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Saturday 30 January 2016

Waiting on Tomorrow

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Linda Gainer, owner of The Narrows, a restaurant and tavern just outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, said she was criticized for serving everyone involved in the standoff, from the F.B.I. to the protesters: photo by Jarod Opperman for The New York Times, 29 January 2016


Not under pressure of a private grief,
Oh for but a few years yet of useful

Life, for all's complete once your rat

Race is run, that's how things go, no one prescribes to

Or gets to presume to order life
Around as though it were a sort of waitress race
 
Sister Life has better things to do than wait
Around in the wings for the part

You may have written for her


File:Halloween chicken.jpg

Waitress serving at restaurant counter while wearing Halloween chicken costume, Leroy's Restaurant, Monrovia, California (original caption: "D.K. made fine chicken, but there was something vaguely creepy about ordering eggs..."): photo by Ross Berteig, 31 October 2002

File:MasonsCafeVachon.jpg
 
Mason's Cafe: truck driver, sailor and waitress at highway coffee shop on US 90 in Southern Louisiana: photo by John Vachon, 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


Waves crash over the sea wall in Blackpool, as Storm Gertrude is sweeping the country with winds of more than 90mph, leaving thousands of homes without power, buildings damaged and transport disrupted: photo by Peter Byrne/PA, 29 January 2016

Kashmiri Muslim devotees pray outside the shrine of Sufi Saint Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Thousands of devotees thronged to the shrine, where the Kashmiri Muslim head priest displayed the relics of the Sufi Saint. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

 Kashmiri Muslim devotees pray outside the shrine of Sufi Saint Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. Thousands of devotees thronged to the shrine, where the Kashmiri Muslim head priest displayed the relics of the Sufi Saint: photo by Dar Yasin/AP, 29 January 2016

TOPSHOT - A fishing boat is seen in the ...TOPSHOT - A fishing boat is seen in the morning general view of the city skyline covered by a smoggy haze in Mumbai on January 29, 2016.  AFP PHOTO / PUNIT PARANJPE / AFP / PUNIT PARANJPEPUNIT PARANJPE/AFP/Getty Images
A fishing boat is seen and the city skyline is covered by a smoggy haze in Mumbai: photo by Punit Paranjpe/AFP, 29 January 2016

A volunteer for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Sanders holds the door open ahead of a campaign rally in Fairfield, Iowa...Billy Hunter, a volunteer for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, holds a door open while waiting for Sanders to arrive at a campaign rally in Fairfield, Iowa January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich
 
Billy Hunter, a volunteer for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, holds a door open while waiting for Sanders to arrive at a campaign rally in Fairfield, Iowa: photo by Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters, 29 January 2016

4 comments:

manik sharma said...

Tom,

No one gets to presume. I presumed that candlesticks were folklore, and redundant, but a deluge and a powerless 8 days reminded me they weren't. It often takes another circle to cut through ours to remind us of the discipline we have to run this race with. And you and I and everyone else here knows by now, we got to run. There are only a few roads that lead out of here. Not everyone will get out, tip-toeing with a sense of pride. Some battles are lost even before they begun. But the race has to be run.

TC said...

manik, always excellent to hear from you.

It often takes another circle to cut through ours to remind us, indeed.

Are we escaping or trying to get inside before everything closes down for good, while the waves crash on the sea wall, the women wail, the haze encloses the boats.

How are we going to stand up to it or down under it or worse, slip our hand into the mechanical sliding door and have it crushed... curiously, I think I know exactly how that feels.

On the other hand though... it being late here... I've been immersed for the past hour in the spectacular land below water... redemptive cleansing ritual of the First Order (as we say around the Stars Wars Barracks).

TC said...

Forgot to enquire my dear manik, may I be so bold as to make off with that lovely spooky picture of sheep before a squat building beside a water filled crater beneath some scraggly pines which you have up top now, I wonder?

(Furthermore and moreover I'd be extremely grateful for any relevant captioning data, you know what a nut I am about that.)

manik sharma said...

Tom,

I don't know how you even got there. Thank you. I don't know if we are more of the sheep than the sheep being anywhere close to us. I used to click photographs some years ago. Then I gave up. Please do use it at will. This is place called "Narkanda" in the northern state of Himachal (India). "Silence of the lamb" - ain't it?