Our Lady of the Shooting Stars (Mary Gauthier)

A friend (thanks, FM) sent me the following - sounds like a good reason/excuse (as if I need one... :-) for a late-night/early-morning jacuzzi soak!

Next Saturday night/Sunday morning, November 17th, we may have a very rare event occurring in the night sky. The Leonid Meteor Shower will return, as it does each year, when the earth passes through the dust trail of the Comet Temel-Tuttle. However, this year it will be a meteor storm. When this happened in 1833, people thought it was the end of the world. You can count on 1000 per hour, but astronomers think the stars are right for a repeat of the 1966 event when at one point 40,000 meteors per hour lit up the night sky.

SONG: Our Lady of the Shooting Stars by Mary Gauthier

BOOK: The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How to See Them: Observing Eclipses, Bright Comets, Meteor Showers and Other Celestial Wonders by Fred Schaaf

POEM: The Mystery of Meteors by Eleanor Lerman

I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a meager park
Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind white birds
Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors
though the radio news says they are overhead
Leonid's brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read
the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire

And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me
You would not think I still knew these things:
I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,
consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,
open windows, find beads to string with pearls
You would not think that I had survived
anything but the life you see me living now

In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air
She has been alone, she has known danger,
and so now she watches for it always
and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.
But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,
I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,
I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning
toward the crackling shower of their sparks

These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:
the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky
Walking down the paths of the cold park
I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything
So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me
the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads

For this is our reward: Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,
come love, not love, millennia of portents--
there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing
Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved

QUOTE: "It takes solitude under the stars for us to be reminded of our eternal origin and our far destiny." ~ Archibald Rutledge

I'm Lucky (Joan Armatrading)

Can't ignore Friday the 13th - I promise the Art of Southern Schmooze tomorrow, M... :-)

I've been a fan of Joan Armatrading's music for as long as I can remember - I have fond memories of driving around Carrollton, where we used to live, playing this cassette... and hearing my daughter S (now 25, then 2) chiming in from the backseat in her sweet, sing-song voice ("I lucky, I lucky, I lucky").

*I'm* the lucky one - always chaos, but very few complaints. I have my health, an almost 31-year marriage, three wonderful children, amazing friends, an enjoyable job, many passions (music, in all aspects, being first and foremost), fabulous weather and a jacuzzi in my backyard - to quote Gershwin, "who could ask for anything more?"... <3

SONG: I'm Lucky by Joan Armatrading

BOOK: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

POEM: Starfish by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?

There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.
And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

QUOTE: "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."