Everyone's refrigerator shows what they really think about the world around them. Some have their kids pictures on them, others are full of notices and schedules. Over the years my refrigerator has gotten a character of its own. I have a collection of cartoons (I especially like the Calvin and Hobbes one where he daydreams that the deer are finally hunting humans) plus a list of movies I want to get around to renting. And I do have some kids artwork and strange magnets on it. But my favorite parts are the Magnetic Poetry and the bits of newspaper clippings that I've found I HAD to stick to the fridge for safekeeping.
Magnetic Poetry: If you've never seen these, you will. Bookstores are full of these kits now. Basically its a set of random words on magnetic backing. Since the pool of words is somewhat limited, these poems have a real Dada feel to them. But like all poetry, they do express some deep meaning. At least that's what I think. You might think these are really dumb. And that's "OK". Most of these are written by the kids, a few by their friends as "guest authors". KT put on a few, and I've written all the good ones. Here's what's on the fridge today:
speak bone pick a ferocious growl
miss me after we have a melon
young baby poetry present her voice
green grass blue ocean ice fire god
perhaps it is her voice that surrounds me
fish decaying in delicious candy cakes
stiff father yesterday eternity
a red stream of translucent smoke haunted my days as I laughingly rotted
magic and deep liquid
embrace not the fool
question clean porcelain
you born life belly
from the eye to perfume
linger as soft as this to rob him of the needle
learn why morning flys remember to beat vast and steamy things and dance with broken bath salt
she has no words to ask
angel & dog & cat devour caramel pie as almost fresh animal as brother must once was
wild as star home tree
women and I kiss like sex
the ghost knows men which listen bleed for my time cold throbing when hard air comes
die dark but kill slowed down man with a bellow
celebrate over secret or sacred concrete
drink corduroy after eating webs
free my hand of a cup of two hot moist sails
your trust dazzles your breath
flower sister daughter smile peace heart
Newspaper clippings: Here's a few items that have stuck on my refrigerator. These are some of the "thoughtful nuggets" that I've found in my readings.
Buddhist thought:
At the heart of Buddhism are the four noble truths:
Insight from Paula Poundstone:
"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, its just a sort of tired feeling."
John Rosemond's Three Eternal Rules:
Lyrics to This Pretty Planet:
"This pretty planet spinning through space,
You're a garden, you're a harbor, you're a holy place,
Golden sun going down
Gentle blue giant spin us around.
All through the night, safe 'til the morning light.
On the day the Blazer was christened "Little Brutus" we were driving back home through the countryside. Pitch black, I just had to stop and look at the stars. Megan, Robert and I lay down on this gravel road in awe of the beauty of the sky, then Megan softly started singing this song. It's now forever etched in my memory.
Seers and Saints:
After the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi in 1948, Walter Lippman distinguished the work of "seers and saints" from that of "legislators, rulers, and statesmen" using a spatial metaphor:
Statesmen were oriented "horizontally . . . they act in the present, with men as they are, with the knowledge they possess, with what they can now understand, with the mixture of their passions and desires and instincts. The must work with concrete and with the plainly and generally intelligible things.
"The insight of the seers, on the contrary, is vertical: They deal, however wide their appeal, with each person potentially, as he might be transformed, renewed and regenerated. And because they appeal to experience men have not yet had, with things that are not at hand and are out of their immediate reach, with the invisible and the unattained, they speak and act, as Gandhi did, obscurely, appealing to the imagination by symbolic evocation and subtle example.
A quote from Ethan Canin's "The Palace Thief":
"We always suspected that something was wrong with Clive, but our suspicions were muddled, especially in those days, by his brilliance. He didn't talk much, and when he did, he used words like "azygous" and "chemism." That afternoon, when our mother's electric blender went dead three hours before her dinner party, he repaired it using her iron and a piece of wire from our father's old shortwave, then went around muttering, "liquefy, blend, puree, pulverize, frappe," under his breath. He kept it up. He sang it like a guitar lick, all the way to the end - "grind, grate, chop"...
Open mindedness? Reality check.
This was called into the Wichita Eagle Opinion line...
"This is for the caller who said his or her son couldn't join the Boy Scouts because he wouldn't swear allegiance to God: Well, I think he ought to accept God because God's the only one who's going to hold this country together. When you have people like the United Nations and thieves in Washington DC taking away our liberties and rights, maybe you better turn to God."
What we can learn from dumpster diving:
... also finds sad things: abandoned teddy bears, shredded wedding books, and diaries. His conclusion to Dumpster diving may surprise readers who feel pity for the homeless: "Once I was the sort of person who invests objects with sentimental value. Now I no longer have those objects, but I have the sentiments yet. Many times in our travels I have lost everything but the clothes I was wearing and Lizbeth.
"The things I find in Dumpsters, the love letters and rag dolls of so many lives, remind me of this lesson. Now I hardly pick up a thing without envisioning the time I will cast it aside. This I think is a healthy state of mind. Almost everything I have now has already been cast out at least once, proving that what I own is valueless to someone.
"Anyway, I find my desire to grab for the gaudy bauble has largely been sated... while the rat-race millions nightly scavenge the cable channels looking for they know not what. I feel sorry for them."
Till they find their rest in a Happy Meal . . .
...In a way, their actions are a parable of the empty promises in life that many of us chase. For Ortberg's children, the chase is for the cheap toy, burger, and fries in a colorful box. Happiness, the ads promise, is within grasp. Or is it?
"When the excitement wears off, they need a new fix, another Happy Meal. They keep buying them, and they keep not working. In fact, the only one Happy Meals bring happiness to is McDonalds.
"Consumerism itself has become a kind of addiction. The more toys we acquire, the more frequent and expensive they need to be to produce the old high. The shift from finding identity in what we produce to what we possess, from a work ethic to a consumption ethic, at once exalts the pursuit of happiness and guarantees its ultimate futility."
He concludes with this McNugget of wisdom: "When you get older, you don't get any smarter, your Happy Meals just get more expensive."
Matt Groening's Secret to successful parenting:
Any one of these phrases can be used in any situation.