prolific: beyond the polder

Friday, September 14, 2001

26:11
A friend from Ireland phoned. He tells me there are 20,000 people outside the American Embassy in Dublin queueing up to sign the book of condolences. All the shops are closed. He told me he couldn't get sweets, or cigarettes. It's all closed. There's no newspapers. It's a day of mourning and people take it seriously.
09:39 PM [link] [4 voices] @ more »

The Cross
How to add the Red Cross box on the right to your site.
08:13 AM [link] [speak up!] @

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Towers
I came home from work today to find a postcard from my parents. They have been travelling in the USA since early September. I cannot contact them, I don't know where they are. You'd expect them to call or send me an e-mail, just to touch base. But they're not like that.

When I was younger and still living at home they used to get angry with me for not letting them know where I was every minute of the day. If I went to a friend, and we later decided to go to a sports event, they expected me to call and tell them. I never did. I thought it was ridiculous.

Now I am older, and perhaps I feel differently.

The postcard, stamped September 4, is of Hovenweep National Monument in Utah, and it features the ruins of two towers. On the back, my dad, in his classic, neat handwriting so similar to mine, wrote:

'These towers were built by Native Americans, some 800 years ago. Everything's ok, but it's awfully hot.'

[ update 14/9: finally, an e-mail from them. They're in Salt Lake City, trying to get to Atlanta to fly home. Apparently they mailed me from Cedar City yesterdat but it never got to me. ]
11:39 PM [link] [1 voice] @

Unsung
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
The Dragon and the Undying

All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down.

Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.
07:57 AM [link] [speak up!] @ more »