Archive for August, 2012
…Weary of words and people…
…sick of the city, wanting the sea…
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Exiled, by Edna St. Vincent Millay; read by David Zaza
My friends swimming off Far Rockaway, 2012
I went to Far Rockaway this weekend, and while it wasn’t Millay’s coast of Maine, it was restorative. I protected myself from the bitchy sun, huddled under itchy towels, crabbed my way through a hangover morning by eating fish tacos with city hipsters. I shook off the salted caramel of a boardwalk Caracas, then took to a dark dive bar in the afternoon to shoot whiskey and darts at my young friends and the bar’s old firemen. I lost everything, even the one fish I thought I’d hooked with a bit of cheese bait back in the inland safety of our little island off the coast. The night was so dark I just knew I had gone blind.
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Wild Sea, by Mark Eitzel
About suffering they were never wrong
Musée des Beaux Arts, by W.H. Auden. Read by yours truly. Click to play:
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Paris Opera Ballet. In Paris!
I’m beside myself because my family and I are going to see Paris Opera Ballet on September 24. Just us, 2000 thousand Parisians, and the Palais Garnier. Oh, and some of the best dancers in the world. Doing an all Balanchine program! Serenade, Agon, and Prodigal Son — three ballets that could couldn’t be more different in style, but which are united in showing Balanchine’s absolute mastery and genius.
Third trip to Paris, third time seeing this company. I saw them twice in New York as well — once fifteen years ago and finally again this summer. But to have them doing an all Balanchine program is beyond my wildest dreams.
Between Poems, by Jack Gilbert
A lady asked me
what poets do
between poems.
Between passions
and visions. I said
that between poems
I provided for death.
She meant as to jobs
and commonly.
Commonly, I provide
against my death,
which comes on.
And give thanks
for the women I have
been privileged to
in extreme.