November, Welcome!

Hey, everyone. Welcome to November in Louisiana. The air is cooler today and the mosquito population is dwindling slightly, but sure to surge after all the rain we had last week. Having had a dry summer, we had no fire ant mounds in the yard. After the rain about 20 mounds appeared overnight...fleas, too. Oh, how nature wants to take our money to kill vermin!

O, the moon-lady tonight is a pure, white bride, dropping her veil which flows like mist over all it touches---until it sighs softly down upon the bejeweled dewy grass. ~Marion, moonstruck yet again......

I've been reading the Tao and some Zen writings and Anne Michaels' poetry. I'll share a few quotes today then I'm back to my couch and reading. It's been a wild week here. All of our cats got sick with diarrhea (TMI, I know) and I was seriously thinking of giving them all away. Then we found out two had tapeworms (TMI, I know) so I had to give them ALL a pill---ONE little pill. Any of you ever tried to give a cat a pill? Well, it's just like every joke you ever read about it. After losing one of those $10 pills, I crumbled them up fine and put them in some tuna for each cat. Two of them gobbled it down and two of them looked up at me like, "Do you really think I'm stupid enough to fall for this dirty trick?" So I put away their dry food and told them (I'm sure they understood, right?) in no uncertain terms that they'll eat that friggin' drugged tuna fish or DIE of starvation!!!! It's just like having hard-headed kids again, except they purr while you're fussing at them to guilt you. I seriously considered joining a monastery for a few days there.

Verse 11 of

Tao Te Ching

Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole that allows the wheel to function.

We mold clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful.

We fashion wood for a house,

but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable.

We work with the substantial,

but the emptiness is what we use.

***************************************

Verse 11 from

"The Tao of Inner Peace"

"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

I know Mardi Gras is a long time away, but I found this pattern online and used some of my heavy scrapbook paper to make some easy masks and then I found this synchronistic quote:

"You wear a mask and your face grows to fit it." ~George Orwell, 'Shooting An Elephant'

And this funny photo is my husband trying to teach Catfish to walk on a leash. (This cat really acts like a dog. It's uncanny. He does everything but bark!) It was a cool, quiet day and we heard one of our neighbors exclaim to her mother, "Oh my God, I think he's walking a CAT on a leash!!!" Ha! We're still laughing about it. The experiment didn't work too well. The cat ended up walking him around the yard. LOL!

And a stanza from a poem by Anne Michaels from her amazing poem, "What the Light Teaches":

"Language is how ghosts enter the world.

They twist into awkward positions

to squeeze through the black spaces.

The dead read backwards,

as in a mirror. They gather

in the white field and look up,

waiting for someone

to write their names.

Language remembers.

Out of obscurity, a word takes its place

in history. Even a word so simple

it's translatable: number. Oven.

Because all change is permanent,

we need words to raise ourselves

to new meaning: tea and dacha and river."

~From "Poems" by Anne Michaels, pages 121, 122

If you've never read this amazingly talented Canadian poet, then I highly recommend her books. This one, entitled simply "Poems" includes poetry from three of her books: "The Weight of Oranges", "Miner's Pond" and "Skin Divers". Each poem is like a gift.

Blessings, Peace, Love & Happiness,

~Marion~