1217 Harris Avenue, Bellingham, WA (Fairhaven Location)
Well, let's head over to Fairhaven where the fancy people live! And let's see what delightful things they get to eat for breakfast! Bennies, of course! The best ones, apparently! That gauntlet has been thrown!
Talking In Bed
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
-- Philip Larkin
I like to get to work a little early and read some poetry before I go in, at least when it isn't 90 degrees outside. Call it my "centering" practice. So it was nice to spend some time with one of my favorite, delightfully grim poets over the past few months with a used copy of his Collected Poems. (A prolific poet he was not, which I also count as a bonus. Take him or leave him. No sticky editorial issues. It's all there in about 200 pages. Was he a horrible racist? Yes, probably.)
Working at the animal shelter since last fall, maybe the choice was subconscious. Some of Larkin's best and most famous poems are, in fact, about animals -- "The Mower" (about killing a hedgehog accidentally), "Myxomatosis" (about killing a rabbit on purpose), "Toads" (about people, really).
I'll always tell people, if they ask, my favorite poem remains "This Be The Verse." But I was less familiar with "Talking In Bed," and I'd have to say it's my favorite utterly unromantic love poem of all time. Which is to say, it's beautiful and true. A response to Sonnet #130, I think.
It's supposed to hit 95 today. I don't blame my dad for not installing AC back when he built this place in 1994, but global warming has definitely changed the game up for much of the Pacific Northwest.
It's worse in Seattle.
It's worser in Portland.
Posting has been light due to stuff. I'm still working at the animal shelter, and that's actually going pretty well. I am about four diners away from finishing my Diner Reviews, which is also kind of exciting. At home, the wheels are turning on some changes with my Dad and our current living arrangements. I'll leave it at that for now. He's fine, doing as well as can be expected at 93.
It actually rained a little yesterday, which is pretty shocking for Whatcom County in July and August.
More to come soon!
"If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes, or cheap jewellry? and if Sarah is right, how unimportant all the importance of art is. I tossed up, I think, simply from loneliness."
-- Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
"'It exists," Shevek said, spreading out his hands. 'It's real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can't pretend that it doesn't exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we'll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we'll die. That's the condition we're born on. I'm afraid of life! There are times I -- I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding -- this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain. . . . If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could. . . get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self -- ceases. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the reality -- the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness -- that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.'"
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
316 W Holly Street, Bellingham, WA
Full disclosure: my very thrifty father was has never been one for eating out in restaurants. For years he maintained a beautiful vegetable garden, and one of the joys of visiting him was getting to eat fresh green beans and salads and squash. (He never did figure out how to get tomatoes to grow regularly here, with all the rain, alas.) But Old Town Cafe is a spot we'd usually visit once on my summer visits. So what I'm trying to say is -- even my frugal father, my prudent Pop, thinks this place is worth your time and money. Let's head south of downtown and try!
An old menu? I think so! Let's head on in! (Am I the only person who would have ordered the fried young beef liver 70 years ago? Maybe!)
