I Shopped Today

I didn't mean to, but I was at the mall waiting for my hair appointment and I wandered into the book store. I got three paperback books off the "3 for 2" table, paid for them, and walked out feeling a little guilty, but not much.

You will have to forgive me; I have already forgiven myself. We are leaving for Watervale next week, and the thought of a week at Watervale without a stack of new books to read was too dismal to contemplate.

So what did I buy? What brought to an end my year of not shopping?

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, recommended by my sister;
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, recommended by my new boss and an Oprah's Book Club selection; and
"Blink" by Malcom Gladwell, the author of "Tipping Point", a book I really enjoyed.

This doesn't mean that I am going to go crazy with shopping. I plan to overlook this little lapse and continue to resist mindless shopping for the balance of the year. Not buying new things has helped me to appreciate the things I already own.

Two poems today, just because I like them:

Lending Out Books
Hal Sirowitz

You’re always giving, my therapist said.
you have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she’ll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn’t have the time
to read them, & she’s afraid if she sees you again
you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.


The Fiddler of Dooney
William Butler Yeats

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.
When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"
And dance like a wave of the sea.

Of Jane and Emily

I saw the movie "Becoming Jane" last week. It is a romance, based, very loosely, on Jane Austin's life, and in particular a sentence in one of her letters to her sister, saying that she had flirted with a Mr. Lefroy at a party. The movie got a lot of things just right - her father the country parson - her dashing brother who married cousin Philadelphia (whose first husband lost his head to the guillotine in France) - Jane's lively wit.

As for the romance between Jane and Mr. Lefroy - well, all the romantics in the theater wished it were true. Jane Austin wrote the most wonderful love stories and we all wanted to think that she had once experienced a passion of her own. But Jane Austin never married. She was very briefly engaged, but called it off, choosing to remain single rather than marry without love.

Another wonderful writer who never married is the poet, Emily Dickinson. There are rumors of an unrequited love for a married man, but no one really knows, and no one believes there was anything physical between them. However, there are tantalizing hints of passion in her writing that give one pause.

The following poems are by or about Emily, but are for Jane as well.

Emily Dickinson

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!



Billy Collins

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.