Your Catfish Friend

(Quilt by Lorena Pettway, Gee’s Bend, Alabama)

“When we think of friends,” wrote Mark Twain in a letter, “and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why, save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy — that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.”

YOUR CATFISH FRIEND

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”

~ Richard Brautigan (1935-1984), American poet and writer

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Try to Remember

(Tohickon by Daniel Garber, 1880-1958, American painter)

(The carefree hours of summer vacation are over. As the days become shorter and cooler, the air turns wistful. It is time for some autumnal reflections.)

This song is a highlight of the Broadway musical The Fantasticks. The plot is a variation on the reverse psychology gambit perpetrated by Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer one Saturday when he tired of whitewashing the fence.

“Oh, come now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?” [Ben asked Tom.]

The brush continued to move.

“Like it?” [Tom said.] “Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth — stepped back to note the effect — added a touch here and there — criticized the effect again — Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

In The Fantasticks, to bring about a romance between a young couple, their parents build a wall to keep them apart.

To listen to a performance by Jerry Orbach of the original Broadway cast in 1962, click on this link (you may have to cut and paste):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPoxZ1NPBY&feature=related

TRY TO REMEMBER

Try to remember the kind of September
when life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
when grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
when you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember and if you remember, then follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
that no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
that dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
that love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember and if you remember, then follow.

Deep in December it’s nice to remember
although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember
without the hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember
the fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December our hearts should remember and follow.

~ Tom Jones, born 1928, American lyricist, and Harvey Schmidt, born 1929, American composer

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