Catch Them If You Can

Lately I've been waking up in the dark of the night with a brain incubating with words. Half-formed rhymes dance tantalizingly overhead and threaten to fly away unless I commit them to immediate memory. For a few intense minutes, I attempt various mnemonic devices (Create an acronym! Build an association chain!) in the hope of staying in my warm bed, but eventually I shuffle off to my office and pit myself in a typing race to catch the winged little creatures before they fade to nothingness.

Here's a poem that came to me recently at 4am and was complete by the time the sun came up three hours later. I may embroider it for an upcoming project I'm thinking of doing on Hollywood - I like the idea of stitching words like "Balenciaga" and "Prius" and "ahi"; they are so redolent of our 21st century narrative.

* * * * *

In Search Of An Ending

She sat in the penthouse bar,

Stylishly wrapped against cold

A capelet adorning her shoulders

A vision for all to behold.

Lace adorning her torso,

(Zac Posen last season, on sale),

Her shoes, Louboutin, half off,

(Via Gilt Groupe's biweekly email).

Neiman's had sold her the handbag,

A Balenciaga, in black,

She felt ill when she thought of the price tag,

And was thinking of taking it back.

The credit card bills were mounting,

The lease on her Prius was due,

The rent on her studio had increased,

Her landlord was threatening to sue.

The bartender reached for her cocktail,

Warm from sitting so long,

She gave him a look, and he left it,

She needed it there to feel strong.

Her Hollywood dreams were still pending,

Auditions had not gone that well,

She had to curtail all the spending

Or it was back home to Tampa to dwell.

The business men wolfed down their ahi,

And knocked back their Grey Goose on ice,

And burped when they thought no one saw them,

And leered at her over their rice.

Her God-given red lips sighing,

She blinked, and surveying the room,

Shook off her creeping exhaustion,

And prayed luck would come to her soon.

(Photo credits: First image, me; second image here; fourth image here; fifth image here; sixth image via marthaadams.com; last image, painting by Christian Schad, 1924)

Sustainable Graffiti for the Soul

This is one of those brilliant ideas that looks so absolutely right that you wonder why no one ever thought of it until now.

(All photos via here)

Guerilla gardener Anna Garforth emblazons walls with mossy graffiti in her quest to meld intrigue into the transitory landscape of urban spaces.

My work needs to make an immediate impact given its ephemeral nature. There is a lot of wild in the city. My eye has become attuned to the plant life that pushes and grows its way through all the cracks in the concrete. Once you have noticed it, it's everywhere....

~Anna Garforth

Garforth uses nourishing ingredients to affix the moss to surfaces. "I collect a common moss that grows well on brick walls and glue it to the wall using a mixture of natural (bio active) yoghurt and sugar."

I've spent the last year watching my ivy delightedly clamber over my own brick wall and now I want to pull it all off in favor of an inspiring quote. There's something so elementally profound about it, don't you think?

It's Arcadian poetry transported to the urban jungle.

Listen to the way Anna describes herself on her website...I think you'll agree she lives with passion and purpose:

I am the crazed woman with mud on her face, bristling with moss and screaming against the wind on a bike laden down with foraged materials.

And now for the question of the day: Given the chance to emblazon your own wall, what quote would you put up?

My personal top three picks would be:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

(Robert Herrick)

There is strong shadow where there is much light.

(Goethe)

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

(Andrew Marvell)

******

Editors Note: I'm off to Kauai for a brief spell. Back soon. Be good.

The Poetry Doctor

(photo via here)

It's the wizardry of the internet: You're browsing online and something catches your eye so you click over to someplace else which leads you someplace else and someplace else, and before you know it, an hour has dissolved in the blink of an eye and you've taken this crazy escapade through time and space and discovered the most marvelous things.

I call it "falling down the rabbit hole."

My most recent virtual adventure resulted in the discovery of a delightful compendium from Penguin called "Poems for Life" edited by a woman named Laura Barber (a.k.a. "The Poetry Doctor").

(book available here)

Inspired by Shakespeare's seven ages of a human life, it's a collection of some of the best-loved poems in English and is divided into sections on childhood, growing up, making a living, finding love, raising a family, getting older, and approaching death.

Of course I want the book (when have I ever seen a book I didn't want?), but what really grabbed my attention was "The Poetry Doctor's" column beneath it, in which she responds to personal queries with a fine-honed prescription of classic poetry. Really, it's amazing how modern-day angst can be eased with a lashing of old wisdom.

I include one letter for your enjoyment. To read the others, click here.

Problem:

Dear Poetry Doctor... I'm not sure, but I think I might drink too much.

Prescription:

Is Ogden Nash's "Reflection on Ice-Breaking" your motto? When you look at the carousing scenes in Byron's "Don Juan", does it all seem strangely familiar? Could Coleridge's vision in "Kubla Khan" of the wild-eyed eccentric who has "drunk the milk of paradise" bring back memories of Friday night? If so, then you're probably just nudging the desirable limit.

For a poem whose mood matches the muffled daze of a hangover (and the insistent bark of the hair-of-the-dog remedy)...

...take a look at Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale", and to get you in the mood for daintier indulgences...

(photo via flickr)

...how about Percy Bysshe Shelley's promise of non-alcoholic fun:

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,

Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;

Custards for supper, and an endless host

Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,

And other such ladylike luxuries.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

And from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats:

(photo via here)

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the tru, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

~John Keats

The Poetry Doctor's prescriptions only exist on the Penguin Books "Poems for Life" page and nowhere else. That's not enough, I say. I don't know about you, but I think the right poem at the right time can do most people a world of good. I absolutely believe in the power of verse to transform moods, improve well-being and solve those tricky situations in life that leave you with a well-heeled foot in your mouth. Egads, by the powers of Calliope, the goddess of poetry, can't this woman please start a blog?

"Penguin's Poems for Life" is available in hardcover here.

And in in paperback (with free shipping worldwide) here.

P. S. On another note entirely: The sweetness that is Suze. HERE.