The All-New Bunrab

Water

Rivers are both male and female.
Lakes are female (everything concave...)
Oceans are male; all the great whales and little fishes
Are sperm. Life came to land from the sea.
Ice? Some say the world shall end in ice,
So ice, like war, is male and wears a black robe.
Snow is female:
Gently, gently covers you with a blanket.
Gently, gently, smothers you.
Rain? Ah, rain is puddles, and puddles are children
At just the age where it does not matter; they are
Like the earthworms that share the puddles, both or neither.

Rivers and rain:
Do laundry.
Grind grain.
Grow crops.
Go fishing.
Whether it is Mother Earth or Great Sky Father,
Motherland or Fatherland,
Rivers and rain are mother and father,
However you conceive of those.

It is said: you never step in the same river twice.
Lesson: your mother/father is/are always changing.
It is also true: you never see the same cloud twice.
Lesson: you must constantly renew your reach for the sky.

©2009 R. Kelly Wagner. Permission to reprint granted provided this copyright notice is included.

(There, was that pretentious enough? Now I'm going back to sleep, whatever pretentious dream inspired this.)

ETA, in the light of day: I certainly hit every cliche in the book. I think I meant grandiose dream, though - can dreams even be pretentious? When I'm asleep my grasp of the language may be impaired just a bit. My grasp of cliche, though, not at all!

We're home. Lessee. The Austin Symphonic Band concert on Saturday night was great, the party was fun. All sorts of people who played with the band at one time or another were invited, so there were people there who hadn't played with the band in 20 years. One guy who had apparently played with the band for a few months in the 80's, who I didn't remember *at all*, apparently remembered squirrel_magnet and I really, really well, because he cornered us for a while to talk to us about our pet rabbits! It was fun seeing all those people.

Jerry knows us really well. Sunday morning, it was iffy about us waking up in time to get to the airport in time to return the car and check a bag and go through security (remember, I have to get the fun hand pat-down), so Jerry had just the solution: put a recording of a band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the stereo and crank the volume up. Yep, that got us out of bed! Jerry and Kathy, thank you SO much for your hospitality this past week!

More of the week than we expected was taken up by visiting w/ Steve's family and by band stuff, so there's still people we didn't get to see. It's funny how much of the week seemed to have something to do with tea. We gave Kathy a hostess gift of a sampler of decaf teas from Upton; Jeanne and Larry gave us a gift of samples of tea from a new tea shop that opened in Round Rock.

We made it back safely, and in time even to take a short nap before having to wash up and change for the concert we played in Sunday evening, in Perry Hall. The concert went pretty well, although there were several places where I missed cues because I was squinting, the lighting being aimed directly into my eyes and those of the two trumpets who sit nearest me. We did not have fun with those lights. The tenor sax did not show up for the concert. I have a few words for him...

One of the things Dick Floyd said at the ASB concert was something he had heard from someone else, to the effect that "Any band conductor who doesn't end a concert with a march doesn't love his mother." The ASB concert ended with "Washington Post." The Baltimore Symphonic Band concert ended with the band arrangement from "Les Miserables" that everyone plays, but as it happens, that arrangement does end with the rousing march, "Do You Hear The People Sing?" so that was OK. Monday night was Bel Air band rehearsal; that concert, next Sunday, will end with "Barnum & Bailey's Favorite." All the conductors we know love their mothers. Judging by what people say at rehearsal, I am not playing the bari sax LOUD ENOUGH on the contra-alto clarinet part; I'll have to try to fix that at dress rehearsal, which is way too early Saturday morning. Being on stage instead of in band room, the whole seating arrangement will be different, so it may fix itself.

I have tons of mail to go through, of course. And I haven't read anything but magazines all this past week, and I have a stack of library books to go through sometime soon.

Sort of odd being back in our plain "Pebble Ash" colored car after a week with the Tomato Express.

The new issue of The Progressive has an interesting poem, called "Bird Seed," by Kathleen Aguero, which uses birds squabbling at a bird feeder as a metaphor for the current war, and uses quotations from Robert Fagle's recent translation of The Iliad. If you like poetry you might want to get this issue. Assuming, of course, that you are someone who would buy a magazine called The Progressive - one of many liberal mags I subscribe to.

OK, that's enough for one post. I'm sure I'll think of more later.

(c)2005 by R. Kelly Wagner

My love, your eyes are larger
Than the largest pearls, than the entire oyster,
And they gleam like phosphorescent worms
In the volcanic vents.

No human wearing kohl around her eyes
Could make herself as attractive
As your ink makes you,
Spread around you in a dark halo.

Your tentacles are as graceful
As fronds of seaweed
And I shiver when I think
Of the many places they could touch me.

Your beak is as strong
As the jaws of a giant shark
And there is no one I would rather have by my side
In the fight against the whales.

My love, spread your mantle next to mine
And share your eggs,
That our sons and daughters
May rule the waters.

Song of the Squid
(c)2005 by R. Kelly Wagner