a total lie

i think this blog is going to say i posted it on sunday. i didnt. i didnt have a brain cell left for blogging yesterday. and i dont have a muscle left today. but ill get to that later.
sunday, the two things that i was thinking about were two lines from the show (local wonders, see widget to the right) they are actually both poems by ted kooser.

the first is an entire poem from his winter morning walks, but most importantly the last phrase:

sometimes, when things are going well,
the daredevil squirrel of worry
suddenly leaps from the back of my head
to the feeder, swings by his paws
and clambers up twitching his question mark tail.
and though i try the recommended baffles--
tine cone of meditation, greased pipe
of positive thought--every sunflower seed
in this life is his if he wants it.

[emphasis mine]
the second is a section from a song (paul made it into a song in the show) called this is nebraska and id sing it for you if i could cuz its really the combination of music and words that i love so much here, but it reads like this:

a pickup kicks its fenders off and
settles back to read the clouds.
you feel like that;
you feel like letting your tires go flat,
like letting the mice build a nest in your muffler,
like being no more than a truck in the weeds.

and i know the sentiments in these two pieces are vastly different from each other but i love them both so very much for the same reason--they are incredibly beautiful and vivid poetry that make my throat catch with their truth.
i used to say i didnt like poetry. i havent said that in a couple years cuz i think ive slowed down and have come to realize it is more worthwhile to appreciate well thought out language than to go for immediate (and possibly facile) comprehension. i think its because im getting more visual as i get older. (and from going to china where i couldnt get any kind of comprehension from reading or listening so i had to learn how to work with the visual sense, just watching people interact to figure out what they are talking about and such. reading the physical aspects of a place or situation because everything else was shut off to me. it was good practice. and i felt like i understand more now.)
cuz it took me until then, my 24th year, to learn to trust anything but written and spoken words. and i know thats what these poems are, but just like radio, poetry is an incredibly visual art from. its about creating images for readers to recreate in their heads. and sometimes the pieces of the puzzle that are used, the syntax and phrasing, are harder to fit together than others. but ted's language is able to ground ones emotions and thoughts in concrete images from nature. that is so valuable to me.

cuz sometimes you feel like that; you feel like letting your tires go flat...like being no more than a truck in the weeds.

and sometimes the daredevil squirrel of worry suddenly leaps from the back of my head to the feeder..and...every sunflower seed in this life is his if he wants it.

and sitting with those images is enough to understand the emotions of what is going on there. so...there isnt anything more to say.