Dear Bleaders,
White sky out there seemed to call for this poem by Timothy Donnelly, of the wonderful Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit and The Cloud Corporation.
Epitaph by His Own Hand
From the morning he started
peeling his first potato
he felt like he'd been peeling
potatoes for eternity-
all that fell about his ankles
like clouds' inky shadows
smudged across pastures
of an afterlife clearly
put farther away from him
the harder he worked for it.
-Timothy Donnelly
It's true! Potato peelings look like clouds. Or rather like the shadows of clouds.
Every time you peel a potato you pick up just where you peeled your last potato. Life is just one long potato peel interrupted by weeks of nonsense and then returns, at last, to the spud and the knife.
No, but I like the misery of this little poem. Don’t always gnaw the heel of the bread, stop working hard for your reward.
Instead, look up at the clouds and see them from upside down, as if they were on the ground around your chair, flapping down from your lap as you sheer thin shapes off a bulbous, knotty loaf of the stuff, whatever it is. Busy day.
Don't kill yourself and I will return to encourage you yet again.
love,
Jennifer
