What do I remember

What do I remember
of this light-weight day
above the hillside,
above dark shadows,
looking at blazing white
clouds in the distance?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
Let’s leave it at that, shall we? More of a question about memory and what one remembers about one particular moment. Thank God for photographs – they greatly help with the task of reconstructing things gone by.

The photo taken from a chair lift above Campo Imperatore in Abruzzo, Italy, is by my real me, Johannes Beilharz. Leica R4, 50 mm Summilux, Adox CMS II 20 film.

Dream No. 181

 

Had a dream last night
in which, try as I might,
I could not remember
what George Harrison
looked like.

This greatly upset me
in the dream, him
being my favorite
Beatle and all. 10-foot 
pole taste of memory loss.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Photo: Ed Caraeff/Getty Images

Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Mother Mother (1990)

I've had this song in my head for days without knowing why. Usually there's some association that triggers the memory of a song. Nothing like it in this case. Didn't even wake up with it playing in my head as it sometimes happens.

I've been listening to Kate and Anna McGarrigle since 1977, when I picked up Dancer with Bruised Knees at the record store at the University of Regensburg in Germany on a whim because I loved the cover.

You think I'm lonesome? So do I, so do I

Most mornings I wake up with music going around in my head. Sometimes it's a piece I've heard the day before, but mostly these songs crop up out of the blue. Like many of the dreams I have, which are mostly weird and inexplicable.

The song this morning was Luxury Liner, written by Gram Parsons and performed by Emmylou Harris, and I have no explanation why this particular song and the particular line from it came to me. She and the Hot Band performed it during the 1977 concert of hers I attended in Munich, Germany. Well, that was a long time ago, no recent association there!

You think I'm lonesome?
So do I, so do I.
- Gram Parsons, Luxury Liner

The onset of dementia haiku

Could not remember

Alka Yagnik. Thought her name

started with an S.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Notes

Managed to remember this super-important piece of poetry for several hours after composing it in my head in the car on the way to the dentist this morning. Not bad for an ageing memory, if I may say so myself. However, this should not detract from the alarming fact that it took me more than a day to remember the name of Alka Yagnik after hearing her sing in a Hindi movie a few days ago. Whereas I could easily remember the others whose voices graced the same film: Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan and Lata Mangeshkar (who is impossible to forget anyway, right?).

The quote haiku

Can quote Dylan. Can
quote Cohen. Can quote Springsteen.
Cannot quote myself.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2018)

Note
It’s true – I can quote from an infinite number of songs by the people named above, plus a zillion others, like Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Neil Young, Gianna Nannini, Gianmaria Testa, Labordeta, Chavela Vargas, Amparo Ochoa, Soledad Bravo, Ralph McTell, Cyndi Lauper, etc., but I cannot quote from any of the poems I’ve written, even though they must number in the thousands by now. Well, except from one of my first ones, written in German when I was around ten, about some flower I claimed to have found deep in the forest.

The who am I haiku

Who am I to stand and wonder, to wait
While the wheels of fate slowly grind my life away?
Who am I?
– Country Joe McDonald

Rediscovered stuff
I’d written and completely
forgotten. I am!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2017)

Note
Looked at poems and stories – and the accompanying notes – I’d written in 2002 because I seem to be missing photos I’d taken that year, particularly in spring, so that a whole period of my life is undocumented, so to speak, except for the things I wrote and saved on the computer and what’s left in my memory. Oh well, even rediscovering oneself is some sort of evolution...

The faded memory haiku

And in retrospect
even that mighty lion
seems small and mousy.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Inevitable notes
Even though I take pride in not wasting words in haiku, I left in the leading “And” – it works well as some sort of intro; try it out for yourself and remove it, and you’ll see that the poem starts too abruptly. Also, when I was writing this in my mind, I had a “somewhat” qualify the “mousy”. However, shortage of syllables available lets you have it full blast now.

The senility or what haiku

Using words not re-
remembered to talk about con-
cepts not remembered.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Notes
What was that about again?

