hats

You already know I adore hats. I love furry winter hats the most,

but, I have been known to wear all kinds; straw, floppy, pointy.

(No, Pete, this is not my hair, it's a hat.) I just put my Zhivago hat

away for the winter, and felt a twinge of sadness. I'm afraid woolly

sock season will soon be ending, as well. Sigh.

Looking very dapper in his wool cap below, is my great grandfather,

Glenn. I don't remember him ever going out in public without a hat.

It just wasn't proper in his day. (I must have been born in the wrong

time frame, as far as hats are concerned.) So, in his honor, I can't let

this week's Theme Thursday go by without posting my favorite piece

of hat poetry by Billy Collins. I wish I had written it.

The Death of the Hat

.
.

Once every man wore a hat.
In the ashen newsreels,

the avenues of cities

are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled

with thousands of strawhats.

Brims and bands,

rows of men smoking

and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.

.

They went without saying.

You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs

who branded your initials in gold

on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.

Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.

Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat

and a hatcheck girl to mind it

while you had a drink

or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.

In your office stood a hat rack.

The day war was declared

everyone in the street was wearing a hat.

And they were wearing hats

when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day

and returned home

carrying the evening paper,

the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded

into the winter streets,

stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside

and the spruce trees behind the house

wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night

in their thin fur hats

to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,

wears a hat of earth, and on top of that,

a lighter one of cloud and sky – a hat of wind.

.

.

Theme Thursday = Ten

.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel

like I'm coming down with something,

something worse than any stomach ache

or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--

a kind of measles of the spirit,

a mumps of the psyche,

a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,

but that is because you have forgotten

the perfect simplicity of being one

and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.

At four I was an Arabian wizard.

I could make myself invisible

by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.

At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window

watching the late afternoon light.

Back then it never fell so solemnly

against the side of my tree house,

and my bicycle never leaned against the garage

as it does today,

all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,

as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.

It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,

time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I would shine.

But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees, I bleed.

Billy Collins

I like the idea of finding a picture of your ten year old self and

putting it in a lovely frame. Keep it out on your desk where you can

see it often. Be reminded of the fact that this little person is you.

Treat her gently and with kindness. Cherish this tender soul.

If this post looks familiar to some of you gentle readers, it is a

partially recycled post from last July. (Remember, we like to keep

things green at WM!)

Mad About Hats

This is my Great-Grandfather, Glenn, looking very dapper in his

wool hat. Don't people look fabulous in hats? I adore hats. There is

something very dashing and romantic about a person wearing a hat.

I like to wear one when I'm in a festive mood or when it's just plain

cold, like it's been this week. I saw a lot of hats on both men and

women at the inaugural because of the freezing temps. There was a

classy guy in a bright red fedora. And didn't you just love Aretha's

fabulous bow? There was a time, however, when you didn't dare

leave the house without your hat. It is quite sad that we have

become so casual in our attire that we feel perfectly comfortable out

and about in public without our hats.

The Death of the Hat, Billy Collins

Once every man wore a hat.
In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities
are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled
with thousands of strawhats.
Brims and bands,
rows of men smoking
and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.
They went without saying.
You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs
who branded your initials in gold
on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.
Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.
Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat
and a hatcheck girl to mind it
while you had a drink
or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.
In your office stood a hat rack.

The day war was declared
everyone in the street was wearing a hat.
And they were wearing hats
when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day
and returned home
carrying the evening paper,
the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded
into the winter streets,
stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside
and the spruce trees behind the house
wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night
In their thin fur hats
to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,
wears a hat of earth,
and on top of that,
a lighter one of cloud and sky – a hat of wind.

He used to frighten me in the nights of childhood,
the wide adult face, enormous, stern aloft.
I could not imagine such loneliness, such coldness.

But tonight as I drive home over these hilly roads
I see him sinking behind stands of winter trees
and rising again to show his familiar face.

And when he comes into full view over open fields
he looks like a young man who has fallen in love
with the dark earth,

a pale bachelor, well-groomed and full of melancholy,
his round mouth open
as if he had just broken into song.


