on how life seems to get more beautiful as one approaches antiquity

- some things, as a soul gets older, they just get more interesting. like flora & fauna. like poems. i just had no interest in any of that in my youth. even as a young teacher, i'd go fast when teaching about animals. imagine that: kids love animals. in that respect, i must admit i wasn't much of a teacher.
- in other ways, i can look back & see i was quite a teacher. i was good w/kids. i like kids genuinely, a genetic blessing from folks who were teachers who like kids genuinely (no, humankind in general). heck, i even like teens, even when they invariably infuriate w/their myopic ways (mama always reminds, "they're not DONE yet," like she means a cake in the oven)... & back before NCLB, we did art & music in my classrooms, & lots of writing, & i got to turn kids on to ancient civilizations, stories & novels, math tricks, conundrums, cartooning, mnemonics, even mozart & spike jones during daily writers' workshop. and when i was a librarian for a while, the middle-schoolers knew i played music, so i got to be a role model w/o blowing my own horn (which would've been a hideous thing to do), just be me & hold up my head & show up for work & try hard & be good to the kids & dress in my kinda eccentric manner & order cool books for them to read & talk w/them & comfort them & laugh w/them & admonish them where necessary... god, that was the greatest job, even w/my personal life at that time in utter ruin...
- now here it is just a few short yrs later: this different life! no teaching these days, but much curiosity about life, & enthusiasm & inspiration, even gusto, shared w/my dear husband... we've not been apart for 4 months! -- but someone had to go check on the mountain house of a billion stars & fresh lungfuls of air & snow-speckled mountains, our magical mountain house!, so i did while he this wk plays his heart & soul out every single night because he is so well-loved, talented, dedicated, the ultimate frontman & entertainer... james can shake a gig out of a coconut tree, i think. and those coconuts want catchin! yes, he goes out there & finds the work. i guess musicians who've told me there's no scene anymore, no work, no pay lack james's drive & charisma... people want to see him perform! he & i & maybe you, too, know this world is beautiful, despite its frailties & human failings & horrors, even; however, tho we all know energy in=energy out, i don't know if this world on-balance is fair. but if it is, james'll accomplish all he desires. he is that strong in body, mind & soul now... unstoppable! a giant star waiting to shine for all to see. my husband. the inimitable.
- he just called for the 21st time today & i've been summoned home. "i miss my wife!" he says. wow! i'd been thinking the same about him! so i will finish my visit w/beloved family & friends & trek on back so that we may together sleep, rest, dream, plagued by nightmares no more. (well, here & there, but that's just human, or a headache, or too much ice cream or pickles or pizza right before bed.)... alluding to sleep & dream reminds me now of hamlet, & how little i know about the bard, & how little formal education has to do w/intelligence cause here i sit w/3.5 college degrees & james w/none, yet he, self-made man, self-educated brightness, is the one who can well-recite swaths of shakespeare from memory, including "to be or not to be..." ... some writers, i just love how they combine such beauty & such heartache, despair, even squalor, leaving me exhilarated, on the verge of tears, baffled, happy to be alive, enervated, contemplative, sad, grateful, amazed. this kinda thing is part of why we both love bukowski so much (whom i CAN quote a bit), tho we no longer hang out at buk's reno room in long beach like we did cause, well, neither one of us now "never [sic] drink... vine." this reminds me, the terrific bio "born into this" is now on netflix. it features my old teacher neeli, even, neeli, swell prof when i was getting my MA in san francisco, shambling, near-sighted, scruffy soul who in his youth had been a pal of bukowski's... (insert singing figures from small world ride...) ok, have gotten too fragmented now, so how bout a few beautiful poems for you, dear reader, & for my beloved husband?
MAMIE by carl sandburg
MAMIE beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana/ town and dreamed of romance and big things off/ somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran./ She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down/ where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and/ when the newspapers came in on the morning mail/ she knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all/ the trains ran./ She got tired of the barber shop boys and the post office/ chatter and the church gossip and the old pieces the/ band played on the Fourth of July and Decoration Day/ And sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the/ bars and was going to kill herself/ When the thought came to her that if she was going to/ die she might as well die struggling for a clutch of/ romance among the streets of Chicago./ She has a job now at six dollars a week in the basement/ of the Boston Store/ And even now she beats her head against the bars in the/ same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place/ the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe/ there is/
romance/ and big things/ and real dreams/ that never go smash.
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by silliam shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments. Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds,/ Or bends with the remover to remove./ O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark/ That looks on tempests and is never shaken;/ It is the star to every wand'ring bark,/ Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken./ Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle's compass come;/ Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/ But bears it out even to the edge of doom./ If this be error and upon me proved,/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved.