[lit-ideas] Re: Poem from behind the last, on Sunday
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:48:18 +0900
Beautiful. And, this time, I think I can say honestly that I know what
you are talking about. A few years ago, stumped for something to
celebrate our wedding anniversary, Ruth and I came across a piece of
wooden sculpture. Imagine an egg about the size of a grapefruit,
carved out of 500-year old wood and polished to a texture that demands
to be stroked.
John
P.S. The 2007 Burns Supper at the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club
attracted a full house (150 people). The speeches were long,
curtailing the dancing, which led to some grumbling, but very funny. I
wish I'd had a way to record the fellow doing The Immortal Memory who
had contrived a hilarious riff on the assumption that Burns and his
sister had gone to Edingburgh to go shopping: he for a pair of
fur-lined gloves for his current lover, she for a pair of knickers.
The packages get confused in the wrapping, and Burns writes about the
gloves to his lover, who receives the package with the knickers. You
can imagine, I'm sure, the result....the latest fashion....pale in
color but not easily soiled...moisture resistant....looking forward to
seeing you put them on....the new style is to wear them rolled down
with a bit of fur showing.... The crowd, both men and women, was
howling.
John
On 1/29/07, David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't know why you should care, but if you do, I'll confess I wish I
knew why I like to stroke the thickly shellacked top of the side table
I made for one of our rooms at home. An Edinburgh aunt, when in
pain--which is almost always-- also rubs her hands on woods, absently,
usually at corners of tables, four inches in this direction, four back.
My mother--different side of the family, but also a Scot--did the same
thing when in pain, which was almost always. So maybe it's a Scottish
stoic thing? Or, second theory, some ancient aesthetic connection with
the bogwood handles of dirks or the hardwood drones of pipes, all of
them beautifully smooth. But why me and why now? My knees have both
been done; I suffer no great hurt; the table's made of birch. So maybe
it's a different gesture altogether, pride in craft? I don't know.
And here goes my hand again, like a ferry, sliding across the surface
of my wee shiny stump of tree.
I do know I buy clocks because they're cheap. In Target the dial of a
beauty can be had, as my father's expression goes, "for two thirds of
nothing," so when I wander over and am asked to hold the coats while
the women look around, I gravitate towards the aisles of Michael Graves
and sometimes come upon one, a clock, with a couple of red stickers on,
much reduced and nearly irrisistable.
Maybe you've a big theory going now, something about death and ships on
the Styx, life's pains and passages in the Oregon rain? Well explain
this. Today at a sale I bought a sundial, not wood, not cheap, not
particularly beautiful.
Could it be that all three of us are mad enough to want to see a genie
emerge, a smart one, with a fine red kilt on, the full head of hair
alluring, in a woody and dreamy and really quite light shade of brown?
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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