The Man in the Moon by Billy Collins
from Sailing Alone Around the Room

The full moon tonight is supposed to be the biggest and brightest
of the year! It will appear about 14 percent bigger in our sky
and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during 2009,
according to NASA. This month's full moon is known as the Wolf
Moon from Native American folklore. January's moon is also
sometimes known as the Old Moon and the Snow Moon.

Alas, our skies are thick with impending snow, so we won't be
able to see the man in all his glory.

photo by willow, october 08

It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times. Mark Twain

.

There were some comments made about the Diane Arbus photo

I posted titled Two Women at the Automat and the fact that they

both had cigarettes in their hands, a rare thing today. Fortunately,

smoking is not the fashion rage it once was. I loved "smoking"

candy cigarettes when I was about five. They came in those cute

little real cigarette style boxes. I had all the sexy, glamorous hand

motions down to a tee, which made my grandmother extremely

mad. I'll have to confess I did smoke my first cigar last year, one

of those cute little Irish Cream numbers, just for fun, of course.

.

Some of the most romantic movie scenes are built around the

lighting of cigarettes. Two that immediately come to mind are Bette

Davis and Paul Henreid in Now Voyager and Roger Livesey and

Wendy Hiller in I Know Where I'm Going. I love when Livesey and

Hiller stretch out the windows for a light and their hands accidentally

touch. Sigh. How fun is Gloria Swanson's quirky finger cigarette

holder in Sunset Boulevard? ((Max!!)) And I adore the easy going

Joseph Cotten puffing his enchanting trade mark smoke rings in each

of his films. But, putting all the glamor aside, it is quite sad that many

of these stars, as well as those we knew who were smokers of that

generation, had their lives diminished by so many years as a result.

I am very happy to say that I never picked up the habit, glamor or not.

There are many that I miss,

having sent my last one out a car window

sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded ones, of course:

after sex, the two glowing tips

now the lights of a single ship;

at the end of a long dinner

with more wine to come

and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;

or on a white beach,

holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations

of flame and gesture;

but the best were on those mornings

when I would have a little something going

in the typewriter,

the sun bright in the windows,

maybe some Berlioz on in the background.

I would go into the kitchen for coffee

and on the way back to the page,

curled in its roller,

I would light one up and feel

its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,

trailing behind me as I returned to work

little puffs of smoke,

indicators of progress,

signs of industry and thought,

the signal that told the nineteenth century

it was moving forward.

That was the best cigarette,

when I would steam into the study

full of vaporous hope

and stand there,

the big headlamp of my face

pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

Billy Collins

"The Best Cigarette"

Sailing Alone Around the Room

Smiling Spider, Odilon Redon

The Willies

There is no cure for them,

unlike the heeby-jeebies

or the shakes

which Russian vodka and a hot bath

will smooth out.

The drifties can be licked,

though the vapors often spell trouble.

The whips-and-jangles

go away in time. So do the fantods.

And good company will put the blues

to flight

and do much to relieve the flips,

the quivers and the screamies.

But the willies are another matter.

Anything can give them to you:

electric chairs, raw meat, manta rays,

public restrooms, a footprint,

and every case of the willies is a bad one.

Some say flow with them, ride them out,

but this is useless advice

once you are in their grip.

There is no way to get on top

of the willies. Valium

is ineffective. Hospitals

are not the answer.

Keeping still

and emitting thin, evenly spaced

waves of irony

may help

but don't expect miracles:

the willies are the willies.

Billy Collins

Questions About Angels

Sleep (or Lack Thereof)

La Mere, Elizabeth Nourse, 1888

......

Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich, and your ma is good looking
So hush little baby, don't you cry.
Summertime, lullaby from Porgy and Bess, 1935
......

The original version of this song is quite soothing, and somewhat

slow and melancholy, in natural minor. Gershwin was actually

inspired to write the song after hearing a Ukrainian lullaby,

Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (A Dream Passes by the Window).

