Friday, October 3, 2014

A Sort Of TS Eliot Homage


Did I tell you that it's supposed to get down into the upper forties tomorrow night? I can't remember if I did or not. I'm old, my brain is older. I know, that doesn't seem possible but trust me, it is.
Anyway, forty-seven degrees or something like that. That, for us, is COLD, y'all! I just had the AC on last night and tomorrow I'll be using the heater. And wondering where my sweaters are. And my down comforter, known fondly to me as "The Duck" and to my husband as "That damn thing."
Coldest night in winter (and I do leave the window cracked) and he sleeps with the sheet and maybe a cotton blanket. Maybe. Meanwhile I have the blanket, a quilt and The Duck.
We are differently tempered in more ways than one.
Bet you knew that.

I have bread rising and am even making a little plate of cheese and crackers and smoked salmon for our martini hour tonight. Like Lis would do, except Lis would do it better and I forgot the damn cream cheese, of course. And she always garnishes things and makes them beautiful and finds tiny silver serving spoons that I don't even know I have. I feel like such a pretender. But I'm going to do my best. Speaking of garnish, I need to plant pansies and violas. They are perfect for all sorts of garnishing purposes, aren't they? Salads, cakes, little plates of smoked salmon and crackers and fancy mustard. They are so delicate and yet so hardy when the coldest days and nights fall upon us. And so pretty with their little faces, their colors of purple and yellow and white velvet.

I went out and checked and the garden is already coming up. Tiny ear-sprigs of greens. Oh, how I love this most perfect time for the garden! It's all potential and promise. I want to get back in there and plant cilantro too. I had good luck with that last year. And guess what I'm going to do this year?
Fertilize!
It has all-of-sudden-occurred to me that perhaps some fertilizer might actually allow my plants to grow larger than the bonsai stage. Yes, I will use something organic. When Mr. Moon used to have his tire store, a guy would come by and try to sell him drugs and also some sort of fertilizer made from dried crab...guts? Claws? I don't know. But that shit was awesome. We didn't buy the drugs. Maybe we should have. As I recall, the crab stuff came in big bags marked with Oriental writing of some sort.
I'm so ignorant.

Anyway, here we are and it's rained today and I took three pieces of jewelry to be repaired which makes me feel as if maybe I'd climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. One of the pieces was a tiny gold ring that my friend Sue bought me in Italy. It has chips of rubies and diamonds in it, and it's either 18 or 22 carat gold and the band broke a long time ago and I pulled it out of my jewelry box today and in a week I can wear it again. That makes me happy. I went to Publix and ran into an old friend and it was good to see her. She's recently retired from nursing and is helping tend her new grand baby. We showed each other pictures of our grands and we laughed and we hugged and god, if it wasn't for Publix, I'd never see anyone I wasn't blood-related to.

I remember when we used to go out every Friday night to a beer garden where they had a happy hour which everyone came to call "hippie hour" and the tribe all came together to drink and chat and dance and we brought children and babies and dogs. Those days are gone forever. All of us stay home now, all of us old hippies. Those of us who are still here. When we meet, we shrug ruefully and say, "I never go anywhere," and we laugh a little and say, "I miss those days."

But we had them, we had those days, and now we stay home and that's okay too. To everything there is a season.
And a time for every purpose under heaven and so forth.

Friday night. Martinis with blue cheese olives and Tabasco olives and cheese and crackers and next weekend Jessie and Vergil will be moving to Tallahassee and the downtown festival which Hank has been working on for months will be happening and life just keeps on happening and thank god because if it didn't, I wouldn't be.

Happening. That is. Time to bake the bread. Time to make the salad. Do I dare put a record on the record player? Or eat a peach?

The mermaids sing each to each.

I still think they sing to me.

A most literary cat. I swear, I did not pose one thing about this.


Wear your trousers rolled, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon



















10 comments:

  1. I stopped at the feed store to get some eggs today and as I was coming out an old woman heading in and she was gray haired with it up in a loose French twist wearing overalls. She didn't carry an extra ounce on her and her skin was so wrinkled it looked a size or two too big. Late 70s, 80s maybe. Strode into the feed store and I thought I want to be like her and the overalls made me think of you. Then she strode out, I guess cause they didn't have what she wanted, before I could get out of the parking lot. She was headed to her pick up truck and as I backed out I saw her license plate. HOOK R. I kid you not.

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  2. Love Eliot. I grow old, I grow old....
    And then this: I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

    Gotta love Thomas Stearns Eliot.

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  3. Ellen Abbott- And now she is the woman I want to be too. Except-uh, HOOK R? Well, maybe she's a fisherwoman.

    Syd- I sure love him. Or at least, some of what he wrote. I cherish Prufock.

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  4. You can use chicken poop. I even worked for a company that packaged it. :-) 2308

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  5. I like some of Prufrock, but he irritates me, too. I prefer you, actually. I mean it.

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  6. "Into the room the women come and go, speaking of Michaelangelo."

    You live a good and shining life there in Lloyd. Could a new tradition of hippe hour happen again? I'd love a weekly ritual of just that sort. I think we are lost without community.

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  7. Michelle- I do put the poopy hay into the garden but it's just not enough. Obviously.

    Elizabeth- You made me smile. Thanks, sugar.

    Angella- We're all so spread out now. We seemed to have moved to further counties to relax in the woods. And it's just hard to move our tired old hippie asses. I guess.

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  8. I should be used to this but I still find myself newly awestruck when I read a post like this and it gives me so much peace. And I don't think I'll ever find the words to describe what I mean by that.

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  9. Jill- The words you gave me brought me such pleasure. So thank you. Love to you.

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  10. Another altar with a welk!

    Drugs and fertilizer. That is a very strange combination. Talk about an all-purpose traveling salesman.

    Cats are so funny, how they insist on lying right on top of whatever you're doing, or putting themselves between you and your task.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.