Beautiful Maryland, Poetry and the Songs
I feel like I've gone through an emotional flu virus that gave me a fever and I came out feeling 5 pounds emotionally lighter and with a skip in my step glad to have gotten rid of the bacteria. It has definitely made me grateful for all the good people surrounding me and the good inside of me. It has felt kind of awesome (in retrospect) to feel raw, and ultimately love.
Here we go to continue the list of November of Thanksgiving:
I'm grateful for beautiful Maryland! The country here is absolutely breathtaking. There are farms just minutes walking from my house where there are sweet horses and gentle people and fresh produce. This week we visited the Harper House where a freed slave raised his family with six children and fifteen, FIFTEEN grandchildren in a 2 room log cabin.
We also took a day to visit Frederick which has a sweet and old fashioned downtown district. Frederick is in the middle of the country so getting there is also a treat. Driving over sweet hills and little valleys was breathtaking. I kept telling myself that one day we will buy a little house with a lot of land and move out there.
One of the benefits of now living in a single house is that I can sing and pray out loud and no one (except the cats) notice.
Fatty likes my singing and prances around my feet while Bentley is convinced I'm howling for food so runs back and forth from the kitchen to show me where my Purina Cat Chow is. My favorite song this week has been a church song: Shepard Me Oh Lord
I have also been following my granny's advice of praying out-loud. The ritual of repeatedly meditating on the words of prayer is relaxing and helps me realize that nothing within myself matters. However, words don't come to me in prayer the way they come to granny so I have been praying and admiring Anima di Christo. This prayer started to be used in Italy around the 14th century. If I pray in Italian, I think in Italian. I learned this prayer in Italian and personally prefer praying it in Italian. The words in Italian are these. In English are here.
When I was in elementary school we had to memorize dull poetry. In college my favorite professor, and crankiest one, would shout out venomous hateful poems by Sylvia Plath to wake us up. It wasn't till I was graduating from college that I truly began enjoying poetry. This week I was reading some poetry by Marc Doty and came across this one I really like. It reminds me of the death and passion in November:
November and this road’s tunnelof soft fire draws you forward, as it descends,as if you were moving toward—
radical completion,some encompassment? Dark kindnesswoven in the fabric of the afternoon.
And because you’ve held within your own veinsanother passage of fire—obliterating mercy—not these lit-up leaf clouds
but a hot wire stealing intothe deepest chambers of the night—you love the way the asphalt lifts
then hurries down toward Deep Lane.The fire road insideis only that road once;
though desire sends you back there againand again, it won’t be that one you’re on,and thus you want all the harder.
So let this road take you,autumn’s enchanted boylifted into the wet-yellow lamps of the maples;
taken up by that fleeting light,let your trophies fall to the rain,let the lean of the motorbike
carry you down the moraine,across the rising chill from the fields, on into town:warm light, voices, a meal in the tavern’s golden cave.
You won’t be riding that other road much again,but this one: the kind man’s dark leather backin front of you, the cycle’s center of gravity
sinking lower, the delicious clay-cold of the fieldbetween here and home rising up, scent of hay,of animals and ruin. He knows
you would just as soon stay,but lucky he’s not here for that.He ferries you home, maybe every night of your life.
Or that’s what you wish he could do,though you know it’s you leaning against himthat makes your mutual direction.
Every night a little like the one he came home late,happy, from the leather bar, and you in your welling upout of sleep said, I have a lake in me,
and he looked at you closely, with a generous,unflinching scrutiny, undeceived, loving, as clear a gazeas anyone had ever brought to you, and he said, You do
Here we go to continue the list of November of Thanksgiving:
Nine: Beautiful Maryland
 |
| Maryland flag |
I'm grateful for beautiful Maryland! The country here is absolutely breathtaking. There are farms just minutes walking from my house where there are sweet horses and gentle people and fresh produce. This week we visited the Harper House where a freed slave raised his family with six children and fifteen, FIFTEEN grandchildren in a 2 room log cabin.
We also took a day to visit Frederick which has a sweet and old fashioned downtown district. Frederick is in the middle of the country so getting there is also a treat. Driving over sweet hills and little valleys was breathtaking. I kept telling myself that one day we will buy a little house with a lot of land and move out there.
 |
| Downtown Frederick |
 |
| Welcome to the south! |
 |
| A cute guy I was on a date with liked this. In the South, we call him Cutie Pie. |
 |
| YUM. You will not find this in Yankee territory! 12 hour slow smoked pulled BBQ. However, here the waiters take about 15 minutes to chat with you before taking your order. It's a bit strange to have to talk to your waiter. I'm not used to being friendly to strangers anymore. |
Ten: Songs and Prayers
One of the benefits of now living in a single house is that I can sing and pray out loud and no one (except the cats) notice.
 |
| "yawn!" |
 |
| "Excuse me, don't mind me, keep typing." |
Fatty likes my singing and prances around my feet while Bentley is convinced I'm howling for food so runs back and forth from the kitchen to show me where my Purina Cat Chow is. My favorite song this week has been a church song: Shepard Me Oh Lord
I have also been following my granny's advice of praying out-loud. The ritual of repeatedly meditating on the words of prayer is relaxing and helps me realize that nothing within myself matters. However, words don't come to me in prayer the way they come to granny so I have been praying and admiring Anima di Christo. This prayer started to be used in Italy around the 14th century. If I pray in Italian, I think in Italian. I learned this prayer in Italian and personally prefer praying it in Italian. The words in Italian are these. In English are here.
Eleven: Poetry
When I was in elementary school we had to memorize dull poetry. In college my favorite professor, and crankiest one, would shout out venomous hateful poems by Sylvia Plath to wake us up. It wasn't till I was graduating from college that I truly began enjoying poetry. This week I was reading some poetry by Marc Doty and came across this one I really like. It reminds me of the death and passion in November:
"Deep Lane"
November and this road’s tunnelof soft fire draws you forward, as it descends,as if you were moving toward—
radical completion,some encompassment? Dark kindnesswoven in the fabric of the afternoon.
And because you’ve held within your own veinsanother passage of fire—obliterating mercy—not these lit-up leaf clouds
but a hot wire stealing intothe deepest chambers of the night—you love the way the asphalt lifts
then hurries down toward Deep Lane.The fire road insideis only that road once;
though desire sends you back there againand again, it won’t be that one you’re on,and thus you want all the harder.
So let this road take you,autumn’s enchanted boylifted into the wet-yellow lamps of the maples;
taken up by that fleeting light,let your trophies fall to the rain,let the lean of the motorbike
carry you down the moraine,across the rising chill from the fields, on into town:warm light, voices, a meal in the tavern’s golden cave.
You won’t be riding that other road much again,but this one: the kind man’s dark leather backin front of you, the cycle’s center of gravity
sinking lower, the delicious clay-cold of the fieldbetween here and home rising up, scent of hay,of animals and ruin. He knows
you would just as soon stay,but lucky he’s not here for that.He ferries you home, maybe every night of your life.
Or that’s what you wish he could do,though you know it’s you leaning against himthat makes your mutual direction.
Every night a little like the one he came home late,happy, from the leather bar, and you in your welling upout of sleep said, I have a lake in me,
and he looked at you closely, with a generous,unflinching scrutiny, undeceived, loving, as clear a gazeas anyone had ever brought to you, and he said, You do
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