9/8 shoes, fly!

Well I now own one fewer pair of brown sandals...

Actually I think I only owned one pair of brown sandals...

Oh well.

Ode to a Dead Pair of Shoes


O once-solid once-whole coverings
designed to complement outfits
built from brown skirts,

Why do you lie, torn and broken,
in pieces, your soles hanging by threads,
mere echoes of your former selves,
in a dustbin by the schoolhouse door?

Why risk oblivion by slipping your heels
from frames, destabilizing what had been
stable, creating chaos in the early chill
of an autumn morning?

As both soles slid inexorably toward
foot covering heaven, I trudged, feet clad
now in the too-white of tennis shoes,
toward my classes, and, with no final eulogy,
let you slide into the open hole in the dustbin's side.

And now, dammit, I'm going to buy something better that won't fall apart.

CW: We're still working on the fleshing out of the outline for the Novel-That-Exists-Only-In-Your-Imagination for which you can create your Open Door or Prologue piece. Keep working!

E2CP: Some good discussion today. Tonight, look again at the Emerson section online. (Same section.) Why does he say some of the sharper things that he says, like "Your goodness must have an edge to it, else it is none"?  Later in that essay, he says this:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.--'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'--Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
What does he mean by this?

E3H: We had some good discussions about the "Not Marble" poems today. Tomorrow is Reading Workshop, but we'll be heading into more metapoems for next week. :-)

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Here is what is going on at the site of the World Trade Centers, along with a CGI rendering of what it will look like when it is finished: