Friday's Poem

Been thinking today about my feet. I have a blister from running. I need to paint my toenails. And later I'm going shoe shopping. All of which will help explain why today I've chosen to share this particular poem:

Pedestrian

The salesman's shoulder and a silver shoe horn helped me climb

into a pair of red Buster Browns with black trim and laces,

plod around the JC Penney admiring my sublime

feet. I slept in those shoes, dreamed that I was going places.

First week of first grade I got a pair of black canvas Keds

with rubber soles and three parallel white stripes on each side.

I felt balanced, could grip the waxed floors with groovy tread

that left its mark. They never knew I was petrified

of slipping into view, just as scared of disappearing.

At recess I hid in the playground's concrete tunnels,

kicked rocks at the kids playing near the openings, clearing

my escape route, imagining myself running until

the scenery changed. It did. My shoes were different

in my teens, when I tried on sex and higher heels for size,

lost my head in the halls. Still I carried an inherent

need for groundedness, gave up dresses and skinny thighs

for a chance to plant my feet in cleats and take the track,

loved the crunch of spikes striking asphalt, flinging gravel

in my wake, scared of being caught, never looking back

to see what was behind me. Even now when I travel

I watch my feet, sure only that I need to keep moving,

wear neon sneakers to which Phidippides would pray,

live as though quickness were a certain way of proving

worth, like a firefly, whose rapid light protects and gives away.

Jennifer Wheelock, 2006

Friday's Poem

On Collaboration

If you bring an umbrella, I will bring rain.

If you bring a pasture, I’ll be cricket, or cow.

If you bring shoes, I will offer my feet.

If you come with four walls, I’ll have a table, two chairs.

If you plow, I’ll follow with seeds.

If you lay a floor, I will prop palm fronds for a roof.

If you write a letter, I’ll lick the stamp.

If you come with flashcards, I’ll bring my best guesses.

If you have a canvas, I will stretch.

If you read a book, I will dog ear pages.

If only your right leg remains, I’ll hop on my left one.

If you come with nothing, I will throw a vase of clay to keep it in.

Jennifer Wheelock 2009

Hump Day Manners--Trash Talk

It's Wednesday. I think. To be honest, this week Monday felt like I was working on Sunday. By Tuesday I was sure it had to be Friday. But I digress. 

It's Wednesday, and it's trash day. Today's manners post is about not being a jerk to the people who pick up your trash. I was noticing in my neighborhood this morning how people, in general, respond in one of two ways to the men and women who are collecting their rotten banana peels, dog shit, coffee grounds, used tissues, and recycled vodka bottles. They either ignore them altogether, or they act mildly irritated by their intrusion into the neighborhood. Why is this? It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. And you'd be better be glad they do. Anybody in New York during the garbage collectors' strike?

I've always been averse to a hierarchy of treatment toward others. Why should I treat my doctor with respect and my trash collector with disdain? Both offer valuable services. Why should I coo over my hair stylist and tip him lavishly and treat the woman at the dry cleaner with bitter impatience. Oh god, maybe I'm a socialist. Or Danish.

Whatever. I suppose I do have egalitarian tendencies. One of my mother's favorite quotes is, "There but for the grace of God go I." (She's also fond of saying, "If you're too lazy to make the bed, why not just stay in it?") But it's really my father who lives by this creed. He treats everyone--pharmacist to farmer--with the same degree of respect. I worked for a while, when I lived in Hollywood, for a TV celebrity. He used to run out when the garbage collectors rolled up and dole out hundred dollar bills to each of them. And he'd say to me, "No one ever shows appreciation for what they do." Now, I'm not suggesting we all start tipping the trash men. But I do try to remind myself daily that one day I could be the garbage collector, or the waiter, or the person mowing your yard. When I walk through the park, if I speak to my neighbor who owns the local gift shop, I also try to speak to the guy who sleeps on the bench. 

Sure, there are days when I'm rude and impatient. But if it's one of those days, I don't pick favorites. I'm as rude to the banker as I am to store clerk or the garbage collector. 

So spend one day--tomorrow maybe?--paying attention to how you dole out patience and kindness. Do you treat your peers at work with deference and the maintenance workers with indifference? If so, let me introduce you to my dad.

Hump Day Manners

My friend Michele suggested I start a Wednesday advice column on etiquette for the New World. I hate to disappoint her, so today is the first installment. And, in typical fashion, I'm not going to wait for you to ASK me for advice, I'm going to offer it unsolicited. We'll start easy, with just a few behaviors I see regularly that I think--in the interest of living a better life in a better world--should cease and desist:

1. spitting on the sidewalk. Unless you're choking to death on a ball of phlegm or have swallowed a small rodent, wait until you find a toilet, a sink, or an area overgrown with ivy.

2. tossing your cigarette butt onto the ground. It is, apparently a little known fact that cigarette filters are resistant to degradation. They are made from cellulose acetate. They contain the chemicals filtered from the cigarettes, which can leach into our water supplies. And they can start fires. That thing in your car, under the radio? That's an ashtray.

3. waiting until you get up to the drive-through ATM to fill out your deposit slip and count your money. Reasons are self-evident to all but the most self-absorbed.

4. leaving your shopping cart in the middle of the parking space or lot. I mean really. Are you THAT lazy? 

5. not picking up the apples that rolled off the top of the pile onto the grocery store floor when you were fishing for your perfect, unbruised, shiny Red Delicious. Don't make me throw one at your head.

6. talking on your mobile phone while interacting with a store clerk. Okay, I admit to having done this. But it's just so rude. What if the clerk did the same thing? We'd be livid.

7. parking on or over the line and thus taking up two parking spaces instead of one. Your car is just really not THAT special. If you're that worried about door dings, leave it in the garage.

8. showing up empty handed. Do you want to be invited back?

9. not wiping down the gym equipment after you've sweated all over it. Ew. Your mother doesn't work out here.

10. Giving unsolicited advice. OOPS.

For my friend: Friday's poem. Not really Friday. Not really a poem.

http://images8.cafepress.com/product/360985638v3_350x350_Front_Color-Black.jpg

Poem for Friday

This Friday's poem is by Pablo Neruda. It is a nod to the little things that make our lives pleasurable, and tasty. And a nod to the margarita I'll surely have later.

Ode To Salt

This salt
in the saltcellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me,
but
it sings,
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those solitudes
when I heard
the voice of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a broken
voice,
a mournful
song.

In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.

And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food. Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.