Monthly Archives: July 2014

Rosy Maple Moth

I found this beautiful moth on the road today…

The moth reminded me of a poem I hadn’t thought about in years. I was lurking in my high school library when I stumbled across a dusty old book that probably hadn’t been cracked in decades. It was a collection of “archy and mehitabel” poems, supposedly written by a cockroach named Archy, but actually penned by New York Evening Sun columnist Don Marquis (1878-1937). Archy pounds out his work on Marquis’ typewriter at night after everyone has left the office for the day. He types by diving headfirst into the keys, and because he can’t manage to hold down a shift key and type a letter at the same time, his poems are in lowercase. And Mehitabel? She’s Archy’s friend, an insouciant alley cat who claims to have been Cleopatra in another life and whose philosophy is: “wotthehell wotthehell toujours gai toujours gai.”

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

1927

Here’s hoping the moth I found today was burned up in one moment of exquisite beauty.

Like mother, like daughter.

An eye for style…

A certain je ne sais quoi…

Poise

Effortless grace…

Poetry in motion…

It’s perfectly obvious we both belong in sneakers.

Related post: Chic Sister Chronicles

My Grandchild

As you may know, I recently became a grandmother. It was quite a shock when the adult friend my son was with at the beach for a week announced that he had become a teenage parent. He texted me this photo of my son holding my new grandchildren.

My grandkids

If you’ve been following along, you may also know that tragedy struck soon thereafter. My grandchildren turned on each other in a savage and gruesome display of sibling rivalry of Biblical proportions. We buried the mangled, suppurating bodies of Cain and Abel, and now it’s just my own namesake Adrienne who’s left.

Despite my initial misgivings, I have to admit, I’ve grown quite fond of the little murderess.

I find myself checking on her all the time.

“She looks hungry to me. Don’t you think you ought to give her a little snack?” I nudge my son.

Today during my lunch break, I did some clothes shopping for her…”Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “These shells are super cute, but will they feel too scratchy?”

The more I get to know my new grandchild, the more I’m convinced that we have far more than our name in common. In fact, I will go so far as to say that we are kindred spirits.

We are both a couple of night owls. We like to prowl around when everyone else in the house is fast asleep. Sometimes we like to have a midnight chat over a cup of tea…We discuss how the stock market’s doing, compare notes on the novels we’ve been reading, gossip about our mutual friends and acquaintances…

We are both indecisive, especially when it comes to clothing. She is constantly changing her outfits:

Sometimes she can be a little insecure:

She’s generally peaceable, but if you mess with her, she can get, well, pretty crabby. She doesn’t really like to be touched, for example:

She’ll tolerate only so much, and then she just might nip you.

And as her siblings (may they rest in peace) discovered too late for their own good, it’s unwise to really cross her:

I think she got my looks, too.

Weekend Snapshots 11

We spent the 4th of July weekend in Arlington with my extended family. The kids were delighted to see their New Jersey cousins.

Friday

At Korshi Restaurant: “Party of 14?! You made a reservation? No reservation?! 14?

Yep. Party of 14.

Hours of fun (?) at Brookstone in Pentagon City Mall

“Owww! Is this supposed to feel good?!”
“Oooooo!”

Still having fun…

“GAAAAAAAAAH!”

We took the shuttle from Pentagon City Mall to Long Bridge Park to watch the DC fireworks from across the river:

“Where’s the jowl-remover filter?”

Saturday

Honorary Triplet
“You and your pictures, pictures, pictures!”

Yechon for dinner and Breeze Cafe for dessert (and the penalty shoot-out for the Holland vs. Costa Rica game):

“Let me take a selfie!”
#Selfie

My husband’s greatest triumph to date…separating four of my sister’s necklaces that had twisted themselves into a Gordion Knot.

Sunday

I think my favorite memory of this weekend will be sitting in my parents’ living room with my fourteen year old son, as he played them the electronic dance music he’s been producing. You have to understand, the only secular music I can ever remember being played in our household when I was a child was an old John Denver LP. Whenever my siblings and I ventured to play music of our own choosing, a pained expression would pass across my parents’ faces. Within minutes they’d ask us in no uncertain terms to turn it off. On Sunday afternoon, my elderly parents listened to the thumping, throbbing Electro house, progressive house, Melbourne Bounce, and Happy hardcore tracks my son played for them with thoughtful expressions on their faces. Every now and then, they would bob their heads appreciatively and say, “I like that part.” “You did that yourself?” “Very good, very good.” As my sister put it, “Now that’s true love.”

Want to listen?

https://soundcloud.com/ifyouknowwatimean/starlight-cruiser-original-mix?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=facebook

Home again, home again, jiggity jig:

Our dogs were delirious with joy to be reunited with us.

Post Script

Last night I showed our children the photos I had taken of the grotesquely large Eastern Hercules Beetle I’d found lurking around our front porch:

There goes the neighborhood.

I was fully expecting them to congratulate me for my incredible, heroic feat of bravery. I had managed to get so close to the beast as to even slide a quarter right next to its body for scale.

