Friday, December 11, 2009

Read.Eat.Listen Ode to Cold

I've been freezing my arse off all week here in San Francisco. But what do you do? So rather than resist, I'm dealing with the cold, living in fleece, and re-remembering what the rest of the country knows very well regarding real seasons.

Read:
Cold Poem, by Mary Oliver
Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.
— Mary Oliver

Eat: Veggie Pot Pie (via Epicurious) Comfort food!



Listen:
Winter Wonderland by Booker T. & The MG's
Play song from iLike.com
In The Christmas Spirit - 2009 - 2:06

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