A Poem For A Monday

January 31
David Lehman

The sky is crumbling into millions of paper dots
the wind blows in my face
so I duck into my favorite barbershop
and listen to Vivaldi and look in the mirror
reflecting the shopfront windows, Broadway
and 104th, and watch the dots blown by the wind
blow into the faces of the walkers outside
& here comes a thin old man swaddled in scarves,
he must be seventy-five, walking slowly,
and in his mind there is a young man dancing,
maybe seventeen years old, on a June evening--
he is that young man, I can tell, watching him walk

Oh I love this poem. I love the description of this little moment - the sky crumbling into snowflake "dots," the Vivaldi and the barbershop and of course this old man, wrapped up against the elements out on the sidewalk and so very clearly somewhere else. Or maybe the narrator just wants to believe that this man thinks of himself as being somewhere else, being a version of himself that he once was. Or maybe the narrator sees himself in this man...recalling a memory of being seventeen, dancing in the summer night while the dots swirl around outside.

Dinner And The Oscars - Part Three

It happened purely by chance two years ago and again last year so we figured why not keep the accidental tradition alive and hit up the Oscar nominated short films again in 2016? We started the fun at Massimo in downtown Portsmouth, one of our go-to restaurants since moving here. The restaurant itself is one of the pricier establishments in town, but a few months before we arrived, they opened a small bar with a more casual menu. We love eating at bars (like actually at the bar as opposed to a table) and this one is particularly warm and cozy, especially on a snowy night like Friday. The bartender, Chris, knows us well and it's always a solid meal.

Except for Friday night. Simon's scallops were dry and my meatballs were "meh" when usually they are "!!!!" The desserts were delicious (yes, I said desserts, don't judge) though we had to rush off to catch the films before I could polish them off.

The movies were also a tiny disappointing. Not quite as good as we remember them being in the past. We were farther apart on our favorites as we've ever been; my least favorite was Simon's number one. I enjoyed "Bear Story," but am putting my money on "Prologue," with stunning animation that seemed entirely sketched in pencil, if that makes sense. It was the most impressive though also the most bleak. You can check out all the trailers here.

I make the whole experience sound lame but the shorts are a great way to see a variety of films, get a glimpse of some cool animation, and embrace your steadily waning attention span. Grade A "date night." Woof.

Just A Little Moment

What, exactly, does he think the blanket is for?

The Post Post-Apocalyptic Post

For nearly a FIFTH of my life (don't do the math) I have been mired in post-apocalyptic, dystopian and survival literature. Obsessed with it.  Unable and unwilling to read anything else. I took breaks for the occasional chick lit beach read and went through a mini "phase within the phase" of guillotine-type historical fiction but I always went crawling back to my trusty zombies and nuclear holocausts. Jury is out as to the effect this had on my mental well-being. Or maybe the verdict is in.

The reign of the crumbling society is over, folks. While I still feel the lure of end of days tales, I've recently moved on to mysteries. Historical mysteries. I'm not even sure that's the genre's name, but I've embarked on three series that revolve around female heroines of yesteryear, ahead of their time as they launch into crime-solving detective work. The most recent novel twisted around so oddly at the end that the murder victim's father was also the father of her unborn child (eek) and was struck by lightning before he could be apprehended. Perhaps these are not so dissimilar from outlandish apocalypse scenarios after all. Anyway, who knows how long this will last, but for now, it's a welcome change. Hey, murders and crime must be better than flesh-eating zombies and roving bands of cannibals...right?