Instead of congratulations, I was subjected to a Greek chorus of reproach and bitter recriminations.

“Why didn’t you catch it in a jar for us so that we could keep it as a pet?”

“YEAH! It would have been so awesome!”

“I can’t believe you didn’t catch it for us…”

Next time, kids…next time.

City Kitty

The other day I was bragging to my coworker about my recent summer vacation to exotic Pittsburgh and glamorous Buffalo. For some reason she looked unimpressed.

“So do you have a fabulous summer vacation getaway planned?” I asked.

“I do! I’m going on a two week backpacking trip in Wyoming,” she announced gleefully.

“Ohhhh…wow!” I said, inwardly noting how her plans all of a sudden made schlepping around the mean streets of Pittsburgh and Buffalo in a zillion degree weather with a whole passel of kids seem all kinds of sexy and amazing.

“I hope you don’t get your period!” I blurted out loud. To cover for this gauche outburst, I explained to her that I’m not an outdoorsy kind of person…that I hate bugs and sweating and that I like cities and sidewalks and asphalt and air-conditioning and indoor plumbing.

“You’re an indoor cat!” she concluded.

By Reward (Photographer: Reward)

Indeed.

It wasn’t always this way. When I was little I would spend hours on my back in the grass, gazing up at the clouds. I loved digging in the dirt and exploring the woods near our house. It was only when I got a little older that I realized that my natural habitat is actually a bug-free, centrally air-conditioned interior.

Maybe the sad truth of the matter is that I always crave what I can’t have. When I lived in New York City I became obsessed with the idea of having a garden. I would check out towering stacks of gardening books from the public library and would look longingly at the flower porn. My hard-core fantasies revolved around pleached linden allées, garden follies, and pergolas. When we first moved to Charlottesville, it seemed like all my dreams were going to come true. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the project of gardening…despite the fact that instead of soil we have pure red clay studded with rocks…despite the fact that there are exactly two and a half days out of the year when it’s actually pleasant to be outdoors…despite the fact that I can’t stand bugs.

I have come to my senses once again. For me, “to thine own self be true” means retreating to the Great Indoors. These days I’ve just about given up on gardening, only venturing out when absolutely necessary. When I weeded for just one afternoon last month, I ended up having to be on a course of antibiotics for Lyme Disease for three weeks. I got off lightly. My son was seriously ill with Lyme Disease for months.

Enough is enough. It’s time to move out of the woods and get closer to civilization. I scheduled a meeting with a realtor. Before she came to assess our property, I thought I should try once again to tackle the thicket of weeds that has overtaken what was once my garden. Believe me, the motivation to move was the only possible thing that could lure me back out into the scary outdoors. The result of that one lousy half hour of weeding is that I now have weeping poison ivy pustules all over my body.

This weekend when my husband and I were swanning around the magnificent 1000 acre Trump Winery I jokingly said to him, “Just think of all the mowing you’d have to do if we lived here.”

“Oh no,” he gently corrected me, “You’d have your entire staff of minions to do your bidding. Yes, I can just see you now as the Lady of the Manor giving your orders. That’s really what you were born to do.”

I chose to pretend that for once in his life he wasn’t being sarcastic. See, it’s not that I don’t like the outdoors, really. It’s just that I don’t have the adequate staff to make it worth my while…

But is it air-conditioned?

Last night I didn’t have the heart to awaken the butler, who usually takes the dogs out for their last pee of the day. I took them out myself, and as I clutched myself uneasily, batting away gnats and listening to the toads croaking and the crickets chirping, I was startled by what sounded like someone knocking on our door. It turns out, it was a new neighbor dropping by to introduce himself:

There goes the neighborhood.

Yep. It’s definitely time for this city kitty to find some new digs.

Trump Winery

This weekend I took my husband on a belated Father’s Day date to Taste of Ash Lawn Opera, which featured performances by the principal artists for this season’s opera: Susannah. The event was held at the Trump Winery, located on a thousand glorious acres, just a little past Monticello. The Trump Winery used to be the Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard until it was seized by the bank for defaulted loans. At one point it was listed at 100 million. Donald Trump bought it for a snip – a mere 6.2 million.

As we drove up to the Pavilion at the Trump Winery we quickly realized that there was something that didn’t quite fit into the picture. That something was us. We are not young by any stretch of the imagination, but as we, from the safety of our minivan, contemplated the other attendees making their way out of their Mercedes and into the Pavilion, we felt like a couple of blastulas.

As soon as the performance was over, we slunk out to admire the gorgeous setting…

Something about the situation made us feel a little silly…

Seriously silly:

We decided to explore a beautiful winding road to see where it led. We got a little panicky when we realized we were heading straight to the grand estate itself with no easy turn around in sight. We kept expecting to be chased away by a baying pack of coursing hounds, or perhaps by Eric Trump himself, huffing and puffing out the front door with his floppy swoop of hair and ascot blowing in the wind. We managed to turn our dusty, dented jalopy around and headed back down to earth and this spectacular, $100,000,000 view: