titles
a title is a brand
is a name
not your name
gotta take it to the
bank gotta
go gotta win gotta
cheering with the crowd
out
loud
gonna give it to the sun
gonna run
someone
gonna show you what I
mean
unseen
this scene
like a name is gonna fly
that lie
who’m I
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As I think about the book, I remember skimming bindweed with an iron rake, her tossing everything over the compost fence, descending the steps into her disease and my history, her knitting in that rocking chair, shoveling snow like memories, driving the jeep like I needed four-wheel-drive to cover the terrain of dementia, always caught off-guard flat-footed and unprepared, a pilgrim being burned at the stakes, Dad pitching horseshoes, the black wall of tornado, driving for yarn and lakes and singing with Mr. Rogers and finding stepping stones to make our way through.
_____________________
The Path of a Tornado
title options
Crazy Weather
I have considered
Bindweed & Iron
and pushed off onto a side table to look at later
____________________
Basho’s haiku written in 1686:
the old pond
a frog leaps in
sound of the water
The master of wabi sabi: the ephemeral beauty and deep meaning of simple, homey objects weathering, gaining patina before utterly crumbling away; “both the passing of time and time transfixed”
Weathering: the wabi sabi of Alzheimer’s
Basho’s book written of his travels around Japan from March 27 to August 21, 1689:
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
As it begins, he writes,
The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or who grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them. Many of the men of old died on the road, and I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming.
Last year I spent wandering along the seacoast. In autumn I returned to my cottage on the river and swept away the cobwebs. Gradually the year drew to its close. When spring came and there was mist in the air, I thought of crossing the Barrier of Shirakawa into Oku. I seemed to be possessed by the spirits of wanderlust, and they all but deprived me of my senses. The guardian spirits of the road beckoned, and I could not settle down to work.
That title is taken twice already now, once by Basho, once by Richard Flanagan. Flanagan even had prisoners of war. Everything I do is already done.
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Old Thunder
seems appropriate
old movie The Big Country
Dad’s favorite scene
nice haiku, but what’s the title of your book?
Dad’s Favorite Scene
now tell me, what did we prove?
any advice? don’t do it.
_________________________
Stretching my Patience
Walking fence
stretched wire thin
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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote that, I found out years later. The author of, “Patience is not passive, it is active…it is concentrated strength.”
He also wrote, “There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men’s deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.”
__________________________
A Pilgrimage to My Motherland was written in 1860 by Robert Campbell, he who traveled back to “the Egbas and the Yorubas of Central Africa” from America. A black man leaving America, taking his family far from these troubled shores. Poor timing to be usurping the title of his book, I think. As if it was ever anything but a poor idea.
__________________________
Mom or Mommy in English.
In Japanese: mama.
So that’s just spooky, not helpful. Still chasing a title. Still searching for the hidden meaning.