Happy Solstice

Here’s my lovely meditative Solstice celebration: a few strawberries in a glass of bubbly water at sunset after 9 pm on the second-longest day of the year. 

I missed my chance at what should have been my blip. I was headed out on an errand when Doll stopped me for a chat, and while we were talking, Joan drifted in, rolling her little art-supply cart behind her. She also lives in this building and is a visual artist, makes monotone assemblages in boxes (think Luise Nevelson). She has had a number of exhibitions, never sold enough work to make much of a living, but her work is fascinating. Joan sat down, chatted for a few moments, and then pulled her harmonica out of her pocket and played Kermit the Frog’s great song, Rainbow Connection. My camera was in the bag at my side, but did I think to make a photograph of Joan playing her harmonica? No. I just sat there and basked in the wonder of it.

I do have a bit of news about Margie. She has been moved to a Rehab facility twenty miles out of town. They expect her to be there a couple of weeks. When Sue comes back, maybe I can use her car to go visit.

I’m loving Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-sook Shin, translated into English from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim. It’s about all of us and our mothers, about how an aging mother’s disappearance woke her children to the fact that they hadn’t paid much attention to who she was, other than their mother. Did she like cooking? What colors did she like? Did they even know her? It’s written mostly in the second person, implicating the reader in the story, like this:

During that visit to your childhood home, you woke up thirsty in the middle of the night and saw your books looming over you in the dark. You hadn't known what to do with all of your books when you prepared to go to Japan for a year with Yu-bin [the narrator's boyfriend] on his sabbatical. You sent most of the books, books that had stayed with you for years, to your parents' house. As soon as Mom received your books, she emptied out a room and displayed them there. After that, you never found the opportunity to take them back with you. When you visited your parents' house, you used that room to change your clothes or to store your bags, and if you stayed over, that was where Mom would place your blankets and sleeping mat. (38).

Brilliant.