greed

The hint of excess was only a dalliance to the creature whose lithe underbelly squirmed with reckonings of luxury.  The monster that was ……….

Humanity. 

Digging

Life certainly had to be difficult in the first half of 20th century Ireland.  Probably still is.  One of my favorite poets is Seamus Heaney.  I didn't get around to writing on Sunday, so I am going to let Mr. Heaney take care of this week’s blog.  Digging is from Heaney’s second published collection of poems, titled  Death of a Naturalist.  Digging is one of his most well known works, but one can see why.  You can envision his father working the field, backbreaking work to be sure.  You understand that this is the way of life in rural Ireland.  Anyone who has turned a shovel in the garden can hear the “rasping” Heaney talks about coming from under his window.  One can sense the cool and too dry soil the potatoes emerge from.  The reader understands the time honored work taking place outside the window, and that Seamus Heaney intends on doing something different.

Seamus Heaney  (1939-)

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Hello, all ye sinners!

Well, I have committed to writing a blog.  I don't have much experience with blogging.  Reading or writing one.  I happened to read one a couple of weeks ago and thought, "Hey!  I want to do that!".  About a week before that, I was on the phone and said how good milk is with tuna casserole and it sounded kind of catchy.  Or I thought it did. The person on the other end failed to share my enthusiasm for figuring out how I was going to utilize this new slogan.  While tossing around the writing my own blog idea, it occurred to me that indeed, everything DOES happen for a reason!  At least random jingles anyway.  I love milk.  I mean looove it.  If I have to go several days without it, shit starts happening to me.  I get moody (moo-dy?  no?) and just don't feel up to snuff.  Having a glass of milk after a dry spell actually gives me a buzz.  Like a heroin rush.  A surging of intense pleasure.  I feel like I think those people feel who I see on Intervention commercials. The ones who, after shooting up, fall back into the corner by the toilet and exhale a gasp of relief.  Then they puke. Okay, it is not that extreme, but I can feel a mellow euphoria warming my body.  And I feel something happening in my brain. When having milk with tuna casserole,  I like to let my big glass of dairy goodness sit out a bit and warm up.  I have been doing this since I was around 9, when the milk with dinner one night wasn't exactly cold from having come from the store a good little distance away.  But I liked it.  I liked how I could speedily gulp the milk without a biting chill from too-cold liquid giving me a brain-freeze or hurting my teeth.   I liked the flavors together.  Maybe it just  recalls childhood for me or something.  Or maybe it is a "thing".  Like a peanut butter and jelly "thing". Which I also have to have milk with. No milk, no peanut butter and jelly.  We've got milk and cookies, cereal and milk, milk and honey, and now, tuna casserole and milk. So anyway, I don't even know why I like tuna casserole.  I hate seafood.  I cannot eat any other fish, or shrimp, or lobster, or crab, or whatever.  I cannot touch fish. I cannot see fish.  Once, at my cousin's house, I sat down to dinner and her mom served a salad with mini-shrimp in it.  I looked down and there were these little pink things in there, and they were curled up.  Like dead roly-polies.   I immediately broke out in a sweat, my heart started to palpitate, and I cried!!!!!!!!!!!  It was horrible.  It was embarrassing, and it was pretty damn weird.