33\u00a0 bar steep fall 30.11\u00a0 6mph N\u00a0 windchill 33<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds<\/p>\n
Boy is my sense of time screwed up.\u00a0 Got up at 4:30AM for the bathroom.\u00a0 Went back to bed.\u00a0 No sleep.\u00a0 Waited.\u00a0 Still no sleep.\u00a0 So at 5AM I got up, went downstairs, opened by John Weber collection catalogue and tried to figure out what to do next.\u00a0 This was difficult because I had put my notes for the tour in the carrier I take when I go into the museum.\u00a0 That location didn’t occur to me until ten sleepy minutes had gone by shuffling this paper and that trying to locate the item I needed to finish the tour.\u00a0 Those notes.<\/p>\n
But I did find them.\u00a0 As a quiet spring snow began to fall outside in the dark, I entered again the world of the Heian poets, the Shining Prince Genji and the floating world of courtesans, no theatre and elegant costume.\u00a0 Japan and China are strange and distant cultures for most Westerners so entree into their world does not come without some struggle, some setting aside of preconceived notions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the last three years in particular I have worked hard to get a handle on the historical context in both Japan and China.\u00a0 I’ve worked harder on China, but Japan has had some time from me, too.\u00a0 As so often happens in the life of the mind, eventually the heart begins to follow and somewhere along the line I went from interested to captivated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was easy then to begin comparing poems used in the poetry competitions, mythical contests in which cultured Japanese matched poets from different eras, then matched two of their poems that seem to have resonance.\u00a0 The competition was not between the two poets in question of course, but among the Japanese who created the matches.\u00a0 It would be like, say, putting Robert Frost’s “Snowy Evening” against one of Emily Dickinson’s darker pieces, Wallace Stevens and Coleridge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So it went for two hours until the dogs began to whine and I let them out of their crates, fed them and began my own breakfast.<\/p>\n
After breakfast I caught another hour and a half or so of sleep, then drove into the Common Roots Cafe where the docent book club gathered to discuss the (apparent) lack of religion\/spirituality in contemporary art.\u00a0 I guided this discussion, but I’m afraid I didn’t conceive a way to do it fruitfully.\u00a0 We had a lot of conversation, though, and I think we may have gotten greater clarity from it than was immediately obvious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was Tom Blyfeld’s 80th birthday.\u00a0 He celebrates his 56th wedding anniversary on Friday.\u00a0 He mentioned the doctor who delivered two of his children, a man 90 something who has great-great grandchildren. Amazing.\u00a0 He will celebrate his 65th wedding anniversary.\u00a0 These are numbers unattainable by most of us in the divorce generation.<\/p>\n
Tonight is the celebration of St. Patrick’s day at Frank Broderick’s.\u00a0 He bought the meat last Friday.\u00a0 His table always groans with meat and potatoes and cabbage.\u00a0 I look forward to it each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
33\u00a0 bar steep fall 30.11\u00a0 6mph N\u00a0 windchill 33 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds Boy is my sense of time screwed up.\u00a0 Got up at 4:30AM for the bathroom.\u00a0 Went back to bed.\u00a0 No sleep.\u00a0 Waited.\u00a0 Still no sleep.\u00a0 So at 5AM I got up, went downstairs, opened by John Weber collection catalogue and … Continue reading Up At 5AM and Hard At It<\/span>