You are like a hurricane

Again woke up with a song playing in my mind that seemed to have sprung from nowhere – Neil Young's Like a Hurricane, essentially a one-image song: that of the stillness in the eye of the hurricane while the storm rages, blowing the narrator away.

It is one of my favorite Neil Young songs, but I haven't listened to it in ages.

What could have caused this to rise to the surface this morning?

Musical affliction

Has it ever happened to you that a song implanted itself in your inner ear, seemingly out of nowhere, and would stay with you for days?

Hank Snow's One More Ride has been with me off and on for several days now. Where did it come from? No source I'm aware of. It's unlikely that I heard it somewhere here in Italy. It certainly would not be played in any Roman store or elevator.

I remember recording this song on my reel-to-reel tape recorder from the country music hour at SWF 3 around 1973 and must have listened to it a lot back then. I loved country music at the time and hardly ever missed that radio show on Saturday afternoon.

The clickety-clack of Hank's railroad track has been calling me much too long. What to do? I have no button to switch it off.

– Leonard Blumfeld, musically afflicted

408311

Have you ever noticed that some PINs – or number combinations in general – are much easier to remember than others?

The generator gave me 408311 today, which struck me as one of the ones you need to look at twice before you enter it.

On the other hand, there are some numbers that are so good they stay with you for ever and ever. Like my first Colorado license plate: MW 9552. Even though I can't explain exactly why I find this one easy to recall...

Anyway: have a good day!

The long lost river haiku

The long river flows –
song heard on radio long
ago. Who sings it?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2013)

Evoked by Haiku Heights and river.

Note
Completely true once again – nothing invented. Heard this song on the radio about 40 years ago. Never have heard it again. But have never forgotten it. Or should I say: never forgotten the memory of it. Memory works in the strangest ways.

Feeding the birds at EUR lake

For S.

Last Saturday the women
of the Gugnani clan
and I as their chauffeur
went to EUR lake
to feed dry bread
and chocolate-coated
rice crispies to the birds –
droves of ducks, geese,
pigeons and seagulls.
I was reminded of my
mother and how, even
during her last days
at home, her first priority
in the morning was
to feed the birds, come
sunshine, ice or snow.
I remembered how
she'd walk out
on that terrace in
slippers and gown,
oblivious of everything
except the birds
and the seeds
she had for them.
I cried for her,
perhaps the first time
since she died in 2009.

– Leonard "Loaded with Memories" Blumfeld

Fragrant

For S.

Still,
after so many years,
that flowery perfume
encountered
on anyone
anywhere
will jostle up remnants
of a love
long buried.

Don't worry –
that love
has been resting in peace
and does not
compete with yours.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2012)

Written around fragrant, jostle, remnant from 3WW.

Strawberries run deep

Or was it raspberries?
That was the title of a book of poems
I bought somewhere in rural Arkansas
in 1978, where three friends and I
had come for boating on the
Buffalo River.

Written by one Edsel ... (not Ford,
I think, definitely not Ford). And
now I can’t find it on my shelves
to help me remember why
those berries, straw or rasp,
run deep.

– Leonard “Does Run Deep” Blumfeld (© 2010)

A poem to illustrate the strangeness of (my) memory and to go with “running” at One Single Impression.

Notes
As I found out with the help of Google, the poet's name is Edsel Ford indeed (there is a Wikipedia article about him), and the title of the collection is “Raspberries Run Deep” (published in 1975). I still haven't located the book, though, so the deep-running raspberries must remain a mystery for now.

Memoir of a reading arranged by a cowbird

Mr. Cowbird was the hyperactive kahuna of the culture scene in Badenweiler, a small spa in the Black Forest which used to be a nobility hangout in the 19th century. Its claims to glory and fame reside more in the past – it is the site of baths from Roman times, the ruins of which are still around, and the place where Anton Chekhov died in 1904.

Russian poet Vyacheslav Kupriyanov – probably better known in Germany than in his native country or anywhere else – had come to give a reading, which I attended to finally meet him in person. His and mine publisher had told me a lot about him.

The reading drew an immense crowd of about 18. Mr. Cowbird presented the poet with a lot of not so succinct words, making reference to this and that – including Kupriyanov’s more famous compatriot and old ties to Russia – and eventually allowed him to read.

Kupriyanov’s poems, particularly the funny ones and the ones he read in Russian, were received with lots of applause – much better than the prose. I seem to recall that he read an excerpt from his novel “The Wet Manuscript,” which left the audience in a state between puzzled and dazed.

Afterwards, Mr. Cowbird and his secretary led a small flock of die-hards to a Weinstube to celebrate the event with some of the excellent local wine and plenty of self-congratulation by Mr. Cowbird.

What do you do when exposed to the incessant onslaught of such an overwhelming ego? I mostly just sat there and blinked my eyes, as did everyone else.

I ordered red wine. Before the waitress could give it to me when she arrived with her tray, Mr. Cowbird, who had been impatiently awaiting the white wine he had ordered, grabbed the glass off the tray, took a good gulp and went on rambling.

Once, when he had asked Kupriyanov a question and actually let him answer it, Mr. Cowbird looked at his wine glass and said, “Did I order that? That’s pretty bad. I didn’t order that.”

“No, you didn’t. That was mine,” I said.

– L. Blumfeld (© 2008)

Written for Totally Optional Prompts.

My darling daughter’s got a relapse of the terrible twos

Quick.
Someone.
You there....
Trip her.
– Rhian

I’m making pakoras
for a crowd, my hands are full,
and she is spinning like a top,
stopping only to push
the pink button again
when La Bamba’s over
on the dratted pink kid
cassette player granny
gave her on her birthday.
And off she goes again
with that exhilarated grin,
that evil chuckle on her chin...
You there, Maria, quick:
get her, grab her ...
before she trips herself.

– Len “Parent Rewarded” Blumfeld (© 2008)

Sparked by the reading of Rhian's poem for Monday Poetry Train #43.

Out of the window, sharply

I've been sitting here on Sunday morning editing tags.
What a thing to do on Sunday morning, without even having had breakfast.

When I caught myself at this (after approx. 20 min of it),
I, for some reason, remembered through the past darkly,*

and that it was probably a wise idea to situate myself
in the world I live in consciously,

by looking out the window sharply. The world is out there
all right, it consists of thinly white clouds and baby-blue sky,

of quiet houses, grey walls, red roofs and spiky antennae.
Not a whisp of smoke out any chimney. Has it all died on me?

Now don't get rhetorical, I admonish myself. If it were dead,
my dear, you'd know first hand, because you'd be dead yourself.

– Len B.

* Apparently a song by the Rolling Stones. I'd thought it was the title of a poem by Henry Treece, recited by Joan Baez. Will have to verify. The world-so-wide web has failed, I'll have to revert to my empirical means.

Will let you know the results soon, like in about 5 minutes. This is, once again, blogging on the razor edge of time.

I'm back!

• Empirical means have failed. That Joan Baez record is not among the ones I have in my living room. Probably in the basement, where some of her stuff has been banned. My first record ever was Joan Baez' "The first ten years." Living in the country with no access to music stores, I'd mail-ordered it. Anxiously checking the mail for it every day for weeks. It took an awful long time to arrive. That was in 1970. I was 14.
  
• The poem by Henry Treece I remembered is called "Old Welsh Song" (I'll post it soon).
• I may have possibly and wrongly been thinking of García Lorca's "Gacela of the dark death", which Joan B. also recited on the same record. (To be posted as well; this is turning into a thread.)
  
• I'll have to listen to that Rolling Stones number.

Back again, some 10 minutes later:

• Riddle solved. The Joan Baez album is called "Baptism," and the piece on it I'd actually been thinking about was "Of the dark past" by James Joyce. There you go.
  

Oh the tricks that memory and association can play...