I love to fall immediately into a delicious deep sleep and then

sleep through the entire night. This scrumptious sleep was

always taken for granted in my younger years. Unfortunately,

I can all too often identify with this poem by Billy Collins. I think

next time, I’ll try counting jumping fish in a lovely field of water.

Insomnia

by Billy Collins
Sailing Alone Around the Room

After counting all the sheep in the world
I enumerate the wildebeests, snails,
camels, skylarks, etc.,

then I add up all the zoos and aquariums,
country by country.

By early light I am asleep
in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood,
yelling across the rising water
at preoccupied Noah as his wondrous
ark sails by and begins to grow smaller.

Now a silhouette on the horizon,
the only boat on earth is disappearing.

As I rise and fall on the rocking waves,
I concentrate on the giraffe couple,
Their necks craning over the roof,
to keep my life from flashing before me.

After all the animals wink out of sight
I float on my back, eyes closed,
I picture all the fish in creation
leaping a fence in a field of water,
one colorful species after another.

Jumping Trout, Winslow Homer

......

I even found The Willow’s Lullaby by Priscilla Hernández.

If this doesn't do the trick, I don't know what will...

Click (here) to listen.

My Ten Year Old Self

Willow, age ten

Not too long ago, I read an older post by Susan, that was so touching. She suggested finding a picture of your ten year old self, framing it, and loving that little person. Travel back in time and imagination and see yourself at ten.

I remember the clean, light sky-blue walls in Miss Reddel's classroom. My best friend, Carol James, and I spent hours pulling the pills from her hand knit cardigans and saved them in giant fuzz balls in our desks. We would giggle with delight when we showed up at school wearing the same poor-boy sweater, with a blue-rose print. We were green with envy when Carol Newman wore her black pointy toe shoes without any socks. How scandalous. Peggy Guichard had the most wonderfully thick Rapunzle braids hanging long, past her waist. We took turns pulling them, like the reins of a pony.

Speaking of ponies, it was one of the most happy and carefree times of my life, frolicking around on wild colt legs. After ten, it is never quite the same. Preteen awkwardness and peer pressure anxieties set in; we are expected to grow up. I love how Billy Collins expresses his ideas on the subject.

On Turning Ten

by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees, I bleed.

Candle Hat

Candle Hat

by Billy Collins, Questions About Angels, 1991

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrandt looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Samson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
then laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in," he would say, "I was just painting myself, "
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

***Francisco Goya, Self-Portrait, 1790-95

National Poetry Month

The Dead

The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall
silent and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

~~Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room, 2001

NPR and Sharon reminded me that April is National Poetry
Month. So, naturally, this would be a great reason to post
another of my favorite Billy Collins poems. I often wonder if

my grandfather, who recently passed away, is aware of my

life’s activities. A very high tech guy for the age of 93, he was

computer savvy far beyond my capabilities. He would have

very much enjoyed my blog and would have passed on little

tidbits of family info for me to post. I like to think that he

does read, and is smiling.

Poem for Today

"The Hunt"

by Billy Collins, Questions About Angels


Somewhere in the rolling hills and farm country
that lie beyond speech
Noah Webster and his assistants are moving
across the landscape tracking down a new word.

It is a small noun about the size of a mouse,
one that will be seldom used by anyone,
like a synonym for isthmus,
but they are pursuing the creature zealously

as if it were the verb to be,
swinging their sticks and calling out to one another
as they wade through a field of waist-high barley.

Poem for Today

Cliche

by Billy Collins, Questions About Angels

My life is an open book. It lies here
on a glass table top, its pages shamelessly exposed,
outspread like a bird with hundreds of thin paper wings.

It is a biography, needless to say,
and I am reading and writing it simultaneously
in a language troublesome and private.
Every reader must be a translator with a thick lexicon.

No one has read the whole thing but me
most dip into the middle for a few paragraphs,
then move on to the other shelves, other libraries.
Some have time only for the illustrations.

I love to feel the daily turning of the pages,
the sentences unwinding like string,
and when something really important happens,
I walk out to the edge of the page
and, always the student,
make an asterisk, a little star, in the margin.