SOME OF THE BEST
3 June, 1999 Click
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Photo by Dan Chapman ©2001
Stanyan Entertainment Group
A Thought for Today
Life remains unfinished without love.
“Dear
Rod, Spring will be over soon, how about reprinting “Spring Song” from one
of your “Book of Days” and the June 3, 1999 Flight Plan. Or your
introduction to ‘A Month of Sundays from the 1981 Book of Days?” Love you
and the new book, Gillian Anderson.”
Dear Agent Scully, for you anything. Here are both. Have a great summer
off. You’ve earned it. Love, Rod
SPRING SONG
Long before the trees begin to
bud, before the new grass starts to roll with the curvature of the hill
and spread out evenly on the common, a certain uneasiness, a kind of
insecurity arrives one morning or maybe just at dusk. It presents itself,
moves in and settles in. Not unkind, not troublesome, this uncertainly is
more an itch - a harbinger that finally scratched enough boils into the
apple blossom.
The thrower of the seeds lets go his kernels in mid-March. The early April
rain cooperates. Later on the lilac trees are all so heavy that their
boughs bend low and nearly break. The prairie dog sits up and calls from
mound to mound... a high pitched squeak that all his brothers answer. New
pinafores for Sunday School. New patent leather shoes for Easter.
The May pole dance. Lost balloons begin to decorate the inside branches of
trees. The song of the Wandering Angus is lived out and sung. The plainest
of us begin to feel beautiful again... and the fever deepens.
- from Rod McKuen's "Book of
Days", 1981
ADDED
ATTRACTION
Sundays. Here are a month of
them to play with.
On Sunday I stay in bed. Open all the windows. Work in the garden. Tear up
all the junk mail. Stretch. Clean the house or rearrange the stacks of
things I plan to go through one day. Take a bicycle ride. Drive to the
beach. Send postcards. Run up the phone bill. Listen to Mozart, Morricone,
Paul Simon, The Police, Bob Marley, Bach - if I'm up, Brahms; if I'm down,
Borodin, Sinatra, Ella, and Sylvia Syms. Groom the cats and dogs. Stay in
bed. Edit tapes.. Write. Ignore deadlines - mine and everybody else's.
Read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Bly, Nikki Giovanni, Charlie
Plymell, Bukowski, Aram Saroyan, Elaine Goodman, and new books friends
have written. Make yet another list of things to do (that won't be done).
Go ballooning. Paint. Draw Nikki or Bingo if they're sleeping. (Cats are
hard to draw.) Wash the car. Rewrite my will. Stay in bed. Call up the
White House, just for fun. (The number is 202-456-1414). Daydream. Make
popcorn or Bloody Mary's. Cancel charge accounts. Read old magazines and
last week's newspapers. Stay in bed. Over-dub bad or incomplete vocals.
Watch reruns of Carol Burnett. Swim. Catch up on Bills (Safire and
Buckley). Give liberal writers equal time. Pray. Make love, if I'm lucky.
On Sunday I don't usually go out to dinner. Sing in the shower. Answer the
telephone. Answer the door. Read my own books. Exercise. Make my bed.
Think about income tax. Go dancing. Weigh myself. Do crossword puzzles.
Play bridge, Scrabble, darts, backgammon. Listen to new wave music. Argue.
Comb my hair. Write my congressional representatives.
-from Rod McKuen's "Book of
Days", 1981
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Rod McKuen" at the Riverton Rendezvous is open! Click below for
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