Word of the Week - 65

Word of the Week:  JUNE

Its arrival has signaled celebrations for many Father's Days (gifts for which were once a roll of wintergreen Life Savers or pack of Gillette razor blades), for graduations.  It launched decades of vacations and once allowed the sun to warm a backyard hippie sort of wedding.  Among my friends and one relative it is now mostly birthday month.

I wish infinite good in all things to Ted, Joan, Claire, Randy and Carroll.  Because silly seemed to be in the air today, I share what might be a spirit creature for each in toy form.  Yes, I could Google toys all day.

The World Wildlife Federation offers adoption papers for their Three-toed Sloth, for Carroll.

For Claire, with a nod to her recent adventures, the Iguana marionette from Folkmanis Puppets.

The Folkmanis Puppets Golden Retriever for Ted.

For Randy, from Big Furry Friends, his retirement Doberman.

For Joan, a vintage Steiff cow on wheels.

Happy Birthday, dear chums and cousin. Happy June. Summer throws open its doors. Let's take our shoes off before we start to run.

Once in a very blue moon

Today (still Thursday in California) would have been my cousin Sheri's 64th birthday.  Her stained glass sun, created from a sketch of mine, is next to me in the dining room window every day as I write.  This afternoon South Pasadena had showers, then a thunderstorm, then pouring rain for more than half an hour.  After four weeks of heat and humidity and not a drop of the oft-mentioned "monsoonal flow" through our neighborhood, it was as fitting a birthday gift as I could imagine.  The LA Times this morning reported that in the past two days, New Orleans had an inch more rain than Los Angeles for its entire so-called rainy season.  Living in a thinly disguised desert, I view rain as a blessing, welcome it, especially when not predicted.

On the 31st, we can all frolic beneath the blue moon, the last until 2015.   Do we make a wish, plan a ceremony, eat cupcakes as an artist friend has announced?  It seems we are being called to watch the sky, even if just for a day.  I tend to watch it rather more often than that.  A rare summer storm may signify nothing, as may the blue moon of song and story.  Regardless, both are happenings outside the ordinary which remind me how fond I am of that which falls beyond the ordinary. 

Running a day behind

"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." 

William Butler Yeats


Through not-surprising inattention, I missed that yesterday was Yeats' birthday. My thanks to Susan T. Landry for the reminder and the poem she shared. In another life, century and state-of-mind, I was a student in Modern Poetry 101. It was there that I met Yeats and there that I was taught the only way to appreciate poetry was to know precisely what the poet meant in every word, phrase, pause, line break and nuance. It should have been called Deconstruction 101 and it nearly ruined poetry for me and me for it. I suspect the baffling process of snipping, with finely-pointed embroidery scissors, all the stitches out of art quilts made of words contributed to a once long-held belief that my brain was not quite equal to the task of participating.

Then, in a new century and with luck the leprechauns would envy, my heart was yanked back to Yeats and others previously unknown. Catapulted into the midst of an ongoing banquet hosted with patience and generosity by poets around the world, I learned that I could appreciate Yeats in my unscholarly fashion and not be wrong. I met a friend, a mentor who invited me to love the words I loved for how they spoke to, how they moved me, as I remained often clueless about the intent or the back story.

Being a day behind the celebrating of Mr. Yeats is a forgivable omission. Surely there are poets born on June 14. We may not know their names; we don't need to. We can thank them in their anonymity for all the ways they make our lives richer, for the fact they may overlook our possibly uninformed personal and emotional responses to their work. Happy Birthday, poets.

“The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.” 

― Jane Kenyon

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (aka: Happy Birthday)

Copyright M. Kelly for Rubbermoon

There were showers this morning, just after dawn. Actual early-in-the-season rain is forecast for later, tomorrow and, perhaps, beyond. We have also entered a big month for birthdays. Sincerest happy wishes today to Jean, and for tomorrow, to Alia and Morgan. Before the week is over, Joyeux anniversaire to Dana. Ah, Libra, fellow air sign, fellow troublemakers. Blessings, all.