Three Graces and Serendipity

This week I’ve been looking at sculptures and paintings of the “Three Graces” (I’m on a mythology kick) and came across a bursting-forth version by Niki de Saint Phalle, whom I know very little about and think of never.  Then, in noontime class, today, Sally hands me a postcard I sent her 10/14/93 from Paris. “Sally: Well, I made it. Now I’m sitting in a café, the sound of pinball and murmuring help me muse over a glass of wine, as I watch the rain and people pass by. Phrase book and map are barely getting me along. So far, all I can remember is “Je voudrais…” (I would like) and merci merci merci. I flew from Dublin to London yesterday, then took an all night bus to here, so I’m fairly out of it. Every time I get someplace new all I want to do is go home but in a day all I want to do is explore. My walking shoes are sopped; soon I’ll return to my shoebox-sized room and collapse and write. Yes, you have to smoke here. And in Dublin, too. I'l clean out driving back across Arizona in a few weeks. For dinner? The best bread, a pear, and some goat cheese. This wandering has its fun moments.”  So who’s on the front but an elephant, “Sculptures animees de Tinguely et Nicky de St Phalle.”  So I have a Niki thing going on. And I am so overdue for a long solitary trip.

Poem of the Day

Messenger

By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on

what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and

learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, which

is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a

mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to

the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.