curtains the mayor was the one watching our show.

The front of our house is what was historically the market square, and as a result, all SORTS of shenanigans can happen there. This is what we were greeted with upon our arrival on Friday:

This pretty much trumps any decorations we had in mind. Also, is Santa supposed to act as the angel that's traditionally over the nativity? Well played, Mayor.

In a few minutes we're off to check out the village Christmas fair! Doesn't this look awesome? It's clearly sponsored by Microsoft Word Art. We don't actually know where the barn is, but you've seen the size of the village, how hard can it be to find?








Famous last words. If you never hear from me again, look for the clowns.

I hope you're having a lovely Sunday!

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss

Monday, December 7, 2015

Poetry Monday: Dear Samuel

News has come of a dear friend suddenly, incomprehensibly no longer with us and in the gasping grief of it all, it seems fitting that today is Poetry Monday and this was the poem I had planned.

Know that you are loved.

DEAR SAMUEL, by Manuel Camacho, previously published in Yellow Chair Review

I will love you forever

Your brother saw you
Or did he see Death?
He stared into that dark empty
Room whimpering scared, scared

The next day they told us
Your heart had stopped
You were floating inside
Your mother, loose weed
In a fish bowl
Her cervix the dirt
Above your coffin

She and I held hands
Through a Hades of beige
Halls and white laser lights above
To watch you born
A floppy salamander
The clammy skin, the squishy chest
Startlingly hard bones
The bud of your penis, the open
Mouth, your little tongue

The placenta that failed
You picked apart, immortalized
In the literature, your mother as well
A curious case! 300 AFP!
And I’m another father
Of a child like you
Initiate to that grim fellowship

Where is God? God has a reason
That’s what people want to say
God was your mother
Wrapped with me in the shower
Her head at my back as I wept
Into the sink.

----

Love and strength,
Esss

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

On Wednesdays, wonder, and walnuts

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen, Anthem

YOUGUYS. It's Wednesday here and I'm in my favourite spot on the rug in front of the fire and I've caught up on emails and prepped dinner and I get a quiet night in before the rest of the week kicks off with a Guild dinner and a brewery birthday party and then the weekend, crazy on its own for existing. We're planning on spending Sunday afternoon wandering through Victoria Park's Winterville, so join us if you're around and want to eat pies and spin on rides until you get sick. I'm also getting us tickets to the Circus just to capture the full terrifying experience of so much wonder.

I'm making a Brain Food meal tonight since Wolf has his last MBA exam tomorrow and I want to make sure he goes in at his mental peak rather than in the sluggish state I usually equip him with thanks to a steady diet of pasta and cream. We're having salmon with blueberries and avocado and walnuts and feta and lots of greens and according to the internets this will make him a regular Einstein. For breakfast he's getting a red pepper scramble with a side of cottage cheese, blueberries and whole grain toast. All this is guaranteed to help him ace his test. Superfoods, amirite?

I leave you now with this photo of our neighborhood bus stop, because it shows a lot of what our neighbourhood is like and also it's just pretty:
Do you think she'll be my friend?

Okay, I'm off to enjoy my last hour of solitude before dinner. Wish Wolf luck tomorrow!

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss