August 7, 2008 @ 7:53 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Well of course I had to pull the green bag poem out of the comments for Poetry Friday this week.
If you missed the beginning of the conversation, a commenter referred to my “great green bag,” which sounded so much like Goodnight Moon’s “great green room” that I couldn’t resist a bit of spoofery:
In the great green bag
There was a cellular phone
And a box of mints
And fifty-two cents
And seven receipts
And a package of treats
And a stray Life Saver all alone
And diapers and wipes
And what’s that? Oh cripes!
The remnants, now mush,
Of things from that bush…
Some kind of berry
Stains like a cherry
My keys are all coated
But oh how she gloated
When she filled up this pocket!
This bag?
I should lock it.
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
Twitter Updates
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
I love reading your site and your twitter-isms. You are so funny and clever!
Posted on August 7th, 2008 at 9:29 pmOh, eeek. I find things like that in my purse even though I don’t have kids…! Hm. Cute!
Posted on August 8th, 2008 at 3:56 amFunny!
Posted on August 8th, 2008 at 7:03 amHow funny and clever!
Posted on August 8th, 2008 at 7:48 amI love this! Thanks for the smile…
Posted on August 8th, 2008 at 8:16 amBoth the original and the sequel are great fun!!
Posted on August 9th, 2008 at 2:43 am