Sylvia's Journal

I woke up this morning looking out over a luminous Lobster Cove, lightly touched by the first sunlight of the day. The words ‘spiraling from the center’ were playing in my mind like a record that is stuck. Did it come from a poem I was remembering? I have a poetry database that contains some 200 of my favorite poems which I use in my teaching. I created the database myself after having taken an online community college course on databases, a few years ago. It was a basic course and thus my database has no search function, so I could not plug in the line to get to the poem. Instead I went about my search by hand. A few poets came to mind, Rumi? e.e.cummings? And this is how I stumbled on e.e.cummings’ poem that now has a different effect on me than it had before. It did not contain the line about spiraling from the center, nor did any of the Rumi songs that I know of.

I still did not want to give up on the spiral line and searched on Google. It only gave me entries on labyrinths, witches circles, Dervishes and even a youth group in Connecticut, who seem to have in common that they dance and spiral into – not from – the center. I gave up on the search and went back to the cummings’ poem because it had touched me in a profound way, especially with the cove shimmering in the morning sun and me and Axel alive and on the mend.

i thank You God for most the amazing
day; for the leaping green spirits of trees
and a true blue dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(I who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings;
and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Axel went on a trip to the Mall with Andrew, which included a trip to the Apple Store (this is even a treat under normal circumstances) while Jim re-charged the battery of our dead car and Sita did the laundry. Ann Buxbaum and Naomi Blumberg drove up from the city and immediately set to work cleaning the kitchen and bathroom after which we had a wonderful lunch and a long chat by the Cove. It was a lovely visit and there was much catching up to do. I had not seen either of them for a long time. Our neighbor Jackie Hooper joined us for a while. The last few weeks have all been what we call 10+ days even though the grass is dying and the trees are already beginning to turn.

I finally had a talk with our lawyer to understand better what I should and can say or write and what I should keep to myself and he helped me formulate the questions to ask the plane and the health insurance companies.

Axel had a rough workout with his occupational therapist in the afternoon and returned home looking drawn and exhausted. We packed him up with ice packs and pain pills and settled him in the recliner. Cynthia from Quaker meeting brought us dinner and a copy of a Bill Moyers’s tape on impeachment which we watched after dinner. The tape features a conversation between Bill Moyers, a constitutional lawyer and a journalist who are trying to wake up Americans to the fact that they are being ruled by King George rather than President Bush.